Brian Fikkert (00:00)
When Helping Hurts is a book that’s trying to say, God calls us to care for the poor. It’s throughout the Old and New Testaments, but good intentions are not enough. It’s possible to hurt poor people in the very process of trying to help them. And so, you know, an opening question in the book is this, what is poverty? Because the way that we diagnose the problem determines the solutions that we use to alleviate the problem, right? And so,
Dru Johnson (00:22)
you
Brian Fikkert (00:28)
When you go to the doctor, there’s a couple of things that can go wrong. The doctor can misdiagnose you, give you the wrong treatment, and you might actually get worse. Or the doctor can treat symptoms rather than underlying causes, and that can actually kill you. And so what we’re trying to say is, yes, we must help the poor, but we’ve got to really understand what is.
Dru Johnson (00:41)
Hmm.
Yeah, ⁓ I’m going to interject all my own experiences in here, which you can weigh and correct me as I go, but our beloved church in Newark, New Jersey, we lived in Newark for 13 years, and one of the tasks of our church, we’d just taken on a housing project in our neighborhood ⁓ and just said, we’re gonna work with the children of that housing project. We’re gonna help them in any way they need it. ⁓
I learned a lot. It was very crazy, chaotic, a couple times a week being involved in the lives of those children and their families or various families. But one of the things that I really came to realize, and I don’t think I’d ever appreciated before, is A, it was about five years before we even kind of understood basically what was going on. Yeah, and even then it was really fuzzy and amorphous. And after 10 years, I felt a little bit more confident in what, making assertions about what was going on. And B,
Brian Fikkert (01:31)
Hold on.
Dru Johnson (01:41)
there was no lack of people, corporations that would come in, give gifts, hand out things, take pictures, and leave. ⁓ And to the point where most of those children were convinced if anybody was talking to them, it was because they were being paid to do so or they were gonna take a picture and put it on their HR website for the corporation. ⁓ So I wonder if that fits the model that you’re talking about, yeah.
Brian Fikkert (02:00)
Yeah.
⁓
Yeah, you know that question. What is poverty? If you ask most North Americans that question, they’ll answer it like this. Poverty is about a lack of food, a lack of clothing, a lack of shelter, and because we define poverty as a lack of some material things. We tend to think the solution then the remedy is to supply material things, and so that’s kind what you’re describing in your situation there in New Jersey and and that that’s.
Dru Johnson (02:17)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Fikkert (02:35)
emblematic of a deeper issue. It really has to do with some fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of the cosmos and the nature of what a human being is. before we get into that, it’s interesting if you actually ask poor people the question, what is poverty? The World Bank actually did this a number of years ago. They interviewed 50,000 poor people around the world. They just asked them that question. And they said things about lacking food and so on.
Dru Johnson (02:51)
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (03:02)
But their answers were much broader. It was more stuff like, I feel shame. I feel less than human. I feel like I can’t affect change in my life. I feel like garbage that everybody wants to get rid of. The poor tend to describe their poverty in far more psychological, social, even spiritual terms. And we’re defining it as a lack of material things. And so there’s a basic disconnect between how we’re thinking about it and addressing it.
and how they’re experiencing it. And that disconnect is at the heart of the problem that we’re trying to address in the book, When Helping Hurts.
Dru Johnson (03:40)
Yeah, and we talk this, we call it the white savior program, ⁓ in my Israeli and Palestinian friends, they’ll always point out, we lived in Israel for a while, Americans talk about solutions to everything, so it’s the two state solution, the one state solution, where they’re all going, there is no solution, we’re just trying to make things better rather than worse. ⁓ So I wonder if just that mentality of there is a problem and we need to solve it is part of the problem itself.
Brian Fikkert (04:09)
That’s exactly it. and especially, I mean, you’re a theologian, you understand what I’m to say better than I do, ⁓ in the West, we kind of have this mechanical view of the way that the cosmos is created. It’s like a big machine, fundamentally material in nature. And so if we can just kind of pull the right lever on the machine, Shalom is going to pop out the bottom like a candy machine or something, right? That’s just not how the cosmos is created.
And it’s not the nature of what poverty really is. know, we try to root our understanding of poverty in the biblical narrative. And so we know that we’re missing the boat with this certain material understanding of things, but can we sort of use scripture to inform what is poverty? And so what we do in our book is we go back to Genesis 1 and really what is a human being? It really comes down to
what is a biblical anthropology, if you will, right? And, ⁓ you know, I think there’s good reason, theologians certainly have articulated this better than I could, but there’s good reason to believe that ⁓ human beings are not just physical, right? We’re physical and spiritual creatures, but even that, you know, I’ve got a cup of water, a glass of water here, you know, the way that so many of us think of ⁓ the relationship of the body and the soul.
