How to Help: Guidelines for Thought and Action

An excerpt from Ismael Hernandez's new book on "rethinking charity"

This is the fourth and final excerpt in a series from the latest book by Ismael Hernandez, Rethinking Charity: Restoring Dignity to Poverty Relief (Acton Institute, 2024). The selections are reproduced here without footnotes.

See the previous posts:

Excerpt from Chapter 2: Sound Thinking about Poverty Alleviation.

Except from Chapter 3: Religion and Reason

Excerpt from Chapter 9: Human Dignity

Excerpt from Chapter 10: How to Help

Guidelines for Thought and Action

Solidarity and bonding require that we understand that collective labels obscure information. Although it is possible to have a general picture about who the poor are, proxies often impede the targeting of the real and deeper human need. Here, we can benefit from the insight of economics through the principle of methodological individualism.

The praxis of poverty-alleviation must address the action of individuals, or it runs the risk of descending into a fraud that at times takes the form of activism. We truly do not know much that is meaningful about the poor unless we actually get to know them as individuals.

The concept of the individual is not an empty abstraction, nor is it a denial of the reality of the social nature of a person. A person is connected to others, and his or her existence is mediated through communities. Self-sufficiency increases over time and involves a wide array of social institutions. The human person’s independence is never total, as even the so-called “self-made” entrepreneur depends on the cooperation of others.

Yet, all action is performed by individuals. The character of the meaning of human action is determined by the acting person. We cannot visualize collective wholes, but we can certainly get to know and act alongside individual persons. Every individual belongs to multiple coexistent collectives, and through unity with the individual, we get a secondary glimpse of social reality. The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises articulated the principle of individual action in his classic study Human Action: “A collective operates always through the intermediary of one or several individuals whose actions are related to the collective as the secondary source. It is the meaning which the acting individuals and all those who are touched by their action attribute to an action that determines its character.” Shelby Steele has warned about what happens when we begin to think of collectives rather than individuals as the motors of human action. “Social victims may be collectively entitled,” he writes, “but they are all too often individually demoralized. Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change.”

Respecting the individuality of persons means understanding that each of us bears the image of God in a unique way and that each of us has different skills, aspirations, temperaments, hopes, histories, fears, and vices. That is why poverty-alleviation efforts that consist of massive distribution of goods or bureaucratic systems that devolve persons into “clients” or numbers fail. They operate on the basis of deficient information and an incorrect anthropology. They lack the personal experience of encounter, even if they might exhibit efficiency in distributing benefits or items.

In a person-centered system, encounter facilitates the acquisition of direct information from an individual relationship. As this encounter is focused on the person, whatever internal feature that is relevant is readily available, but the success of our effort cannot simply be reduced to quantitative measurements.

In a group-centered system, general features and general criteria are necessary to address the complexity arising from the task of addressing what often are larger numbers. Group-centered action relies on proxies, because these serve the purpose of reducing reality to common denominators, thus depersonalizing those who should be considered individually.

Bureaucracy emerges as an efficient system to dispense aid. Believing that we already know the needs of the clients, if things do not work, external constraints on the group are easier to target and blame as culprits for whatever negative features are found within the group. Often, two externalities are offered as reasons for failure: insufficient resources and discrimination. If there is any problem with the intervention, it is that it did not occur soon enough or it was not comprehensive.

Respect for the individual person calls for an attitude of humility. We must be very careful in trying to change people when we are working with the poor. As Robert Lupton observes, that attitude might convey a message that is offensive: “I am ok. You are ignorant; I am enlightened. You are wrong; I am right.” Practicing effective compassion means treading the tightrope of, on one hand, recognizing and discouraging vice, indolence, and dependence; and on the other hand, being sensitive and humble as we encourage others toward positive change. We must at once be willing to bring moral judgment to bear and also be ready to admit that our judgments or applications of principles could be mistaken.

At the same time, it is not productive to hurl accusations of insensitivity, judgmentalism, or privilege at those who are involved in charitable work. The reality is that most people genuinely want to help, even if all they know how to do is to write a check. Even if they are still influenced by prejudices or fears concerning getting close to the poor, they try to assist one way or the other, and this should be affirmed. Too many books have been written about how American middle- or upper-class Christians do not understand the poor, do not know what poverty is, or do not appreciate how “privileged” they are. Maybe it is the activists who are the ones who do not understand the reality of most American Christians. What many get from condemning lectures is a sense of being attacked, and that is not going to inspire people to pursue authentic encounters. Affirm and encourage everyone who is doing at least something to help those in need.

At the same time, we must remember that encounter is not optional. What is most important is not where we are on a spectrum of encounter but the direction we are headed. Here is where the creation of effective networks of influence is vital. Your entire church or non-profit community must become a network of influence.

“The key actor in history is not the individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that arise out of that network,” writes the sociologist James Davison Hunter. “I don’t want to underplay the role of individual charisma and genius,” he continues, but “my point is simply that charisma and genius and their cultural consequences do not exist outside of networks of similarly oriented people and similarly aligned institutions.” Networks of influence propose better ways of working with the poor, create incentives for a type of learning that leads to understanding who we are, and systemically foster a type of action that is rooted in the Christian tradition of service.

Service must become integral, instead of incidental, to the mission of your organization and grounded in the great commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself ” (Lev. 19:18). If you believe that your organization is already centered on the great commandment, ask yourself this: Are our systems of care reflective of the firm commitment of bonding with the poor? Are they transactional or relational?

Encounter with the poor is not optional. It is a necessary aspect of poverty-alleviation efforts. Encounter brings us face-to-face with the reality of suffering and, as importantly, with the reality of human dignity. People need people more than they need things.