Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn't the American Dream

By Brian Fikkert and Kelly M. Kapic

Western Civilization is wealthier, but it isn’t happier.

We are the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth, but according to research, we aren’t becoming happier. Families and communities are increasingly fragmented, loneliness is skyrocketing, and physical and mental health are on the decline. Our unprecedented wealth doesn’t seem to be doing us much good.

Yet, when we try to help poor people at home or abroad, our implicit assumption is that the goal is to help them to become like us. "If they would just do things our way, they’d be fine!"

But even when they seem to pursue our path, they too find that the American Dream doesn’t work for them. What if we have the wrong idea altogether? What if the molds we are using to help poor people don’t actually fit any of us? What if the goal isn’t to turn other countries into the United States or to turn America’s impoverished communities into its affluent suburbs?

In Becoming Whole (building on the best-selling When Helping Hurts), Brian Fikkert and Kelly M. Kapic look at the true sources of brokenness and poverty and uncover the surprising pathways to human flourishing, for poor and non-poor alike. Exposing the misconceptions of both Western Civilization and the Western church about the nature of God, human beings, and the world, they redefine success and offer new ways of achieving that success. Through biblical insights, scientific research, and practical experience, they show you how the good news of the kingdom of God reshapes our lives and our poverty alleviation ministries, moving everybody involved towards wholeness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Mar 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780802481030

Brian Fikkert

Dr. Brian Fikkert is the Founder and Executive Director of the Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College, where he also serves as a Professor of Economics and Community Development. Dr. Fikkert earned a Ph.D. “with distinction” in economics from Yale University, specializing in Third World economic development and international economics. Dr. Fikkert has been a consultant to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. Prior to coming to Covenant College, he was a professor at the University of Maryland and a research fellow at the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector. Dr. Fikkert is in demand as a speaker and has numerous academic and popular publications, the most recent being When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself.

Book preview

Jesus announced, from the very onset of his ministry, his love for the poor (Luke 4:18). Some spiritualize away this concern for the poor, the way others try to spiritualize away His miracles. Others seek to alleviate poverty in fragmented, counterproductive ways. In this fascinating new book, Brian Fikkert and Kelly Kapic call Christians to where Jesus is already: in the fight for whole persons, body and soul. This book will not just awaken you to the plight of global poverty but will also give you hope as we seek to follow Jesus together for the sake of the poor of the world.

RUSSELL MOORE

President, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

Becoming Whole is a hard-hitting, transparent read that will force you to think and act differently as you are confronted with poverty at home and abroad. It will help you understand the root of poverty, whether the unhappiness of the affluent West or the material poverty in the global South. This book will introduce you to an alternative universe, one in which human flourishing, born inside of man through a change in the heart and mind, bears external fruit in the present reality of the coming of the City of God. Metaphysical capital is more important than physical capital in the path to human flourishing.

DARROW MILLER

Author of Discipling Nations

Cofounder of Disciple Nations Alliance

In Becoming Whole, Fikkert and Kapic build upon the watershed legacy of When Helping Hurts by challenging latent assumptions and awakening essential truth. Becoming Whole is a torch of wisdom to lift high, a beacon to help us to exemplify God’s love in cultures across the world and also our own backyards. Read at your own risk, however: these words will transform!

STEPHAN BAUMAN

Coauthor of Seeking Refuge

Former President and CEO of World Relief

Thanks to the principles of love and leadership as articulated in this book, as well as in the related work, When Helping Hurts, the church I serve has been able to come alongside disadvantaged, vulnerable, oppressed, and marginalized communities in more informed, life-giving, and sustainable ways. Backed with sound biblical theology and practical guidance and stories, Becoming Whole is a must for any Christian community aiming to make a difference. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

SCOTT SAULS

Senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee

Author of Befriend and Irresistible Faith.

The kingdom of God is about life as God intends. In Becoming Whole, Brian Fikkert and Kelly Kapic help us understand the robust narrative that the kingdom creates and supports. Unfortunately we have settled for puny competing storylines that make people poor—in every way. The Spirit is shouting to the Western church to abandon the worldviews and idols that are keeping us from becoming whole. This book serves as a gracious but prophetic invitation to partner with God in his mission to enable us to become fully human.

REGGIE MCNEAL

Author of Kingdom Come and Kingdom Collaborators

Becoming Whole is about the rest of the story, our story and how having it right can help in dealing with poverty and the real needs of people. It examines cultures and religions, even religions that claim they have nothing to do with religion. It is revealing and will cause people to reflect in fresh ways on how they see the world and our role in it.