Dru Johnson (05:36)
Mmm.
Brian Fikkert (05:36)
is kind of like the relationship of a glass to water. And so the glass is kind of like the body, right? And the soul is kind of like the water. And you can like pour it out, right? But in the Bible, the body and the soul are, mean, you’re the Hebraic scholar, the body and the soul are much more intertwined. They’re integrally connected. So we’ve got this body-soul thing, but then there’s more, right? Because God is inherently a relational being.
from all eternity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost exist in perfect relationship with one another. And as beings made in His image, we’re hardwired for relationship as well. And so we’re not just bodies, we’re not just bodies that contain souls, we’re highly integrated body-soul-relational thingies.
Dru Johnson (06:17)
Mm.
Hmm.
There should be some long German word for this. Wer kunstgeschicktes Bewut sein.
Brian Fikkert (06:31)
Yeah, there is…
So there were these body-cell relational thingies, and one could argue that the relational dimension is somehow maybe more foundational than anything else. And you can unpack that better than I could. And so if you start to think of it that way, then what happens in the fall is really the relationships that we’re wired for are broken, starting with our relationship with God. And so the fundamental issue for humanists is a relational problem. And so that reframes everything.
fundamentally about a lack of stuff. It’s fundamentally about a relational problem. And so that reframes the causes of poverty are more relational. And then it reframes what the solutions to poverty look like. And I know this is a little bit abstract, but this is very concrete. You know, when a woman walks into your church asking for help with her electric bill.
understanding how she’s wired, understanding how she’s constructed and understanding what flourishing would look like for her is fundamental to everything we’re going to do. And so if we get away from the material to this sort of body cell relational thingy, it changes everything.
Dru Johnson (07:45)
Yeah. Well, and I worked in a church on a main intersection in St. Louis, Missouri for eight years. ⁓ And we constantly had people walking in the church ⁓ with all kinds of stories. There was always a story. Excuse me. It wasn’t until I read a book on John Calvin’s Theology of Poverty by Bonnie Paterson, where she went through his sermons that had never been translated into English, and it was fascinating.
And I’m running this by you here because while I have you here, this ⁓ is something I’ve been thinking about for over a decade now. ⁓ One thing that Calvin tunes into, A, Calvin dealt with the poor ⁓ quite hands on in Geneva. So he was in charge of the purse and making sure everybody was, all the widows were getting money for food. ⁓ two, he hated beggars because he believed that begging induced lying and it kept people from actually knowing each other. ⁓ It’s like, don’t, you know, don’t.
get to know me, just turn your guilt into a sacrament and drop it in my cup kind of a thing. ⁓ And then three, he believed that ⁓ from the Torah and from Jesus’ citing of the Torah, that the poor you always have with you. So like there is no solution to poverty ultimately until the return of Jesus. So we’re really talking about ameliorating poverty in various ways, which I think is really interesting. But he also said, every poor person that stands in front of you,
Brian Fikkert (08:47)
I’m
Dru Johnson (09:12)
represents Christ himself testing you to see whether you’re part of the true church or not. And I think that’s where a lot of us get uneasy. It used to be if you lived in big urban cities, you would run into people asking for money or help on the street. Now I feel like any city you go, you get off the highway and there’s somebody standing there wanting help, right? So what is it, just speaking nuts and bolts, what’s your advice for, how do you practically relationally help in those kinds of moments?
Especially like when I was a pastor, people really did not want you to actually know what was going on, right? They just kind of wanted the thing that you were there to give them. And I was always happy to give people help in any way. But what’s your advice now that I threw all of that on you?
Brian Fikkert (09:56)
That’s
the one everybody wants to know the answer to and so I’m a professor so my answer is going to a little bit long. All right Let me let me give some more background then it will get down to brass tacks If we believe that human beings are fundamentally body so relational creatures in As many have summarized our relationships are with God with ourselves with others and with creation work and so on
Dru Johnson (10:02)
Okay, let’s let’s hear it.
Brian Fikkert (10:23)
Then we need to ask, why are those relationships broken? Well, I think in the biblical narrative, you can kind of say something like this. Those relationships are broken due to individual sin and systemic injustice and even demonic forces. All right, so there’s a lot going on here. And, you know, as you know, one of the things that’s dividing the church and American culture right now is
Dru Johnson (10:26)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Brian Fikkert (10:49)
that old issue, is it about individual sin or systemic injustice? I mean, I think for those who have a biblical framework, that should be an easy one. The fall happened. The fall happened. So it is comprehensive in scope. And so in any situation, we can say, there’s probably individual brokenness, sin, ⁓ in some cases.
