As we were driving to the bridge to help feed the homeless, I asked the others in the car what they were hoping to accomplish that night in their time under the bridge. One young man said that he was going under the bridge to develop more of a servant’s heart. Others in the car had similarly noble goals, which were very similar to ones I have made for myself. I try to treat my time under the bridge as practice in spiritual formation. As I reflect on it, though, there is a selfish element to it. None of us said that our goal was to actually help someone. In fact, I often wonder if the whole enterprise of feeding the homeless under the bridge is more self focused than other focused.
Lately, they have been feeding about 75 to 100 people under the bridge, three nights a week. Depending on how you plan the menu, it costs from $2 to $4 per person, if you actually provide a meal that consists of more than hot dogs or pizza. That’s a chunk of change for most of us schmucks. Is that the best use of our time and money? Feeding the hungry certainly is a good thing, but meals are not that hard to come by if you are homeless in Little Rock. On a typical day, you can get at least 4 meals all before noon. Little Rock is good about that. If there is so much food, why is there such interest in feeding the homeless under the bridge? I worry that it may be more about us than the homeless.
I have a similar issue with how short-term mission trips are done. Lots of money is expended to give fortunate people an experience with minimal effects for the people being served (I also wonder if, in some cases, even harmful effects – like lavishing attention on a group of orphans, only to abandon them after a week – not good for children who have issues of trust and attachment). To take an example from a church I belonged to and one of my kids had participated in, a trip to Brazil for 15 people was about $22,000, for what benefit to the Brazilians, really? The prospect of benefit appears to be tilted way in favor of the servers rather than the served.
Many, including myself, take the approach that doing things that help us change will ultimately help the needy (sounds sort of like a trickle-down approach). If we become compassionate, we will start doing compassionate things. If we go serve food under the bridge, we will develop more of a “servant’s heart.” If we go on short-term mission trips, we will develop a heart for people outside our culture. So we trip over ourselves under the bridge serving meals to many who just had a meal at the Salvation Army about an hour and a half earlier, all with the hopes that such experiences might, at worst make us feel good about ourselves at that moment, and at best, might be move us to change in some way that might actually help someone.
I wonder if we are going about this all wrong. What if we tilted the weight of benefit more toward the served than the servers? What if we placed a priority on helping the other rather than giving ourselves an experience? How would we go about doing that?
2 comments:
Mark, you are the king of metacognition - always thinking about your thinking. With this post, you have called into question the primary premise that you have always given to me as the basis for your trips under the bridge.
lol...yes I have. I wish someone would put me in the hot seat and challenge my premises, until then, I will have these conversations with myself.
I certainly still think there is value in spiritual formation practice, but it should at some point lead to action. Someone needs to actually help. I just want to argue that maybe we should be intentional about doing both.
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