The Spiritual Danger of Doing Good

Hurts

Introduction

Amovement of doing good has begun. We sign petitions. We wear the T-shirts. We attend conferences. We volunteer. We give. We go.

People are putting their faith into action by responding to local and global needs with renewed passion and radical commitment. I want to do everything possible to fan this flame and encourage even more outrageous acts of service.

But doing good has a dark side, one rarely acknowledged.

For several years, discussion has centered on charity and its effects on recipients. Does it hurt or help? Economists and authors have recognized that charity can be toxic; our help can actually harm those we seek to serve.[6]

Largely missing from the discussion, however, is the damage that doing good can do to you and me.

For virtually my entire life, I have been actively involved in ministry and have had the privilege of attending great churches, being on prayer teams, participating in mission trips, volunteering locally and abroad, and working full time in international missions and development. And I’ve noticed something alarming.

While charity can harm others, doing good can also wreak havoc on us.

I have seen friends and mentors throw themselves into the causes of justice and do extraordinary work for Jesus. I admired their passion, their devotion, and their sacrifice. But despite their extraordinary dedication, things went wrong. Burnout. Infidelity. Lost faith. Financial compromise. Personal meltdowns. My heart breaks for these friends and for the ministries they worked so hard to build.

But then I looked at my own life. Even at the pinnacle of my good work, serving refugees in Congo, internally I was at my lowest. I was in a rut of giving and desperately needed to discover a new way of doing good.

When I looked to Scripture for guidance, what I found troubled me. Men and women who had heard from God—who even performed amazing miracles—were just as likely to blow it as everyone else. A study by Fuller Seminary professor Dr. J. Robert Clinton found that only one out of three biblical leaders maintained a dynamic faith that enabled them to avoid abusing their power or doing something harmful to themselves or others. Only one in three finished well.[7]

What if the greatest threat to our churches and ministries and spiritual growth is not found in external pressures but within us? Proverbs says, Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.[8] Everything flows from the heart—our motivations, our desires, and our good deeds. Without evaluating our motives, it is possible to love our service more than we love our Savior. It is easy to pursue working to see thy Kingdom come without having a vision of our King. It is possible to be so proud of all we’re doing for God that pride chokes our good deeds.

In my zeal for justice and mercy, I made service—a good thing—into the ultimate thing, opening myself to pride, doubt, and approval seeking. My heart unguarded, I found myself vulnerable to the spiritual dangers of doing good. And I’m afraid I’m not alone. The church today is zealous, and we are doing great things. But my concern is that in doing great things for God, we will forget who we are becoming. Without a clear understanding of why we serve, we risk a backlash of relational ruin, spiritual disillusionment, and personal burnout.

Please don’t misunderstand me: I truly celebrate the renewed movement of service and am cheering as the church tackles the world’s greatest challenges in the name of Christ. But I desperately want more than one out of three of us to finish well. If we are going to finish well, we first need to learn to live well. And to live well, we must ask ourselves: Why do we serve? To unearth the answer to this question may help us rediscover the true heart of service.

This book is for anyone loving, giving, and serving. Whether you serve in international ministry or your local soup kitchen, a megachurch or a home church, a community center or your neighborhood, you are part of a great story of hope, and I earnestly desire for you to live a full life of faithful service. But for all of us who serve, we must diagnose and then disarm the spiritual dangers of doing good.

May we learn to love God and serve well.

It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding. When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—playactors I call them—treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.[9]

—Jesus

They carried everything they owned on their heads: old milk crates, soggy mattresses, pots and pans. All their worldly possessions amounted to what looked like throw-away items. Flowing to the rhythm of the rain, the people of Goma poured down red streets. Barefoot or in flip-flops, they streamed down the road to Gisenyi.

Behind them Mount Nyiragongo loomed. Lava oozed from the gash in its crater lake, swallowing entire homes in its path. Leaking through the center of Goma, the volcano forced a migration to the border of Rwanda.

Sitting in a white Land Cruiser, my wife, Laurel, and I watched refugees stream from the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo) to the border. Just one of a few vehicles on the street, we could not move. People swarmed around our Land Cruiser, peering into it, making us feel even whiter and more out of place than normal. I turned the radio up, but the reggae beats of Lucky Dube, the African Bob Marley, provided no escape.