There’s probably systemic injustice and guess what? There’s demonic forces too, which of course we’re very blind to in the West. And so the problems are really big and many of them are multi-generational in nature. And so, you know, everyone wants to know, do I give the quarter or not? Well, it’s sort of like in the face of nuclear explosion, should I give somebody a quarter or not? It’s just, it’s not about the quarter, right?
Dru Johnson (11:37)
It’s not about the quarter.
Brian Fikkert (11:43)
So ⁓ I think the more I, you know, I don’t claim to be an expert on poverty, I learn more every day, but ⁓ the more complex I understand that it is, the less that that quarter can possibly solve the problem. Now, what do do? So ⁓ generally speaking, I don’t give money to people who are begging unless it’s really cold out. ⁓
Dru Johnson (12:10)
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (12:10)
I know that by giving that person ⁓ some kind of handout, I’m not solving their problem, actually enabling them to persist in their problem. so generally speaking, the money actually does more harm than good. But if it’s really cold, there’s not a lot of time for the long term solution. You got to help people get to the next day. And so that’s kind of how I divide it. Now, sometimes
Usually I pray, you know, under my breath, Lord, give me wisdom here. And sometimes I’ll feel called to give. Usually that’s been a mistake I found out later. The problem is there’s no quick alternative. The problems are deeply embedded in this person’s story. It’s going to take a long time to help them out of it. It’s going to take highly relational ministry.
over a long period of time. And what experts will tell you is that for the typical person who’s down the street corner, it takes about 70 touches. And by touches, I mean, you know, conversations about seven conversations before that person will be open to ⁓ engaging in any long term solution. OK, well, when I drive by, I don’t have that. I don’t have that 70. And so it’s a
Dru Johnson (13:21)
Right.
Brian Fikkert (13:36)
really awkward situation. My advice would be know of some people who can provide, or some organizations you can provide that kind of long-term help. Suggest that to people. They will probably reject it. And I just don’t think there’s anything you can do at that point.
Dru Johnson (13:52)
Yeah,
we’re also dealing with in the United States, most of the United States, you know, I used to teach in Kenya and ⁓ where when I asked my, used to take students sometimes with me too. And I, for the sake of my students, I asked my, group of pastors that I was teaching, I said, when you say, you know, what’s a main problem in your church? And they’d always say poverty. said, when you say poverty, what do you mean? Describe to us what that looks like. And they said, you know,
somebody who maybe only has one pair of clothing and they don’t eat a few days of the week at all because they don’t have enough food. And my students, you could see like their faces dropped and they really ⁓ came to understand what destitute poverty looks And this is in Kenya, which is a former British colony and there’s lots of like market economy going on in Kenya, right? ⁓ And so I think you compare that to somebody who…
has a lot of resources, a lot of opportunities in urban centers. There’s places they can go that will always help them. It does require them to sometimes give up drugs, give up, ⁓ or it requires them to give up, they have to go live by rules. a lot of these places have a lot of rules. Some of them are wet versus dry where you can’t have anything to drink or whatever. So it’s completely different dynamics. ⁓ And that’s why I mean,
you can tell me you think this is wrong. When I teach students, say, look, poverty, when you see the word the poor or the poverty in scripture, you actually have to translate it to all of these various circumstances because there’s no direct version of that in the United States. ⁓ And so I think the complications that you’re dealing with, that you’re speaking of are part of the, there is a sense in biblical Israel in the Iron Age.
where poverty, A, could have happened to anybody because anybody’s crops can fail and you’re without food and you can be malnourished. ⁓ And B, it really is as simple as you just give them food, right? It’s kind of like when it’s cold outside, you just give them some ability to get a hot drink or food or whatever. ⁓ Okay, so when we talk about poverty, we really need to, you know, this is going back to the, need to understand the situation. ⁓ so I guess what’s a good way, if you have somebody on a,
street corner, it takes 70 touches and you feel called by the Holy Spirit to get involved in some way. ⁓ So do you just get out of your car and start getting involved or what? Like you have any coaching here?
Brian Fikkert (16:19)
you
It’s all about relationship, right? It’s about developing trust and in some degree of mutual respect over long periods of time. it’s about, I mean, there’s a famous book in the space of kind of Christian poverty alleviation, the best book ever written, in my opinion, there’s a book called Walking with the Poor by Brian Myers. And that title tells you the idea, walking with the poor. And so the key,
Dru Johnson (16:44)
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (16:52)
is to get out of this sort of framework of I’m up here and the materially poor are down there and I’m better and they’re worse and I’ve got what they need because what they really need is money and I’ve got the money. And so if we think about ⁓ human beings as wired for relationship, one of the ways that we are broken is in our relationship with ourselves, right? And so for those of us who have material resources,
we tend towards the sin of pride, the sin of I’m better, I’m more moral, I’m more ⁓ thrifty, I work harder. And then those who are materially poor, their broken relationship with self tends to be shame, inferiority. I can’t affect change in my environment. And so when those of us who have a sense of pride and maybe a savior complex interact with people of a sense of shame,
Dru Johnson (17:38)
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (17:50)
It’s a bad mix because the way that we interact, the things that we say, the way our posture to them confirms in them what they’re already feeling. I feel like I can’t do it. I feel less than human. I need this other person to fix me. And of course, we kind of think that they need us to fix them, especially because we’re probably thinking about poverty in kind of material terms. And so when you have a material framework, then I’ve got the stuff.
