Well, it’s official. I’ve been called back to Ethiopia. I’ll be there in April this year. This will be my third trip to Africa in eight months, which for me is a lot. So why do I do it? This is the question I was thinking about this morning. For me there are a number of reasons; to see the love of Christ come to people, to see captive people set free, to see people lifted out of poverty, to see the sick healed. Then there are other, less noble reasons; the desire to travel, the desire for adventure, the desire to meet new people and see and take photos of new things.  These and many other reasons are why I go. So I could go any number of directions with this, but the subject I want to talk about today is poverty alleviation, because the desire to alleviate poverty for most people is not a desire in itself, but is driven by other factors.

What are the basic human motivations?  I believe they can be broken down into four basic categories. Human decisions are based on fear, greed, guilt, or love. You might balk at this idea, but I believe if you look around and put this idea to the test, it will play out.

In the United States, politically speaking, there are basically two attitudes toward the poor.  (I know I’m generalizing, so you’ll need to forgive me for that.) The first is that if you increase the number of jobs, the poor will naturally be lifted out of poverty as less people are out of work. It’s a completely supply-side equation for poverty alleviation. The other side says that if you just give the poor enough financial assistance, they’ll be better off. This is a completely demand-side equation.

Let’s go back to the four human motivations. Do you think either of these methods of poverty alleviation are done out of love for the poor?  I would argue absolutely not. Why?  Both of these methods are by design completely arms-length transactions. They both exclude getting your fingernails dirty and actually engaging with the poor or looking them in the face. I believe the first view is based on greed, and the second on guilt. Greed because there is a desire to get rich, and if crumbs fall to the poor, that’s great, too. It fails to recognize that there are other reasons people are poor besides a lack of jobs. The second group feels guilt over their own success, so throwing money at the poor without actually dealing with the underlying causes helps them feel better. This side fails to realize that when you give a poor person everything without making them work for it, you break their spirit. Both views think of poverty as a purely economic phenomenon, but fail to address the mental, spiritual, and social aspects of poverty. Neither side actually wants to look a poor person in the eye. The attitudes these two groups have toward each other drive me nuts. Guess what? You’re both wrong, so put the condescension aside.

There’s a quote from the book, “When Helping Hurts” by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert . I’ve quoted it before, but I believe it’s worth quoting again.  “The god-complexes of the materially non-poor are also direct  extension of the modern worldview. In a universe without God, the heroes are those who are the best able to use their reason to master the material world. In other words, the materially non-poor are the victors in the modern worldview, the gods who have mastered the universe and who can use their superior intelligence and the material possessions they have produced to save mere mortals, namely the materially poor.”

The only true way to alleviate poverty is to actually love the poor. It says in the book of Isaiah, chapter 1, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing of the finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.”

So this morning I had to ask myself again, “What is my motivation?” If it is out of greed or fear or guilt, I have no right to go back to Ethiopia.