DARRELL L. BOCK

Executive Director for Cultural Engagement, Howard G. Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership and Cultural Engagement; Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary

The big story (or the metanarrative) that one lives by is not benign; rather, it really, really matters. Our brothers Fikkert and Kapic show us how to identify and jettison false metanarratives, like the American Dream, expressive individualism, and consumerism; so that, we can wisely appropriate and live by the True Big Story found in Scripture for the sake of escorting the poor from their impoverishment to a flourishing position, for the sake of our flourishing and personal wholeness, and for the sake of the flourishing of our communities and cities.

LUKE BOBO

Director of Curriculum and Resources, Made to Flourish

Why aren’t Christians making more progress at becoming whole? The economic systems that shape our daily lives have been warped to keep us broken, so the world can exploit our brokenness. No one has done more to open our eyes to this, and show us what we can do about it, than Brian Fikkert. He and Kelly M. Kapic bring the whole story of Scripture to bear on God’s perspective on what it means to be human and to flourish. This book is a perfect way to start—or continue—the eye-opening process that we all so desperately need if we want to become whole.

GREGORY L. FORSTER

Director of the Oikonomia Network, Trinity International University

This is a book about transformation. I’m grateful that it’s not just about how American Christians can help transform the poor, although that is a worthy topic. No, as surrendered people, we need to constantly yield to the Holy Spirit for our own transformation—to become more and more like Jesus Christ. And we are not truly whole until we give and serve and love like Jesus. There is no more urgent, inspiring, and satisfying mission than bringing God’s vision of fullness of life to the ends of the earth. Thank you, Brian Fikkert and Kelly Kapic, for this helpful resource for our journey!

EDGAR SANDOVAL SR.

President, World Vision U.S.

Those of us who have tasted the American Dream know that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. And when you understand what’s happening in the rest of the world, you realize that pursuing it keeps you on the sidelines of God’s great mission. You miss the most exciting adventure there is in life: demonstrating the love of Christ to the least of these in ways that draw people to the cross of Christ. Becoming Whole is a remarkable sequel to When Helping Hurts, and it should be required reading for ministry workers, church leaders, donors, laypeople—everyone responding to God’s call to change the world.

RICHARD STEARNS

President Emeritus, World Vision U.S.

Author of The Hole in Our Gospel and Unfinished

Becoming Whole challenges the basis for our best intentions toward the poor, which are often consciously or subconsciously founded on American materialism rather than a holistic Christian view of transformation. Although it is a fitting prequel and sequel to When Helping Hurts, it is more than this. It lays an engaging, yet theologically comprehensive guide to the foundations of human flourishing.

BRUCE WYDICK

Professor of Economics, University of San Francisco

Distinguished Research Affiliate, University of Notre Dame

© 2019 by

BRIAN FIKKERT and KELLY M. KAPIC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Brief quotes on pp. 98 and 189 from Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance. Copyright © 2016 by J. D. Vance. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates.

Edited by Kevin P. Emmert

Kelly M. Kapic photo: Tad Evearitt

Cover and interior design: Erik M. Peterson

Cover photo of leaf courtesy of Laura Haley

All websites and phone numbers listed herein are accurate at the time of publication but may change in the future or cease to exist. The listing of website references and resources does not imply publisher endorsement of the site’s entire contents. Groups and organizations are listed for informational purposes, and listing does not imply publisher endorsement of their activities.

ISBN: 978-0-8024-0158-8

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8024-8103-0

We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

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To Jill, Jessica, Joshua and Morgan, and Anna. Thank you for your faithful love, support, encouragement, and sacrifice. I long for that great day when we all will dwell in the same house again, for then we will be whole, together forever.

~ Dad

To Jay Green and Jeffrey Morton. Thank you for your love, wisdom, laughter, and presence. God has powerfully used you both to patiently nudge me toward becoming whole.

