Beyond good intentions, charity requires justice

James Whitford, Executive Director Watered Gardens Gospel Rescue Mission – Published in The Joplin Globe August 31, 2012

 

A well-dressed guy showed up at our mission who wanted to help by distributing government subsidized cell phones to our people. He was wrong on a couple of counts. First, they aren’t “our” people. Each is his own and with difficult decisions to make every day just like you and me. Hope, effort, potential, risk, and love are no less a part of the day for the homeless and poor than they are for us. We should always remember that.

Secondly, distributing cell phones to the poor doesn’t constitute real help. I certainly appreciated his approach more than the lady who preceded him. She simply pulled up in her wagon with cell phones in a box and began indiscriminately handing them to anyone who would sign the paper on her clip board. There was certainly a spike in street sales that day. As I spoke to him in my office, I wondered if he knew that his cell phones were the result of the Telecommunications Act that taxes cell phone corporations so the “underserved” can have what you and I pay for every month. (Yes, those fees are passed on to us. Take a look at your cell phone bill.) No, this man just wanted to help. And though I didn’t question his motive, genuine intent does not always equate to true charity.

Consider the word charity. The dictionary defines it as “generous donations or actions to aid the poor or ill.” The Bible interchanges the word charity with love. But I am afraid our nation is losing sight of what true charity really is. Are “free phones” for the poor sponsored by the government an act of charity? Is feeding the hungry with food stamps an act of charity? Does the provision of shelter using tax dollars fall within the definition of charity?

In the Pope’s 2009 Encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), he pens these words:

“Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice.”

Justice is prerequisite to true charity. How can charity be true if it’s accomplished by taking from one what is rightfully his? We have seen a great deal of funding flow into Joplin in the last year, both private and public. Did some of those public tax dollars do any good? Of course. Should we be happy for the people who are helped by public funding? I am. I simply suggest we recognize that this is not true charity and that rather than celebrate accomplishments achieved at the expense of working, taxpaying Americans, we should instead wince, drop our heads a bit and find a new resolve to stand for what is just, a place where liberty is preserved and true charity abounds.

 

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Effective Compassion not Government’s Job

James Whitford, Executive Director Watered Gardens Gospel Rescue Mission – Published in The Joplin Globe

 

I was recently contacted by the Missouri Association for Social Welfare with a request to participate in the annual point-in-time homeless count. This is a particular day when all agencies serving the homeless are encouraged to do an on-site head count of the homeless and turn in the numbers to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a champion of collaborative effort in Joplin over the past several years, I am always interested in gathering good data

for all of us to use. However, when that data becomes a tool for bringing government funding into our city, I can’t help but cringe. Remember, as a nation, we’re almost 17 trillion dollars in the hole. We all should cringe. I’m pleased like many others that Missouri has an A+++ credit rating with a balanced budget, but don’t forget that a third of the revenue in our state comes directly from Washington. Yes, Missouri is on federal welfare. So, any way you skin it, we are in a situation that calls for every one of us to do our part in finding alternatives to the use of government dollars in caring for the sick, the hungry, the elderly and the poor.

Years ago, when I started managing a large pizza restaurant, it was typical for the cooks to eat the mistakes they made. Food cost was high and figuratively speaking, everyone was fat. It wasn’t until I instituted the policy “no eating mistakes” that the number of mistakes dropped significantly. Here’s my point; problems rarely get solved when the presence of the problem guarantees our next meal. Yet, this type of disincentive is subtly at work when we report homeless numbers to a government that returns aid in response. And to compound the problem, aid doesn’t resolve the issues. Food, clothing and a house don’t solve the problems of hunger, poverty or homelessness any more than triple antibiotic ointment heals a wounded heart.

What is effective? Read Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion. He delineates the marks of effective compassion: building or restoring family relationships, using discernment in the process of accountability, entering into economic exchange with the poor, providing freedom and exercising faith. Government’s primary responsibility is maintaining order in society so freedom can flourish, not demonstrating effective compassion. That job belongs to you and me, personally. And part of our responsibility in caring for our fellow man is to view him as God intends. Consider that my rescue mission alone has documented in the last 6 months more than 2000 instances of the homeless and poor earning what they need. Did we view Kathy as poor while she partnered in our “Worth-Shop” to earn Christmas gifts for her kids? Did we consider Joe “homeless” while he was framing in our new garage so he could earn tires for his car? Maybe we’d be better off and move toward real solutions if instead of counting “homeless” and “poor,” we counted “inventive, diligent partners with ingenuity, capacity and potential.” That would be a point-in-time count I’d like to see.

