Review And Analysis Of The Book When Helping Hurts: How To Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting The Poor ... And Yourself

This book is all about helping the impoverished. It gives you different ways to think about and improve the impoverished community. The book argues that sometimes trying to help people is not only hurting them but hurting the helpers as well. It focuses specifically on times when we try to help but make it worse and on ways to improve that. It gives ideas to help better the poor and different experiences that have happened because of it. The text doesn't address specific material things to give to the poor. Within that, the book stresses how to help the poor, and they need more help emotionally and physically then giving material things. The author of the book takes the side saying that there are many different ways that we try and help the poor but end up hurting them instead. The central claim of the whole book is that we are all broken and that the only way to fix that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. That Christians must teach the word of God correctly to convert them to the Lord. Then allowing them to turn their life around.

“For many young women (younger girls, really), having a child may be the only way of finding someone to love or be loved by. Sex and childbirth among teenagers in the ghetto is about personal affirmation”. This quote is talking about the sadness and shame that younger girls and women have to go through, they don't feel loved and they feel like no one will ever love them. Therefore the only way that they can get the love that they want is to have a child. These young girls have children at ages when they probably aren't ready, with men that they do not love, for reasons that no woman should ever have to feel. It's so sad to think about how broken the world is that these women do not feel loved. They don't feel like they have someone that they can lean on. These women need to know the Lord God is the only one who will love them unconditionally. These women had children when they are not ready when all they need is the father above who will love them more than anyone else will and yet they still don't see it that God the Father is the way the truth and the light. So it is Christian's job to show the light of the Lord to the people who are hurting the most.

“Living in the context of violence, some ghetto children correctly assume that they will not live very long. This can make them more presently oriented and give them little incentive to invest in their futures, such as being diligent in school. And of course, a failure to get a good education contributes to the long run material poverty”. This quote talks about how violence to kids in ghettos has just become a regular thing. The people that live there see destruction as something that happens every day and not something that has to be stopped, it's just a part of their world. Witnessing this violence shows them that they don't have a long time to live. They see their friends and their family continue and continue to die because of the violence that goes on, because of this violence they think they have no future. Therefore since they see no future, they see no sense in being a good student, a good athlete or even a good family member. They do what they want because they only see themselves living for a little while before the violence gets to them. What happens then is when they do make it through they have nothing to support them by. They have no education, no job and no way to live through life. This ends in maternal poverty. The brokenness in this is how these people expected violence. Violence is never something that we want to continue but is also something that is hard to stop. These people have given up hope when hope is what they need the most. Except the most trustworthy and hope-giving person, they do not see. It is God. God is the only one who can get them out of the depths and into the light. To show them that there's more to life than violence. They have a future. This is why again Christians need to come and teach them how to find the Lord Jesus to give them back their hope.