How Helpful?

Customer: Could you show me where the self-help books are?
Clerk: I'm sorry, but that would defeat the purpose...

How much should we help other people? If we help too much,
will we create dependency? Questions likt these always come
up as we walk downtown streets...as we try to raise teenagers...
as we discuss public policy...or as we simply see a friend in need.
seen in the context of the local church life, it becomes a riddle
in Galations chapter six:

6:2 "Carry each otehr's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."
6:5 "...each one should carry his own load."

Is this a contradiction? Do these two verses somehow fit together?
How should we best understand and practice these directives?
Although Pal mentions it only breifly here, he expands his
philosophy much more in another letter, notably Phillippians, chapter 4.
Let's look at a very well known verse, but this time in context.

4:13 "I can do everything through Him who gives me strength."
4:14 "Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles."

Verse 13 is the summation of Paul's teaching on contentment.
He has peace and contentment in the Lord, regardless of poverty or riches.
He is a burden on no one. This is a carrying his own load, in the Lord's strength.

Yet verse 14 begins a section commending the Christians at Philippi
for their willingness to help carry Paul's load. They gave him
very practical, material help when he was in need. This is God's
plan, and they are warmly commended for it.

In other words, when it is my own needs I am thinking about, then
I should try to carry my own load. Christ-centered contecntment
leaves me no room to fuss and fume about why others are not doing their
part to help me.

On the other hand, when it's the needs of others under consideration,
then God calls me to help carry their burdens. There's nothing here
about lecturing them to carry their own load.

We so often get this backwards, don't we? I want to apply the carry-your-own-load philosophy to other, but for myself it's
"Everybody help." Tha's human nature. And increasingly our
society is making self-centeredness the norm. We are warned about
compulsive heloing syndrome, and worry that too much helping will
stunt self reliance. Doubtless this is true in certain cases. But
this new syndrome, this new insight, true though it may be, has
been over stretched to cover everything in life. It becomes convenient rationale for isolation from the needs of others and narcissistic self- abosorbtion.

When is someone going to stand up and shout: Selfishness is still
the human problem@ We are NOT plauged with an epidemic of selflessness!

It's true enough that Scripture warns us about doing for others what they
are perfectly able to do for themselves. "If any does not work, neither
should he eat," 2nd Thessslonians 3. But we dare not dismiss every need
as mere laziness. Everyday we encounter people who are broken, whether physically, mentally, emotionally or economically. In our complex world,
there are so many ways people get stuck and need a hand. In most cases,
the feeling that help will hurt owes more to an over-wrought sense of
American rugged individulaism thna it does to any Biblical sense of
the Good Smaritan.

Galations chapter six, verses two and five. Philippians chapter four,
verses 13-14. The same twin principles. When you inverst these twin
principles, you get a society of whiners where everyone is protesting
his own rights, jockeying for his own fair share of the pie. But what
do you have when you see if in the Biblical order? You have a harmonius
church where each one has learned contentment in Christ, and the love of
Christ flows freely.

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to
give His life as a ransom for many." Mark 10:45

-Rev. Bernie Powell

*Adapted from the Family Postman -A Monthly Newsletter of The Fellowship





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