This is the third in a series of excerpts 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
Human dignity requires a recognition of the human person as a body-soul unified whole. The fact of human consciousness and their spiritual character makes persons subjects capable of transcending their biological reality and participating in authentic human action that connects them with the world through discovery, creativity, and self-determination.
The Freedom and Virtue Institute’s self-reliance clubs are an example of projects that focus not on passivity but on active participation and character development. In dozens of schools across the United States and beyond, students participate in extracurricular organizations such as gardening or service clubs. Students work, learn economics, and earn funds with which they can meet all their educational needs. The clubs’ effectiveness is due to connecting rewards with accomplishment.
Systems of care that affirm the subjectivity of the poor have a better chance of avoiding the staleness of transactional engagements where the poor are provided with material goods and services and helped to connect to the manacles of bureaucracies offering additional help. The spectacle of long lines of people waiting to get “stuff” is the image of idleness and docility.
Promoting the creation of simple systems of encounter and productivity alters the exercise and stimulates engagement and activity. As subjectivity is open-ended and existential, each person is seen in his or her unique reality, demanding from us closer attention to each individual person. In biologistic systems based on the transaction of goods and service, we might think that we already know what a mass of undifferentiated people need. There is not much discovery to be made there. In personalist systems, however, the discovery of the deeper human need is an everyday adventure. Every individual is seen as unique and unrepeatable, made in God’s image, with an intrinsic capacity to transcend biological reality; a being called to greatness. The poor are not seen condescendingly as “little” or unimportant but instead as “giants in the making.” As that reality may be difficult to descry at first, it is often the case that organizations need to invest in “baby steps” in the right direction.
A correct understanding of the human person also demands a respect for the communal aspect of the person. The imago Dei refers not only to the uniqueness of individuality but also to the communal dimension of self. We are beings created in relation to others; we do not pop up from the ground but are born from others, brought into relationship from the very moment of conception. We need each other! The rationale for our communal life goes beyond mere utilitarian necessity. We are in relation to others because relationships are rooted in the deepest orientation of the human soul. There is a social reality inherent in our beings, and human fulfillment is contrary to isolation and the radical individualism of atomistic conceptions.
We respect the individual person because he or she is one of us and one with us and because in each we see a glimpse of what it is to have dignity.
Finally, a correct understanding of the human person demands that we are honest about the reality of sin. The actual situation of the human person, the historical context of man, is marred by rupture of relationships: rupture with God and rupture with others. We only need to look around to see the reality of our inhumanity to each other and the sorry state of our condition. We are often inclined to corruption, to immanence, to vice and death. Our response to human dignity must take into consideration the various ways that human dignity is injured by some people against others and by our own actions. No matter the diversity of our religious or philosophical commitments, we are capable of recognizing a common set of moral norms. As human beings, we have a common sense of what it means to treat others with dignity. “There is something in the way we humans are wired,” Lawrence Reed insists. “Down deep within us we have a sense of what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. And when we ignore our wiring, something within us— that voice we call our conscience—cries out to us. In complex situations, the voice can be difficult to discern, but we cannot really deny that it is there.”
The poor are human beings also, with the same inclinations to evil and the same potential for good. They are not immune to the temptations of vice, just because their material resources are fewer than others’. In short, we need to resist the temptation to romanticize the poor!
We must learn how to address the poor with a realism that avoids doubtful models based on how we think things ought to be. Instead, we must consult them directly, letting the poor speak for themselves regarding the totality of their reality.