Segued from a previous post about what people really need, I have been thinking about how to best help people. While most people tell us that money will solve their problems, and while it might solve some of their immediate difficulties, it will not solve all their problems. This is particularly true if the root of the problem lies not in their status but in their behavior.
Tuesday morning, I was rudely awakened by a text message at 5AM. The message came from someone asking me for money because she had been mugged and needed help. I deleted it and rolled over in bed. You see, I have not seen or spoken to this person for over two years, and she did not so much as even attempt to build a relationship of trust before asking for help. There was no pretense at inquiry after how I was. The other reason I ignored the plea was because last time we spoke she also asked me for a loan, and at that time I told her "second loans will be made when first loans are repaid". She has already borrowed $3500 from me and never made even a token payment to settle the debt. You see, it is not money that is the problem; she has a problem with fiscal responsibility. I discovered the next day that she is on a cruise, meaning that although she has money to settle the debt, she decided to spend it on luxuriating rather than pay me off and then had the gall to ask me for more money. If she had paid me off instead, she would not have been robbed. She would have been at home.
I am not convinced that giving people money is the answer. We have all heard stories about lottery winners who quickly squander their winnings and return to a state of poverty. You may also have heard of the woman who won a $500,000 payout and tried to stay on food stamps because she 'had no income'. What we are seeing here is a clash of values and morality rather than a dearth of cash.
I see far too many people using money they do not have to buy things they do not need to impress people they do not like. Back during the housing boom, a member of my congregation unwisely bought extra homes to flip for easy money and ended up with three mortgages he could barely afford. I know a young entrepreneur who, at the tender age of 20, bought himself a Ferrari. Oh, he's very popular, but he's barely scraping by. This is not God's way.
A few years back, while listening to a conference address, I heard the following statement about how God acts in our lives:
Were you to receive inspired guidance just for the asking, you would become weak and ever more dependent on Them. They know that essential personal growth will come as you struggle to learn how to be led by the Spirit.
Likewise, if God granted our every wish like a genie, we would become quickly unable and unwilling to do anything for ourselves. If we are given anything we like at any time for any reason we imagine, we become beholden to and dependent on someone else. Growth comes from struggle. You may have heard the story of the naturalist who tries to help the butterfly or the bird escape from the cocoon or egg, not realizing that the rescued animal no longer has enough strength to survive on its own as a consequence. Too much help makes us weak. Your muscles get strong because you work them not because you sit on the couch watching other people exercise on TV.
We do people no favor when we are codependent with their underlying problems. Although it is true that sometimes people need a little fiduciary help to bridge the gap, if there is an underlying character weakness, then we're basically just hacking away at the symptoms. For every 100 people hacking at the leaves of evil, there is usually only one hacking at the root. Be the one at the root.
This is one reason why most government programs, however well-meant they may be, are doomed to fail. They believe that changing what people do will change who they are. Like most of those self-help seminarians, they believe that doing begets being. God sometimes opts to be silent to our pleas because He knows we do not intend to become better people. We do not desire to change; we desire that He should change things around us to better fit us. Ezra Taft Benson has said:
“The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.”
As I said before, people need our time and our talents far more than they need our fundage. They need us to invest in them, to believe in them, to create opportunities for choice rather than creating a choice environment. The world's methodology is always doomed to fail because it relies on trickle-through, on an ability of some things to penetrate the hard shell of habit and character that surrounds the hardened heart. We do what we are. If our characters reflect slums, we will build slums; if they reflect anger, we will build carnage; if they reflect gratitude, we will share the wealth of our characters, even if we have neither silver nor gold to give.
My biggest concern with all of the world's methodologies, with all the grandiose promises of the intellectual elite around us, is not what they do but how. Too many times, even those who mean well, insist on using the Adversary's methods as a way to implement the Father's plan. If doing leads to being, then why was Lucifer's plan to FORCE men to be good rejected? Self government is difficult, but it is the only way for people to grow. In a letter to PS Dupont, Thomas Jefferson summarized his faith in people's ability to choose their own adventure:
“We both consider the people as our children and love them with paternal affection, but you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses and I as adults whom I freely leave to self government”
God stays silent sometimes because we need to learn to choose for ourselves. It has been said that people learn from their mistakes. What will they learn if they are not allowed to make any? What will they learn if every time they make a mistake someone else comes in and makes everything ok?
I think God stays silent sometimes to see what we will do. In his landmark work, the Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis says this far better than I ever could:
You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs-- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot 'tempt' to virtual as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
God could override our will, but He never messes with it. He could save us from danger, but sometimes He allows it, not because He does not care, but because it's the best way for us to become the creature He knows we can become. I told a friend several weeks ago that I am grateful for my path because I like who I am and because I know it was the most efficient and effective path God had at the time to help me become what I was born to be. If we do not use it, He will provide us another chance, but it is only in the leap from the lion's head that we prove our worth. I take comfort in the knowledge that God is pleased at that point even with our stumblings.
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