When Helping Hurts — Accelerate Books

The Best Insights from When Helping Hurts

Truths from the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett, Brian Fikkert

By the Accelerate Team

Published: September 6, 2022
Last updated: September 6, 2022

Poverty is an extremely complex issue that requires long-term, relational approaches over short-sighted quick fixes. When a fundamental misunderstanding of poverty and the people it impacts happens, helpers can do more harm than good in their attempts to alleviate poverty. The authors have revealed the need for a different approach to facing this tremendous issue.

This idea is explored more deeply in the pages of the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett, Brian Fikkert (published by Moody Publishers). In our reading of this book, some important insights stood out.

Poverty is a result of broken relationships with God, self, others, and the rest of creation.

At creation, God made man to be in a healthy, whole, and holy relationship with Him. The purpose of man is to glorify God, and to show how great He really is.

Out of that relationship flows three other relationships. Our relationship with self is a correct understanding of who we are, for mankind is created with inherent worth and dignity because every single person is created in the image of God.

We also have relationship with others. We are supposed to know, love, and encourage one another. The same dignity and worth that is given to us is bestowed upon every human being, and they deserve our love for that reason.

We also have a relationship with the rest of God’s creation. God gave man a unique job to steward creation. Humanity is supposed to understand, protect, subdue, and manage the world God created for our benefit and His glory.

All poverty is produced by one or more of these relationships being damaged and broken. People believe wrong things about God, themselves, each other, and creation. Both materially poor and non-poor experience poverty in these areas, but in different ways. For instance, a materially poor person can experience shame that causes them to feel inferior to others and to have a nihilistic view of life. Therefore, they condemn themselves to a life of poverty.

On the other hand, a materially non-poor person can experience poverty of self by having a god-complex where they believe themselves superior because they have achieved their wealth through their own efforts and think they know what is best for low-income people. Both of these poverties require repentance and believing the truth of God’s Word.

“Being made in God’s image, human beings are inherently relational...before the fall, God established four foundational relationships for each person: a relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation.”

Page 54, When Helping Hurts Tweet

Misdiagnosing poverty-needs results in the wrong alleviation efforts and does more harm than good.

If poverty is primarily about a lack of resources, then helping seems easy: provide more resources. However, history has proven that resource reallocation does not cure poverty. Poverty is a much deeper issue that requires a more informed, better invested, multi-faceted, relational approach.

There are three primary levels of intervention when it comes to poverty alleviation:

Relief: meeting an emergency or crisis need to sustain a person, family, or community.
Rehabilitation: the person or community has survived the emergency or crisis but are now working on restoring their life to what it was like before the emergency or crisis took place.
Development: requires a long-term relational commitment to help the person, family, or community gain skills and steward God-given gifts so they can glorify God and support their families through work.

Misidentifying the problem results in applying the wrong intervention, which can have devastating effects. For instance, if a family is not experiencing a crisis, but relief is the only intervention used, then they can become dependent upon handouts and even enabled to continue their current patterns and behaviors. On the other hand, if relief is needed immediately, but development is the only thing offered, then a family may perish before they are helped. Therefore, great wisdom and discernment are needed.

Most of the time relief is not needed, particularly when helping the poor in North America. The person who is habitually in poverty due to poor financial management or decision-making would benefit more from rehabilitation and development than relief.

Most organizations cannot provide all three of these interventions effectively, so it is better for the organization to determine what they are best at providing and do it well. They should, also, partner with other organizations who are able to provide the other levels of intervention and recommend people to them when needed.

“A helpful first step in thinking about working with the poor in any context is to discern whether the situation calls for relief, rehabilitation, or development.”

Page 99, When Helping Hurts Tweet

Closing Thoughts

What are some ways well-intentioned efforts could actually hurt a person experiencing poverty?
What happens when a doctor treats the wrong problem? What happens when poverty relief efforts try to solve the wrong problem?
In what ways have you tried to help others but found it to be less successful than you intended?