Though momentarily stuck, I knew we’d leave soon. The crowd would clear. Driving away in an air-conditioned vehicle, I’d watch 400,000 people caught in this catastrophe in my rearview mirror.

They were the ones who were trapped. They had no real option for escape. And when they did return, a normal life meant living in extreme poverty, in shacks that seemed unsuitable for a family to call home.

My boss had wanted me to stay another week. I wanted out.

Whether I extended my stay a few days or not, I’d go—return to my job as managing director of a microfinance institution in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Unlike the refugees, I could escape this gritty reality.

When I had set out to serve in the refugee camp, I was eager to help and excited about the possibility of making a difference. But the problems were overwhelming. Refugees kept pouring in to the camps. Laurel seemed to cope better than I did, playing hand games and giving hugs to a burgeoning group of children.

I longed for Kigali. The rain never let up. I was weary, tired of wet clothes and sleeping on the floor. Exhausted from never-ending meetings with relief agencies, I was wearier of the politics pervasive among the aid organizations.

Most of all, though, I was tired of myself, having caught a glimpse of my true motives.

Power Play

When we arrived, the United Nations and powerhouse players in global relief assembled in Goma. With a flurry of media coverage, these organizations flew into action. To my surprise, the first action was to plaster bumper stickers in the refugee camps. Tacking logos on telephone poles and cars, the nongovernmental agencies (NGOs) marketed their image with New York ad agency efficiency. But somehow, it seemed, they forgot about the people.

Consider the blankets.

Even though we were in central Africa, the rainy season and elevation caused the weather to be surprisingly cold. People living in poverty—who were forced to leave their homes—needed warmer clothes. Between the unrelenting rain and constant chill, I was uncomfortable in my raincoat, long-sleeve shirt, and khakis. A lot of kids wore nothing but ripped t-shirts. And we had blankets to give—generously funded by churches in the U.S. and purchased locally. But we were unable to give them away.

The high-profile NGOs decided how and to whom goods and services were to be provided. Supposedly an American news crew would be following the story of a bundle of blankets arriving in Goma from the U.S. Each NGO wanted the spotlight; the leaders began debating who would give the blankets while being filmed.

Blankets were piled in our van, ready to go. Yet the refugees went without blankets for two days. Until the next shipment arrived, no blankets would be given.

When the delivery finally came, there was no CNN news crew. It had been a rumor.

Because we were no longer competing for media coverage, the larger NGOs finally granted permission for us to distribute the blankets. Even then, it felt like we were under the control of the mafia. As we prepared to hand out blankets, our partner organization herded a few Congolese with the right look—those with torn clothes and emaciated faces—to elicit a compassionate response from foreign supporters.

To capture the perfect pictures, they made the Congolese repeatedly walk back and forth as we handed blankets to them.

It felt manipulative and phony. Organizations need to promote their causes and raise support, but why can’t they do so in ways that uphold the dignity of the people they serve? The aid industry seemed broken, but it wasn’t long before I recognized these same traits within my own heart.

The part of this story that still causes my stomach to churn is when I was finally allowed to distribute the blankets. This was my chance to be in the spotlight. Up on a platform, I bestowed my blankets on people who orderly shuffled through a line. The orchestration was almost perfect—we had roped off lines like at an amusement park—and I was the main attraction.

We had lists of the families so each family received their allotment. Here I was, on the front lines, personally handing out blankets and helping families that had lost almost everything. Noble cause. Noble mission. Noble actions of a twenty-five-year-old relief worker. A photographer snapped pictures, and I smiled wide for the camera as I did God’s work.

And the thought running through my head was not about the people receiving the blankets.

I thought, I can’t wait until the people back home see these photos of me.

When I saw the photos a few weeks later, I trashed them. With a flaky smile plastered on my face, I could only see the photos as incriminating evidence of an unhealthy heart condition. Captured on film, I recognized myself as playacting for people far away, not thinking about loving the people in front of me.

My friend who took the picture emailed it to me with the caption cheese. That’s exactly how I felt—like artificial Cheez