~ Kelly

CONTENTS 

Opening Exercise

Preface

Part 1: The Shaping Power of Stories

Introduction: We Need a New Story

1. Love Really Does Make the World Go ’Round

2. How Do Human Beings and Cultures Change?

Part 2: When False Stories Make Helping Hurt

3. You Can Become a Consuming Robot

4. You Can Be a Harp-Playing Ghost Forever

Part 3: God’s Story of Change

5. Escaping Flatland

6. Reconsidering Creation: The Key to Understanding Human Flourishing

7. Reconsidering the Fall: More Than Just a Legal Problem

8. Reconsidering Redemption: Fully Embodied Hope

9. The New Creation Dawns

10. Living Into the Story

Acknowledgments

Notes

More from the Author

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OPENING EXERCISE¹

Consider the following hypothetical scenario:

For tax purposes, you must spend $100 on one or all of the following funding requests from three different ministries. You can allocate the $100 in any way that you want, but you must spend all $100 of the money. All three of the proposals come from Christian organizations that are of similar size and age, and that work with materially poor people in the Majority World of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. How much money will you spend on each of these requests for funds?

Microenterprise Organization (MicOrg) 

MicOrg helps very poor people launch their own microenterprises so they can earn a living. Toward that end, MicOrg staff members provide weekly training in biblical principles of business to small groups comprised of poor people. For the past several years, MicOrg has been pilot testing the use of a new approach that allows the training to be distributed via cellphones. Because there is no longer a need for the small group meetings, this approach saves both the staff and the poor people a lot of time. An evaluation of the pilot has found that those trained via cellphones understand the curricula as well as those trained in the small group meetings. However, the cellphone approach enables MicOrg to cut its costs by 50 percent per beneficiary. MicOrg is seeking funding to install the new cellphone system organization wide, which should lead to a significant cost savings and help the organization to scale its impact.

Health Organization (HealthOrg) 

HealthOrg provides basic health services in rural regions in the Majority World. HealthOrg has decided that demonic forces are one of the biggest causes of poor physical health in the regions in which they work and that demonic forces are also attacking their organization. HealthOrg believes that unless its large network of frontline healthcare staff is trained in how to engage in spiritual warfare, its traditional medical services alone will be ineffective. HealthOrg is asking you to help pay for a new Director of Spiritual Integration, who will train staff on how to use prayer and Scripture to combat demonic forces.

Jobs Organization (JobsOrg) 

JobsOrg provides jobs preparedness training that has been highly successful in helping urban slum dwellers find and keep good jobs. Each lesson of the training integrates a biblical worldview with work skills training on such topics as interviewing for a job, being punctual, writing a résumé, respecting the boss, working hard, and so on. JobsOrg has recently obtained a large grant from the United States government to dramatically increase the scale of its training. However, to maintain the separation of church and state, the grant requires JobsOrg to separate any biblical training by time and location from the work skills training. The US government will pay for the work skills training, and JobsOrg would like you to help pay for additional training sessions that will teach people about salvation through Jesus Christ alone. This overall approach will allow JobsOrg to double the number of people it reaches each year.

Complete the following: 

1. Fill in the blanks below with your donations. We will return to your answers later in this book.

The dollar amount you would give to MicOrg is:

The dollar amount you would give to HealthOrg is:

The dollar amount you would give to JobsOrg is:

Total: = $100

2. Why did you allocate the funds the way you did?

PREFACE

In 2009, Steve Corbett and I (Brian) wrote a book called When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor … and Yourself (WHH), wherein we articulated a biblically based, relationally focused approach to caring for people who are poor. We argued that while we should do more to help materially poor people, good intentions are not enough. It is possible to hurt poor people in the process of trying to help them. So, we need to abandon strategies that undermine dignity, diminish capacity, and create unhealthy dependency. And we need to increase the use of approaches that are truly empowering. In the ten years since WHH was published, readers have had three general types of responses.

The first group of readers accepted the basic premises of WHH, but they weren’t always sure what to do next. Many ministry leaders still ask, Could you visit us and examine our ministry? We want to know if we are doing it right. Similarly, many donors regularly ask, Which poverty alleviation ministries should we give our money to? Who is really doing it right?

Behind these questions is a heartfelt desire to be good stewards of God’s resources in order to bring positive change to the lives of materially poor people. Many people really do want to help without hurting. At the same time, these questions reveal a sense of inadequacy that many of us feel. The causes of poverty are extremely complex, and the solutions usually are unclear. To make matters worse, even followers of Jesus Christ do not have a shared understanding of what success in poverty alleviation looks like or how to get there. It’s often difficult to determine who is doing it right when we don’t even have a common conception of what right is or how to achieve it.

