The Hurt of Helping People

We often find ourselves at different points of our lives presented with different opportunities to help people who are in need. The society, the media, and publicity often paints the idea of helping people as this pretty sight that is supposed to make you "feel good" about what you're doing. The helper always says something about realizing the privileges that he/she has and how it's so nice to be able to give back.

Given the situation and how recent this has been placed at my doorstep, it would be inappropriate for me to go too into detail about it, so I'm going to remain vague about describing this experience I've had.

About mid-January, so a little over a month ago, I received a call from someone who was in desperate need of money. Due to the nature of the situation and the relationship, I think 99.9% of people would've dismissed it and turned down the opportunity to help. However, it was placed on my heart that we're supposed to help give to the poor and needy. After receiving the call, I explored what options we had to be able to help. There was an immediate sense of rejection all around; so while I understood why, it still upset me that we would have to be so guarded.

I felt the need to help this person, so I decided to act on my own accord because I can't sit here knowing that this could be a chance for someone to come to know Christ. So, as I am no Bill Gates in terms of financial stature, it pained me to know I'd be giving away a substantial amount of money not being 100% confident that it was going where I presumed it should be going.

What irks me even more is that after having given this person the money, I was essentially told that it wasn't a good idea to have done it. I'm fine with being careful and being measured in our approach to helping people, but when we try to assume so much control over the situation in order to act, it makes it seem so self-righteous. I mean, I guess money is important to a lot of people, perhaps even too important, but to have it to a point where we basically lord it over people and use it as power, you can count me out. I'm so thankful that God's helped me understand that money really isn't all-powerful like so many people make it out to be. Some people are more attached to their money than to their own lives.

The saddest thing is that people deceive themselves into thinking that by working hard and earning their money, they reserve the right to keep it and display it as a trophy to show people what they've done.

So from my point of view, I see so many people and so many areas of need, but where do our resources go? "Let's help ourselves first, and whatever we have left we'll give to others." That's where I see our money going. Tragedy. Then, when someone wants to actually do something for another in need, you have to grind through layers and layers of pathetic policies and politics just to get a "no."

Helping people doesn't need to be so difficult. There's no need to have a thorough audit of the situation just to make sure we're 100% confident that the aid is used appropriately. I'm not saying that we should just blindly throw away our money, but that is the ballpark I'm playing in. We're given resources so we can return it and put it to use, not to glorify ourselves. Nobody's going to come up to you and tell you, "Wow! You're such a great budgeter/planner! Our money had an efficiency rating of 100% for 2015!"

When the person called again last week, I felt sick to even have to think about whether or not it's worth the trouble to go through the process in trying to help this individual out again, just to get turned down from my request. If from getting to know this person I got the sense that the situation was a fraud, I'd have no problem saying no. But it's because it isn't that now I have to take all these ridiculous steps for myself before I even consider helping her on my own because that's what I'm told to do.

I'm just hoping that the hurt of helping people won't outweigh the cause of helping people. If it does, I'll know that I'll be on my knees for forgiveness.