Now the Complexities

No one has said that charitable work is easy. In fact, my blog posts here over the past few weeks have argued just the opposite. Taking the easy (or easier) path is what gets us into trouble. Giving away money is easy. Building relationships is hard. Partnering with people who are culturally different is challenging. Learning to listen and being willing to lay aside any notion that we're in charge is daunting. But there is another elephant in the room that hasn't yet been discussed.

Developing nations are often difficult places to work because they are unstable. I have argued here that some of that instability has been fostered by our charity which has created an unhealthy dependency and destroyed any internal motivation on the part of those being helped. But that's only part of the story. In most cases there are other factors that contribute to the instability. In my humble opinion the biggest culprit is usually the government...or lack thereof. Every country is different so I want to be careful not to paint with too broad a brush, but in most cases the lack of stable, coherent, and fair governance creates an environment of insecurity and fear. In many developing nations rulers take power, some with seemingly good intentions, only to end up lining their own pockets and using their people, or worse, ignoring the needs of the people. In these setting corruption is rife throughout all levels of government from police to courts to elected officials. Even those who have the support of a ministry or charitable partner in the U.S. can lose it all on the whim of a government agent.

Coming from a 'melting pot' like the United States it can be hard for us to imagine how neighbors could kill neighbors in Rwanda as Hutu's turned on Tutsi's and for 100 days in 1994 slaughtered nearly 20% of that country's population. Along the way all the charitable work that was going on there came to a halt. Jacqueline Novogratz, who founded the Acumen Fund, tells of the devastating loss to women she worked with in Rwanda and the project she helped them start in her book 'The Blue Sweater'.

I wept when in early 2008 the slums of Nairobi and rural communities alike in my beloved Kenya exploded in violence after the hotly contested December presidential election leaving hundreds dead. I can still recall emails and texts with my friends in Kenya as they, too, mourned what was happening in their country. Though brief, this violence also interrupted or derailed good work that was being done there for those in need.

When we commit to help lift people out of poverty, partner with others for the sake of the Gospel and give our lives to building relationships with people of other cultures there are risks we take; emotional, spiritual, relational and, yes, physical risks. Unstable governments and the leaders that run them stop aid from getting to those in need, demand bribes from those who would be charitable, oppress their people and take advantage for personal gain. If you can't deal with this reality, don't get involved in doing charitable work in the developing world.

In situations like the ones I described and countless others like them, our role as partners is to come alongside our hurting brothers and sisters, mourn with them, pick up the pieces and start all over again. We must be willing to start and re-start and know that everything we are building today could be swept away tomorrow for reasons we may never, ever understand. What we must understand is that the work we do is for a season but the relationships we build are for a lifetime. If we get that we can do this.