This book and its companion, A Field Guide to Becoming Whole: Principles for Poverty Alleviation Ministries, is our attempt to address this confusion by creating a more systematic model than that provided in WHH. Of course, we cannot provide poverty alleviation ministries with a detailed, one-size-fits-all recipe that can be used to design everything from after-school tutoring programs in the United States to medical clinics in Zimbabwe. Each ministry and each context are different. Similarly, we cannot provide donors with a list of organizations that are worthy of their support. We don’t have enough knowledge about most ministries to be able to create such a list, and we are not qualified to be the judges of the entire poverty alleviation movement! However, we do hope that God will use this book and the companion Field Guide to equip His people with a common set of lenses through which they can view any poverty alleviation effort.

A second group of readers decided not to try to help poor people at all, saying that they were afraid of hurting poor people in the process of trying to help them. While for some this response reflected a sincere desire not to do harm, we fear that others may be using WHH as an excuse to justify their lack of concern for the poor. Many of us, including we authors, often just want to maintain the status quo in our lives. Many times, we don’t want to heed the Bible’s command to spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed (Isa. 58:10). Often we just want to come home at night, lock the doors, and watch Netflix or ESPN in peace and quiet. Regardless of the motivation, inaction is simply not an acceptable response. Both the Old and New Testaments indicate that caring for the poor is one of the primary indicators of saving faith (Isa. 58:1–12; 1 John 3:17–18). Doing nothing is simply not an option for a follower of Jesus Christ.

This book is highly relevant for this second group of readers—those who have chosen not to help the poor at all. For the subset of this second group that sincerely wants to help but are afraid of doing harm, we hope that the model presented in this book will provide some more direction for moving forward effectively in any setting. There is definitely no need to be paralyzed. And for the subset of the second group that really just doesn’t want to care for the poor—a problem with which we all struggle in some form or another—the material in this book truly is good news: there is a better life than the one you are currently living, a life of greater flourishing for both you and for people who are materially poor. Press on!

The third group read WHH and decided that there was nothing wrong with what they were doing, so they just maintained the status quo in their poverty alleviation ministries. Sure, the church down the street was doing some things that hurt poor people, but their own church’s approach was just fine. Perhaps. Or maybe these readers didn’t really understand the radical nature of what WHH was saying. Indeed, I am still learning what the core messages of WHH really mean in my own life, even though I coauthored the book!

If you are in the third group and maintained the status quo in your poverty alleviation ministries, we think this book is for you too. We believe the status quo isn’t working, not just in our ministries but in our lives in general. There is a better way of being in the world. We don’t have all the answers to how to best live in our world and how to effectively alleviate poverty, but we do believe that the messages of this book, which are deeply rooted in God’s mission, can move all of us to a much better place than the status quo.

HOW DO THESE BOOKS RELATE TO WHEN HELPING HURTS?

This book provides a more systematic treatment of the underlying concepts and principles foundational to WHH. This book, then, is sort of a prequel to WHH, and readers of both books will definitely notice some overlap.

At the same time, a large amount of material in this book is not in WHH. In particular, drawing on recent insights from theologians, philosophers, scientists, and practitioners, this book employs deeper theology, anthropology, and cosmology than WHH in order to articulate a model of human and cultural change that can be used to improve any poverty alleviation initiative. Building on this foundation, the companion Field Guide then articulates principles that can be implemented to design more effective poverty alleviation ministries. Some of these principles are in WHH, but many of them are not. Hence, because so much of the material is new, in some sense these two books are the sequel to WHH. In summary, whereas this book and the Field Guide provide a systematic, overarching framework to help readers design more effective poverty alleviation ministries—and thus summarize the operating system behind WHH—WHH fleshes out how to apply some of these principles in concrete situations.

So should you read WHH or this series first? It’s up to you! However, we guess that most people would benefit from first reading WHH, then reading this book, and then reading the Field Guide. The reason for this is that some of the concepts in this series are more challenging to grasp than those in WHH, making this series a somewhat more advanced treatment of effective poverty alleviation.

INTENDED AUDIENCE

This book is relevant for anybody seeking to alleviate poverty, including ministry leaders, staff, volunteers, boards, donors, and individuals. It is particularly focused on those involved with Christian ministries that are directly interfacing with materially poor people. Hence, some of the content will be slightly less relevant for organizations working in other domains, e.g., organizations seeking to change public policy at a national or international level; however, even readers working in such arenas should find most of the content to be highly relevant to their work.

