Yesterday I tweeted about how World Vision’s gift catalog promotes donations by giving the impression that you are able to buy farm animals and other items for families in poor countries — but it turns out that they often don’t buy the actual animals that the donor thought they purchased. Puzzling? Yes. Warren Throckmorton quotes a […]
A Case Study in Giving to the Poor: What Do You Do When You Think Someone Has Wasted Money?
Tim Keller recounts this story in Generous Justice: When I was a young pastor at my first church in Hopewell, Virginia, a single mother with four children began attending our services. It became clear very quickly that she had severe financial problems, and several people in the church proposed that we try to help her. By […]
11 Objections on Giving to the Poor Answered by Jonathan Edwards
One of the best sermons of all time is Jonathan Edwards’s “The Duty of Christian Charity: Explained and Defended.” In it, he argues that helping the poor is one of the highest duties of the Christian. It is not a just a small duty, but a great duty — and even heaven and hell lie in the […]
The Chief Cause of the Wealth of Nations is Not Material at All, but Knowledge and Skill
Very, very well said by economist Michael Novak, quoted in Compassion International’s short booklet Poverty: Economists affirm that the chief cause of the wealth of nations is not material at all, but knowledge, skill, know-how — in short, those acts and habits of discovery, invention, organization, and forethought that economists now describe as “human capital,” which […]
Have We Missed the Meaning of the Incarnation?
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. Here’s the point: Sometimes, helping the poor requires taking part of their burden on ourselves, and suffering deprivation […]
The Necessity of Distinguishing Relief and Development
In both cases, the goal is to help the person back to self-sufficiency. But the strategies in each case are different — often profoundly so. Relief The goal of relief is to meet pressing, urgent needs that are causing great hardship to a person or group. You don’t worry about things like “dependency” here; you […]
One of the Most Important Sermons Any Christian Can Ever Read
Jonathan Edwards’ The Christian Duty of Charity to the Poor.
Is There a Relationship Between Stewarding the Environment and Ending Extreme Poverty?
Live58 is a movement to end extreme poverty in our generation. This is a helpful connection from the latest email newsletter by the team: When we think of justice, the environment isn’t normally the first thing that comes to mind. Perhaps we think of human rights, or all those crime shows. But when Paul said […]
Poverty Cure: From Aid to Enterprise
I am really impressed with the vision of Poverty Cure: PovertyCure is an international coalition of organizations and individuals committed to entrepreneurial solutions to poverty that challenge the status quo and champion the creative potential of the human person. This vision, rooted in their biblical understanding of poverty and the true solutions to it, is […]
The Greatest Need in Developing Nations
Peter Drucker: “The greatest need in underdeveloped countries is people who build … an effective organization of skilled and trained people exercising judgment and making responsible decisions.”