I was recently at a dinner and a church was being recognized for their outreach and service. As the pastor talked about how their church impacts their community he said, “We are very active in our community. Every month we do a clothing and food give away and give backpacks to the kids every fall.”

A picture popped up on the overhead of this Pastor and a child as he went on, “This is the child that we support in a third world country.  We got to meet him last fall on a mission trip and our support is helping this young man break free from the bonds of poverty.”

As the crowd rose to their feet with applause, to shouts of “Amen”, “Great Job” and “Praise God”, I wondered, “Why do we want to break the bonds of poverty in  Third World countries but the kid around the corner only gets a backpack and a box of food?”

I have started asking this question to Pastors and have received blank stares from some and a grimaced reality from others.

One Pastor responded, “Exactly”, as he proudly told me about their monthly food and giveaway programs. I am fairly confident he did not understand the question.

I asked his question to social media and got some very good responses.  While there are thousands of reasons, below are the thoughts of others as well as a few of my own as to why we only meet the immediate need to the kid around the corner.

1. Some have a superman complex. They need someone to save. People on the other side of the world are not a threat. If you help the kid around the corner too much in ways that lead to independence and this person that used to be on the receiving end is now your peer/equal you have lost your power.
2. It’s easy to write a check, pat yourself on the back, and move on. Not so easy to make a commitment, invest time in someone’s life, then see them continue to suffer. We live in the age of instant gratification in which we think 140 characters in ten seconds should yield a miraculous return on our investment. Besides, it’s harder to help someone you will see again because they might expect more of you, Rob! People don’t even want to walk across the street and meet their neighbor for fear of getting too close, much less look a hungry child in the eye because we might be compelled to try to help in some way, and then feel the pain when we fail to make a significant difference.
3. Your post reminds me of a fav quote of mine from World Relief leader, Jenny Yang:
   “Charity removes us from the hard work of building relationships with people who make us uncomfortable. We have to transition from charity to justice.”
4. We live in America…the land of opportunity. If somebody really wants to change, then they will change. Besides, we pay our taxes and the government takes care of them. They give them educational opportunities, healthcare and meet their immediate need. We limit our service because if this kid really wanted out, he’d “pull himself up by his bootstraps.”
5. We alleviate our responsibility by not acknowledging the problem here in our own backyard. If we begin to invest ourselves in real solutions in our own communities, our reality will have to change. It could be considered a form of denial or self-protection to ignore the real needs of the kid around the corner, but help those who don’t really affect you in any way.
6. Helping the kid around the corner is scary. It’s cool to go to an unknown, possibly dangerous place in a third world country for a couple of days, but the kid around the corner lives in a community that we try to avoid. He lives in communities with gangs, drugs and violence. We wouldn’t want to go there and we certainly would not our children to build a friendship with that kid.                                                                                       Last but certainly not least:
7. We don’t really love our neighbor as ourselves. We want to do the minimum so that our ministry box gets checked and we can go home knowing we are good Christians.

The problem is, we are not being good Christians. We are not loving our neighbors as ourselves. To love the kid around the corner as you love yourself, you have to put yourself in their shoes. You’d have to ask the hard question, “What would I want if I were in their situation.”