I’ve held back on sharing this story because I didn’t want to embarrass anyone. But several years have passed and it seems okay to share now.
It began with a presentation I gave about the work PathLight is doing in Belize. An acquaintance listened and then quickly dismissed the work as cultural intrusion. Without using these exact words, the gist of her comments were, “You have no business imposing your cultural values on the people of Belize.” She continued with warnings about doing damage through our work because we do not understand all the cultural norms and thus were sure to make things worse, not better.
It sounded like she had read half of When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. But only half. She got the part about how generosity can mess things up, but she never got to the part overcoming that challenge. She also, sorta, kinda knew that anything that sounded like colonialism is bad, but she didn’t understand the depth of history we have in Belize, or the skills of our Belizean staff in Belize, or the partnerships with Belizean institutions.
To be fair her dismissal has some grounds in historical reality. There are plenty of intrusions by a dominant culture that lead to terrible results. Unfortunately she had more of a knee jerk reaction than a thoughtful one.
The conversation reminded me of a cross-cultural stage sometimes called Reversal. It’s a stage when we have a largely positive view of other cultures and a negative opinion of your own. We can find ourselves in Reversal because of our own stereotypes about other cultures and our own.
Being stuck in the Reversal stage, as well as only reading the warnings from books like When Helping Hurts, often leads to being paralyzed. People can simply stop giving/trying/serving because they are afraid of making mistakes.
Back to my conversation. Starting an argument with her wasn’t going to accomplish anything, so I asked for her thoughts about generosity in general. Unsurprisingly, she had a cautious approach about giving anything to anyone. She was basically saying that it’s easy to make mistakes by giving, so it’s probably better to not give much.
By now you can imagine the snarky me wanting to say all kinds of things. The cynical me dismissing her. The arrogant me giving her a lecture. The holier than thou me asking if Paul was also a cultural imperialist. The disappointed me simply walking away. All tempting responses, but I resisted.
We continued the conversation, off and on, for a few years. The one thing we agreed on was that generosity is messy. “It certainly is,” she responded. But she was thinking in a negative way, whereas I was thinking about good messes, about learning and growing.
She never did become a donor, and I never did convince her that taking a risk with generosity was worth it. But we continue to interact and who knows what might happen.
Generosity is messy. So are relationships.
Photo by lalesh aldarwish