While serving in an inner city ministry, Ismael Hernandez began to have doubts about whether he was effectively serving the poor. “For the first time in my ministry work I felt dissatisfied with what I was doing,” says Hernandez. “I saw that I was simply a ‘stuff-giver’, a bureaucrat of compassion, and under the weight of the free stuff I was dumping at the poor was their spirit, slouching aimlessly, awaiting.” He realized that the human person is not only called to change but also to choose:
Christian anthropology asserts that from the beginning of our lives we are created as subjects, not objects moved by forces; even if these forces are well intended. In pursuit of the safety that a parasitic life offers, some find comfort in the boredom of meaningless life or on the pity of others. The truth is that much of what we were doing for the poor was about ourselves and how it made us feel. We began and ended in moral posture that justified our endless call for resources to pass on to others; never daring to challenge the poor themselves, as that was blaming the victim. We had become the brokers and middlemen of a flow of goods passing from a set of hands to another but barely making a dent in the condition of those who ended up with the loot.
Read the rest to hear Hernandez’s five essential principles of poverty-alleviation.
