This story begins with a generous act of giving time, treasure, and talent. A friend, I will call him Larry, and several people from his church went to Mexico to build houses in a blighted community. These were simple structures with communal water and electricity, so it wasn’t hard to put up four walls and a roof. Several houses were completed. Larry and his team returned home feeling good about the work they had done.
Larry had given his time, treasure, and talent. The others on the trip did as well.
A few years later Larry returned to the same area to build more homes. What he saw surprised him. The homes built on the first trip were in various stages of neglect. A few windows were broken. Interior doors had come unhinged. Nothing else had been done to improve the neighborhood, so there was still no indoor plumbing or electricity in the homes.
Larry was disappointed. He had put a lot of time, energy, and funds into his act of generosity. And he felt like it was not appreciated because it was not well cared for.
I know the organizer who put this trip together. He’s a good person with capable cross-cultural skills, and I wish Larry had brought the issue up when all this surprise, angst, and frustration was bubbling inside him. But Larry didn’t want to be disruptive or become “that guy” on the trip, so he kept it to himself.
Only when he returned home, and had a cup of coffee with me, did it all come out. Larry said he’d never go on another trip because clearly his work wasn’t appreciated.
It was tempting for me to say nothing and just listen, but doing so would have been a missed opportunity. So I told Larry that a lot of what he saw was the manifestation of poverty. When you struggle to put food on the table you don’t worry too much about a cracked window. When you can’t be sure you will have a job tomorrow you aren’t going to invest in indoor plumbing when the communal well works just fine. And if you aren’t even sure you will be living in the home next month, why fix the unhinged door?
People in poverty have a different set of priorities. They have to think about survival, not thriving. Larry didn’t see this. I’m not sure he even does today because I don’t think he’s ever gone back (which might say something about my ability to explain this).
Now we could analyze whether building homes was the right approach to begin with. But for this post I’m less concerned with defining good missiology and more interested in thinking about Larry’s reaction. His response to what he saw was a classic case of misunderstanding the situation. He didn’t have the context clear in his mind, so the results didn’t make sense.
Curiously, it was less about a cross-cultural dynamic and more about a cross-economic dynamic. Larry simply couldn’t identify with the poor because he’d never been around the poor. He couldn’t read the subtle but ultimately crushing realities of poverty. He wanted to do the right thing, he simply didn’t know how.
Larry was giving without understanding.