12 Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
My favorite Talk Radio host, Dennis Miller, often opines,
“I am willing to help the helpless. But I don’t care about the clueless.”
I have enormous respect for Dennis Miller. In some very dark days of my life, God used him to bring great joy to me. I also greatly respect him and find myself agreeing with him in many areas. I also recognize that to some that may seem like a harsh statement. To others, Dennis’ statement strongly resonates. I confess that I am one with whom his statement resonates.
Yes, I know that as Christians we should willingly step forward and help people who are truly helpless. I am more than willing to do that. But, when it comes to the clueless, I think we need to exercise a bit of discernment and great care. I am particularly concerned that Christians seem to have abdicated the extending of help to the helpless to the government. This abdication has extended government’s reach into our lives. And, I don’t think that is a good thing at all.
In his 1988 book, Help Is Just Around the Corner, Dr. Virgil Gulker shares some very insightful thoughts regarding efforts to mount a campaign in the war on poverty. He begins his narrative by describing a 1977 meeting that called together of all the “helping” agencies in Holland, Michigan:
For example, our sharing at the meeting revealed that several agencies gave away clothing. The duplication was actually convenient for the agencies. In Holland [Michigan] there was no shortage of donated clothing, and so there was no reason to ration its distribution. Imposing more accountability on the distribution of clothing would reduce distribution and thereby produce a stockpile of clothing. This would require renting a warehouse. In addition, controlling distribution at each agency and coordinating distribution among the agencies would take a lot of time. The agencies saved money and time by simply giving away clothing to anyone who asked. But, one agency representative pointed out, it was apparent that some people were showing up at one agency after another asking for clothes. It turned out that some of these people simply never did laundry. When clothes got dirty, they threw them away and went back for more. After all, if you don’t have your own washing machine, why go through the bother of going to a laundromat, as long as clean clothes are always available?Who was responsible for this behavior? Surely the agencies contributed to it by their own irresponsible style of compassion.
The same was true of financial aid. Whenever assistance is readily available, people will take advantage of it and may not even think they are acting irresponsibly. Why should a person feel guilty about accepting something that an agency or church readily provides? (An especially memorable instance of financial irresponsibility was a client’s request that a church donate money to pay his fine for welfare fraud!)
It was incredibly frustrating to realize that our way of doing things unintentionally kept people focused exclusively on their physical needs. We made it virtually impossible for them to achieve any level of self-esteem, because the helping experience was not designed to give them the help they really needed to become self-sufficient; it was geared to meeting their needs for clothing, money or whatever, in the manner that was simplest for us. Much of the blame for chronic dependence lay with the service providers, who lacked the resources and relationships with other providers to intervene more deeply in their lives. The system was betraying people.
The agency representatives reached the decision to work together more closely. In a series of meetings in the fall of 1976 we systematically gathered information about needs and resources in the Holland area. We conceived of a clearinghouse that would interview people to determine their needs and would refer them to the appropriate agencies for help. We developed a policy statement for the clearinghouse and even came up with a name—Love, INC.
We agreed that the clearinghouse:
- should not promote any further duplication of efforts in town;
- should conduct a need analysis of each client to determine the nature, extent and legitimacy of his or her needs;
- should identify people who were chronically dependent, not with the intention of dismissing their needs but in order to understand their whole need and to involve them in the process of overcoming their irresponsible behavior;
- should confirm the availability of help at an agency before referring someone to it.
Helping agencies would work cooperatively in analyzing people’s expressed needs. The clearinghouse would become a city-wide data bank on people having a wide variety of needs.
The next question was how to use the clearinghouse to bring these needy people into direct contact with church members. I suggested to the agency people that the clearing- house could be used to connect needy people not only with appropriate agencies but also with church members who could help them. Doing this, I argued, would be a way of enlisting more people, more resources, in helping needy people in the community.