GETTING OUR STORY STRAIGHT

At the heart of poverty alleviation is change. We are trying to help poor people move from their current condition to a better one. Fostering such change requires us to understand the very nature of human beings, of human flourishing, and of God Himself. God has a plan for changing the entire world—including poor people and ourselves—and since God is all-powerful, we would be wise to get on board with His story, His plan for change.

These issues are deeply theological in nature. As a result, I asked my dear friend Kelly M. Kapic to join me as a coauthor on this book. Kelly is far too humble to say this about himself, but he is an internationally respected theologian who has focused much of his work on the Trinity and on exploring questions about human nature and relationships, making him an ideal partner for this project. Just as Steve Corbett has been a huge mentor to me in general and in the writing of WHH in particular, Kelly has been discipling me on these theological issues for the past decade, deeply impacting me both professionally and personally. Although there are two authors, whenever I appears in this book, it refers to me (Brian).

As we shall see, the poverty alleviation initiatives used by many Christians are deeply rooted in false metanarratives, overarching accounts of the nature of God, of human beings, and of the world. Metanarratives lead to a story of change, an understanding of the goal of life and of how that goal can be achieved. Every poverty alleviation ministry, either explicitly or implicitly, embodies a story of change in its design, execution, and measured outcomes. If we hold a false understanding of the nature of God, of human beings, or of the world, our story of change will be wrong, and we will harm poor people in the very process of trying to help them.

This means that developing more effective poverty alleviation strategies involves far more than simply adopting new tools and techniques, as important as those are. Rather, it involves the more profound act of both recognizing and repenting of cultural lies that are deeply embedded in Western civilization and the Western church, lies that we often unconsciously perpetuate in the design of our poverty alleviation ministries. The good news is that as we repent, we move more deeply into the only story of change that is true: God’s story of change for the entire universe, including people who are poor … and ourselves.

Toward that end, Part 1 of this book sets the stage, examining how the stories of change that we believe—whether those stories are true or false—profoundly shape every aspect of our lives, impacting even the cells in our bodies. Part 2 then describes several common but misguided stories of change that are shaping our lives, including our approaches to poverty alleviation. As we shall see, the fact that our poverty alleviation efforts often do harm is because we have—unknowingly and unconsciously, yet deeply and destructively—absorbed misguided stories of change from our culture. In order to get our story of change straightened out, Part 3 attempts to articulate God’s story of change, which is both more marvelous and more mysterious than anything we could ever imagine or describe. In the process, we will pay particular attention to the implications of God’s story of change for our poverty alleviation efforts. Building upon this framework, the Field Guide articulates very practical principles that can be used to design, evaluate, and improve poverty alleviation ministries in light of God’s story of change—that is, in line with the way that the world really works and the direction in which it is actually heading.

THE HEROES ON THE FRONT LINES

We would like to highlight two challenges in writing a book about subjects like poverty alleviation and the gospel.

First, our culture often gives lots of accolades to authors. But the real heroes are the sacrificial servants working in front-line ministry who normally don’t have time to write books. Although our work with the Chalmers Center at Covenant College gives us years of experience in the field of poverty alleviation, it is the faithful practitioners who are the real heroes, as they seek to hold together ministry that is holistic amid the endless storms of life. This book is meant to honor these faithful servants, highlighting the many lessons we have learned from them about both working in poverty alleviation and living faithfully in this broken world. We want theology, research, and practice to be held together, rather than pitted against one another. We want compassion and confession, mercy and meaning, realism and hope. We don’t want to choose. So, inspired by many on the front lines, we are offering you what we pray will be biblically, academically, and experientially sound guidance that will help all of us in our diverse callings to see the embodiment of the gospel in our lives and communities.

Second, we authors are very much a work in progress. As our family, friends, and coworkers can attest, we are a long, long way from becoming whole. We struggle every day to live out the concepts in this book, and often we fail more than we succeed. That said, we have confidence that He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus, that great day when we’ll join all God’s people in finally becoming whole (Phil. 1:6). Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

If you haven’t done so already, complete the Opening Exercise that precedes this preface—the exercise about allocating $100 to various ministries—before you continue reading. Really—stop and do that right now. You will need to use your answers to that exercise later in the book.

We hope God uses this book to affect your mind, feelings, and actions. Such impact is less likely to happen if you simply read through the book. Toward that end, we have included questions called Initial Thoughts before each Part, and at the end of each Part are Reflection Questions. Throughout this book, you’ll notice sections with greens asterisks above and below the text. These sections offer