When People ‘Don’t Deserve’ Our Help
Me and my wife have now been caring for refugees in various ways and places for over two years. From time to time, a friend or family member talks to us about this, saying that “this must really give you a lot of satisfaction!” Many people seem to rationalise what we do by reformulating it in terms that make more sense in our society: you do it because it makes you feel good. So somehow, helping people is something you actually do for yourself. In practice, this logic cannot be sustained for a very long time.
Many well-meaning persons start with such a naive view on ‘helping people’. And initially, all may be well and indeed bring a lot of satisfaction. But sooner or later, one is confronted with reality. For example, by somebody who is not at all grateful after being helped, and acts in a rude way. Or when it is discovered that one of the people helped stole something. Then the new helper is very dismayed and disillusioned. They might say: “If those people aren’t grateful, they don’t deserve our help. Let them help themselves, I quit.” With this naive view on helping, we have certain (unspoken) expectations of the people helped: that they should be grateful, that they should be polite, etc. When they don’t act according to our expectations, we easily feel like they don’t deserve our help.
With a more profound view on ‘helping’, one realises that we should help people irrespective of their ‘dignity’ in our own eyes; whether they are grateful or not, whether they cause their own problems or not. This view is based on the belief that all people are equally created in the image of God, and that therefore actually everybody totally deserves to be helped, regardless of our own not-so-humble opinion on this. Jesus definitely never attached any conditions to his command for us to love and help all people. “Love your enemies” actually means that even those who in our own eyes least deserve our love and help, actually are still worth it.
So when somebody does not behave as you think you deserve, or as you expect them to, you should realise that this person (1) still deserves all your love, and (2) that Jesus likes you so much, that it more than makes up for the love this person is withholding from you.