The agency staff members were not optimistic about this proposal. Their general view was that the churches were irrelevant to meeting needs. Staff members cited instances in which churches had unnecessarily duplicated services or had started out to provide help but then lost interest. Agencies expressed their sense of responsibility to protect their clients from church members’ passing enthusiasms. They were interested in asking churches for food, clothing and money, and even for volunteers for programs. They did not, however, envision making the churches partners with them in helping the needy members of the community.
One reason agencies did not perceive a need for church members was that the war on poverty had produced a multitude of organizations and funding streams. Agencies had appeared to meet every need. The proliferation of well-funded agencies for a while masked the fact that agency efforts unfortunately often did not alleviate the needs or eliminate poverty. The spending cuts of the 1980s would force agencies to cast about for new resources. The possibility that church members might be enlisted became more attractive as it became clear that they represented not a reshuffling of existing resources but an infusion of new ones.
In any case, in 1976, despite reservations, the agency workers admitted that a cooperative program with church members would be great if it worked.
The next step, then, was for me to go to the churches.
Dr. Gulker did just that. Today, currently 157 Love INC affiliates in 30 states represent a network of more than 8,600 churches, 9,200 community-based organizations, and 100,000 volunteers meeting more than 1,680,000 needs each year. And, Dr. Gulker did not stop his involvement with the founding of Love INC.
In October, 1993, Dr. Gulker, working under the auspices of International Aid, conducted a research project. The objectives of this project were to answer two questions: First, what are the most pressing needs facing American Youth today? Second, how can the church reach out to these children and their families? By November, 1994, he had an answer and a plan and was looking for at least one church to test his ministry idea (Kids Hope USA). By February, 1995, members of Mason County Reformed, Grace Reformed of Holland, and Ottawa Reformed of Zeeland agreed to sponsor 54 public elementary school children. By 2003, members in 217 churches connected with 3,800 children. By the end of 2007, 705 churches in the US and Australia were sponsoring 9,300 children, and the numbers keep growing.
Currently, Dr. Virgil Gulker holds the highly honored position of the Servant Leader in Residence at Hope College’s “Center for Faithful Leadership.”
The Scripure passages at the beginning of this blog post illustrate God’s concern for the helpless. Because God’s love is pervasive, He also cares for the clueless. It may be that God shakes His head from time to time at what the clueless do to game the system. But, let’s not forget that He has infinite patience, which He displays every day in dealing so graciously with believers like you and me.
So, is Dennis Miller right? Should we help the helpless, but turn our backs on the clueless? After all, it surely seems as if the clueless have brought their hardship on themselves.
If they make absolutely no effort to solve their own problems or reach out for a hand up, doesn’t that mean they deserve whatever plight in which they find themselves? And, doesn’t ignoring them, or turning our backs on these clueless ones, seem reasonable? Is Dennis right?
Frankly, that’s a question that you will have to answer for yourself. For me, well let’s just say that I am trying to remain open to whatever answer the Holy Spirit might reveal to me. I certainly want to help the helpless. I also want to show God’s love to the clueless the same way that Jesus would have done. At the moment, I’m just not totally certain how He would act toward the clueless.
Will you pray with me?
Thank You, God, for loving us. Thank You for sending Jesus to be our Savior. Thank You for sending us Your Holy Spirit to dwell within us.
When we look out at the world, Gracious Father, we see so much need. So many people are hurting. Poverty has not only sustained itself over the last half-century, it has markedly increased. Far too many children go to sleep hungry every night.
We also realize that as bad as poverty may be here in the United States, it is far worse in other countries around the world. Our hearts break at the thought of the countless millions who barely eke out an existence each day.
By the power of Your Holy Spirit, please open our hearts to the needs around us. Grant us courage and the ability to wisely use our resources to reach out to the helpless. Give us Your guidance with regard to our relationship with the clueless. In all things, help us to minister to those in need as we would minister to the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself.
Thank You for speaking to our hearts and minds. And, thank You for hearing our prayer in and through the precious Name of Your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Copyright © 2012 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.
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