Helping the Poor - the Four Stages

As anyone following along here would realize by now, I have this preoccupation with poverty and economics and culture.  I am persuaded that our human reality is a social one - that we are intertwined with others for our values and happiness and well being.  And I think that inter-dependency extends to the economic realm as well.  Our well being, our full development as persons is tied to the poorest among us. 

And I have been flopping around here reading and writing stuff for a decade or more that leans toward DOING SOMETHING about poverty on the planet.  I have learned a bit - I have tried to share some of it in this Blog.

I just stumbled on a little gem by one of my favorite authors.  The Rev. Albert Nolan, the author of Jesus Before Christianity, has a little monograph on the four stages of Christians helping the poor.  He calls them stages of "spiritual growth".  That terms is a tad vague for me - but you get the point.  If you want to read a bit more about this book, I have posted a bit of a summary here:
 https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://scheiders.com/temp/Jesus%20Before%20Christianity%20Notes.pdf
That is probably more information than you want, so just keep reading here!
This piece by Nolan is here:

  http://www.catholiccincinnati.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/FourStages_SpiritualGrowth_by_Nolan.pdf

I think he describes pretty well the stages that concerned Christians go through when they encounter poverty.  It's helpful to reflect on that as we try to figure out what we are about.

Stage 1 Compassion

We send people off to expose them to poverty.  We build compassion - it IS my problem.

This leads to action - relief work, simplifying our lives, etc.

Nolan doesn't point this out, but this is the charity phase.  It's a good thing to do - but it is palliative at best, and creates dependencies at the worst.

Stage 2 Realization that poverty is a structural problem.

We want to change the system.  We move to preventive actions, political action.

I think he puts a little too much evil in the rich, but that's just me.

The structural problems are clearly there and they are NOT HELPING.  That is true.

Stage 3 - the Poor have to help themselves, and they CAN help themselves.

And they don't need us to do it for them, thank you very much.

He rejects even the idea that we can teach them to help themselves.

The poor know better than we do what needs to be done.

The book, Economics of Poverty, makes an excellent point of that  See my blog entry on that:

http://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2011/11/poor-economics-book-review-and-few.html

This is where we are now - I think a good understanding of the impact of culture helps with this.

See my blog entry on this:  

http://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2011/01/culture-and-developing-nations.html

Turns out we need them!  We are in this together - we are not in charge of this either.

BUT - don't romanticize the poor.

This step takes quite a bit of development and there are not a whole lot of organizations or people up to this level.  Sustainable development is a good step - but it is still helping from the outside.

Stage 4 - we are disillusioned with the poor.

They make mistakes.  They are selfish.  They waste money.

They are human beings too.  The book Poor Economics makes this case well also.

The enlightenment stage is that we join with them to oppose the structural problems, and the injustices that exist.  We work together.  That is real empowerment.

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That said - I still don't know what to do to get people more engaged in this.  It feels like an insurmountable problem to move the political will of even a few members of our parish, let alone the state of MN, or the nation, or the planet.

Well - a step forward is better than one backwards!

What do you think?

--

Carl Scheider

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"Remember, I'm pulling for ya. We're all in this together!" 

Red Green