A gift! How
thoughtful! Thank you!
I remember back in the day, driving to spend Christmas with
certain relatives, my mother would always prep us with, “now remember, no
matter what, you need to say ‘thank you’ and be grateful, ok?” Now that I have
kids, I’ve taught them a similar script – A
gift! Thank you! – and I’ve communicated my expectation that they not
embarrass me by being ungrateful brats.
I’ve thought about this lesson a lot lately – how saying thank you is an act of both gratitude
and basic decency. Furthermore, I’ve thought about it outside the context of my
childhood Christmases in America. I’ve thought about all the gifts that we
personally are asked to hand out on behalf of donors and even more about the
thousands of OCC gift boxes being packed NOW that will pass through our region next
spring. OCC is by far the largest “gift-giving ministry” working world-wide and
as such they provide the most obvious examples. Among the many negative articles
circulating about OCC lately (like this, and this, and this, and this) one push-back
comment I keep seeing is, “Remember, these are gifts.”
I’ve written about OCC myself – more than once, in fact – so
I obviously have thoughts. But it wasn’t until recently that I honed in on that
repeated phrase – remember, these are gifts. Every time my eyes read
that line, I’d think, yeah, so? until Jeremy and I were talking about it and we
remembered to pass the phrase through our magic ‘America filter’ and it donned
on us – Mom’s telling us to be grateful,
regardless.
The third world and missionaries like myself who are attempting
to serve here, have spent a good amount of time and energy trying to
communicate a specific message to the generous peoples of the first world:
random stuff from America is not helpful. But then mom reminds her kids again
to be grateful… and what’s left to be said?
WELL, how about this:
The following is why I believe “But it’s a gift!” is neither relevant nor appropriate, and why you
should think twice about giving “gifts” to the poor.
Let’s say a friend of yours has been struggling financially.
She finally comes to you and says, “hey, I need to fill this prescription for
my kid, but it costs $50 and I just don’t have that,” and you respond, “Aw,
girl, you know I love you! Here’s a gift basket of stuff from Toys R Us worth
$50!” And she just stares at you and doesn’t immediately say thank you and you
get all feely and annoyed by her ingratitude… Your actions would have been
unreasonable, right? No one could be that insensitive or crass as to not meet their
friend’s stated, pressing need… Right???
Meet the need first
is fairly intuitive in this case. But the reason why most Americans don’t respond
as instinctively when it comes to giving unnecessary gifts to the poor overseas
is that they are too far removed from third-world poverty
to get it.
America has a lavish gift-giving culture; we give presents
for everything! New Baby! House Warming!
New Job! But despite this generous tradition, many, if not most, of the people
we are giving these gifts to aren’t simultaneously looking for solutions to
life-threatening situations. Most Americans have never been confronted with the
either/or dilemma of “meet a desperate need” or “give a random gift instead.” The
struggle is quite literally foreign to
them.
The driving proviso behind, “But it’s a gift!” is that Americans (as a generic unit) can afford
to spend money on unnecessary things all day, every day – and we assume others
do to. BUT, the developing world does not function this way. Luxury is
appreciated when it comes, to be sure – but by luxury, I’m not talking fancy jewelry and the latest iphone. Luxury in our village is water that has spent
time in a fridge, a car ride (instead of a bike ride) to town, and getting to
eat the gizzard of a chicken. So let me say this: it is ignorant and tacky to pretend that frivolous luxury is a
reasonable replacement for basic human needs that are not being met.
You can give any single unnecessary item from Target to your
best friend and rightly expect a thank you from her because she probably has a
roof over her head tonight. You can give a bag of party favors to your neighbor
kid and even tell the goober to say thank you to you because chances are good
that kid is getting fed tonight. If your friend didn’t have a house and your
neighbor didn’t have food and you knew
that but decided to use your expendable cash to buy trinkets instead, the word ‘negligent’ would be appropriately
applied.
In the place where we live, families routinely go hungry,
don’t have shoes and can’t send their kids to school. Our neighbors sleep in
crowded huts, wear the same clothes for a week and walk miles to see a nurse. And
yet, with this scene as the backdrop, the same American Church that can manage
to buy millions of dollars worth of “Just because we love you!” gifts refuses
to use those same dollars to alleviate human suffering.
Americans have the luxury of having skewed priorities
because, by and large, their needs are already met. What would truly change the
American-gift-giver’s perspective is an exit from the first-world bubble and a
true desire to know what the legitimate, third-world needs are. From much
experience, I can say that, once on the field, it does not take long for
American bauble to look alien and offensive when the intended recipient in
front of you is either hungry, sick or afraid.
In case I sound like a gift-giving curmudgeon, let me free
ya’ll up: Buy the candy and the bouncy balls and the glow in the dark
toothbrushes. Yes. Go ahead and buy them. And send them! But here’s the caveat:
Do that AFTER you’ve made sure that each and every recipient has a home and
clothes and food and everything she needs.
You see, that same mama who taught me to be grateful at
Christmas also taught me how to spoil the people I love. Here in the land of Where
there is no Target, we have to wait for many of our American items to
come across with visitors. Because space is limited and our list is usually
pretty extensive, I have to do some negotiating with my mother to make sure
that the innate Grandmother urge to spoil her grandkids doesn’t usurp actual
necessities. Because I know she loves me,
I’m free to say, “Grandma, the kids don’t need sugar. They need vitamins and
socks and school supplies. Can we prioritize that instead?” And Grandma always says,
sure! Because as much as she loves – and lives – to spoil those grandbabies,
she cares about them enough to make sure their needs are met first.
So she sends vitamins and socks and school supplies… and all the s’mores ingredients that the
left-over luggage space can handle. Despite my joking protest, the spoiling
with sweets isn’t bad. We just need the other things as first priority. If I
had told Grandma our needs and she had said, “I DON’T CARE. IT MAKES ME HAPPY SO
I’M SENDING MARSHMELLOWS AND NOTHING ELSE…” Well
shoot, Grandma. That wouldn’t be very loving, now would it?
If your gut reaction to negative press for OCC is, “they
should be thankful,” you need to recognize that it is your purchasing power speaking
– not compassion towards the poor. Because yes, all humans should be grateful
for gifts, no matter what. But it is not ingratitude that leads those of us
working amongst the poor to make the needs known. It is necessity. And urgency.
And Stress. And if that does not call you to sympathy, you are in this for the wrong
reasons.
Giving gifts to the poor aught not be a consumer activity.
But when first-world donors announce that they will only pay for that which
makes them feel good, this “generosity” takes on a controlling element that
needs to be exorcized. A true gift is one without stipulations, including your
desire to “participate” or “teach your kids the true meaning of Christmas” or
to foster some artificial “connection” to a small child far away.
Leveraging financial privilege in a way that self-gratifies
and puts the rich-giver ahead of the poor is not Christ’s way.
Psalm 41:1 says it right:
Blessed is the one who considers the poor.
Are you considering?