 

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Time to halt the handout

James Whitford, Executive Director Watered Gardens Gospel Rescue Mission – Published in The Joplin Globe March 4, 2012

After working diligently to connect charitable organizations and churches on-line to better steward distribution of resources, the time had finally come to implement the accountability component, to halt the hand-out and challenge some individuals to take a hand up. With a curriculum in place to inspire the poor to dream of a better future, establish a life-plan and attain measurable goals, I notified the network of Joplin organizations that some of the most

“frequent fliers” would be flagged in the system and need to be in the class before assisted any longer.

Then “Dave” came in my office. He was homeless and had tried to get food from another organization, but the “accountability net” had caught him. He was visibly angry. I explained the class and how it could help. Not interested. I asked if he thought giving him food was really helping him. No response. And then I told him I would allow him to work an hour for a food voucher. He exploded, “Why should I have to work for my food?!” Want an eye-opener? Dave’s question was asked sincerely. He truly didn’t understand “will work for food.” Unfortunately, he chose not to work that day. Sadly, and in very short time, a food stamp card arrived in the mail for him.

More than 2.5 million dollars in food stamps were distributed in Jasper County alone just last month. And so it was the month before that. Unfortunately, as most know, abuse abounds. People in the know have shared with me the details; details about the daycare that charges parents for their kids’ lunches and then purchases food stamps fifty cents on the dollar to increase profit. Details about personal shoppers that fill up the grocery cart with what they need only to let the food stamp card holder check out at the register. Groceries and cash are exchanged just outside the door. Details linking food stamp abuse to increased drug and alcohol use. One time I even stumbled upon a food stamp for pain med trade about to happen.

So I called the food stamp office locally and in Jefferson City. “Our private charity food bank network would like to know who is receiving food stamps.” No way. Confidentiality. “What about a signed release of information?” No way. Confidentiality. “It’s a federal thing” I was told because “It’s federal money.”

The government was never intended to exercise charity. No institution should ever intend to exercise charity. “Institutional charity” is a misnomer. Real charity only occurs person to person where compassion leads to relationship, encouragement, accountability and character-building challenge. The system failed us when it gave food stamps to a man who thought it absurd that he should work for his meal. And of no less importance, it failed Dave. Today, I saw him lying in the woods barely responsive after drinking a bottle of vodka. How did he pay for that?

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Broken people or broken system?

James Whitford, Executive Director Watered Gardens Gospel Rescue Mission – Published in The Joplin Globe February 5, 2012

Are the people broken or is the system broken? If you walk into our rescue mission, it may seem the people are broken. But it’s a rescue mission. It just feels that way. And sometimes, it just looks that way. That undone, unkempt and unloved person with a thread worn stocking cap is slumped over a table where some other look-alikes commune over coffee with an unsettling ease as if the man’s condition was merely one of their shadows. But they’ve seen it before. And so have we. Is it the drunk? Is it the meth addict who’s cycled out? No. It’s “Steve.” And yes, he’s broken.

Steve is an addict. He had been through our mission some time ago, was completely clean for several weeks and beamed then with the youth intended for his mid-twenties frame. When he fell “off the wagon,” he had to make a decision: be restored by the community who had relationally invested in his life or return to the help he had sought before. He chose the latter. Days later, after a medical discharge, he showed up with a hazard-labeled bag of six bottles: Risperdal, Klonopin, Lithium, Cymbalta, Buspirone and Zolpidem. In this struggling addict’s hands were anti-psychotics, muscle relaxers, mood stabilizers, anti-depressents, hypnotics and anti-anxiety meds. They were all prescribed on one day by the same psychiatrist. The next day, Steve was unresponsive on a ventilator in ICU from over-dosing.

Unfortunately, problems with medication abuse are not unique. Many times I hear the homeless and poor discuss hope of housing assistance or disability income via mental health or pain-related diagnoses when I know the true need is to be loved and challenged. The system seems detrimentally weighted to incentivize the poor to seek an illness. I know. That’s a hard pill to swallow. Making that pill even larger, the pharmaceutical industry plays its part in the incentivizing process, as well. But there are some who resist. Just a few days ago, a man in our shelter, quite seemingly in his right mind, reported with disappointment, “They said they can’t help me with housing unless I get on medication.” And another, contingently released from jail, “They said I have to take these pills to stay out of jail, but I don’t really think I need them.” I think he’s right. I’m the one who visited him while incarcerated when he was on no medication, clearer, calmer and more responsive than I had ever known him to be.

The next time you see a person on the streets that some kids might label a “zombie” or someone else might mistakenly label a drunk, just consider first that he or she may simply be a broken person that sought help from a broken system.

As I see it from the trenches,

James Whitford

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