Dru Johnson (17:51)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (18:18)
You know, I’ve got the money. I’ve got what you need. I’m successful. And the solution for you is actually here in my wallet. And so it just exacerbates this dynamic. And so the real key to the whole thing is the gospel. The gospel changes everything, right? So it’s about saying, you know what? ⁓ I’m broken and you’re broken. It just bubbles up.
in different ways in our respective lives. And the good news is that there’s the bread of life and it’s Jesus and he can feed both of us. Let me give you an example. I have a friend, we’re going to call him Bob ⁓ for the purposes of this call here. And Bob is, ⁓ he is a homeless person. And a number of years ago, I was trying to write a book, Becoming Whole with Kelly Kapic a theologian.
And I could not get it done and I was losing my mind and I just could not get the words to come out. I was behind the publisher was getting on my case, the whole thing. And so one night I went out for a walk just to clear my head and I run into Bob and Bob says, Brian, I’ve been thrown out of the house. I was staying in. Can you help me? Well, I started to say, you know, Bob, I’m really busy writing a book on how to help poor people. And I thought, holy crap, straight.
Dru Johnson (19:18)
Mm.
You
Brian Fikkert (19:41)
Ed right here on the spot for my hypocrisy. So I thought, how am going to get out of situation? I thought, I’ll call my wife. So I called my wife, my cell phone, and I said, honey, Bob needs a place to stay tonight. Can I bring him home? Thinking she would say no. And she said, of course. Terrific. So now I’m bringing Bob home. So Bob is sleeping on my couch. And he’s a mess. And I
Dru Johnson (19:56)
Ha
Brian Fikkert (20:08)
My wife had to leave for the weekend and so I’m madly writing this book and Bob says, Brian, what can I do to help you? And I said, Bob, why don’t you clean the house? So all day long he’s cleaning my house. And I’m sitting in my study and I’m typing away and I’m mad as a hornet about how horrible my life is. I can’t get this stupid book done. And Bob is cleaning my house and he’s talking under his breath all day long. And I thought maybe I’ll get a secret friend or something, you know?
So I said, they said, Bob, what are you doing? He said, I’m just talking to the Lord. I said, what are you saying to him? He goes, well, I’m thanking God for the fact that I got to stay in your house last night. And I think my work should be an act of worship to God. So I’m trying to worship God through my work. Well, I’m sitting in my studies, spitting nails. And here’s my homeless. All right. Well, it turns out that Bob and I have the same birth date. It also turns out Bob’s got obsessive compulsive disorder.
And I don’t think I’ve got it exactly, but I’m this close to it. Well, the way that that’s expressed itself in my life is I work like a dog. I’m very productive and write books and all this. Well, the way that it manifests itself in Bob’s life is hoarding. Hoarding is sort of extreme OCD. So we both are actually suffering from similar things, but I’ve been in a situation where
My expression of that underlying brokenness is work like crazy. You’re in Western Michigan right now. It’s raised in Dutch culture. I it’s just horrible, right? So work like a dog and stay poor is the message that I was raised in that Bob didn’t have the advantages I had. So for him, it expressed itself in hoarding. It’s but we’re actually both struggling with similar issues. And until we understand that, it’s always going to be we think we’re up here and that they’re down there.
Dru Johnson (21:43)
Right.
Right.
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (22:04)
and that confirms in them what they’re already feeling. So the way out is the gospel. The way out is to say, we’re all broken. And the good news is that Jesus isn’t. And that posture is the key to everything.
Dru Johnson (22:11)
Right.
Yeah, that is extremely helpful and crystal clear. I think we can all resonate with that somehow. Going back to my original comment about ⁓ spending time in the housing projects, think God, a similar thing, God confronted me with like, do you want to be friends with these people or are you just trying to help them? And I did, I did want to be friends with them. I think if he had told me at that point, like you’re on a 10 year journey, I probably would have backed out.
Brian Fikkert (22:46)
Totally!
Dru Johnson (22:46)
But
⁓ yeah, that’s always the case is you can’t see, but you do need to see like, okay, if you want to get in, it’s a long arc of love on both parts, right? And it’s going to be messy. ⁓
Brian Fikkert (22:57)
Totally,
It’s a long process. There’s no way around it. It’s a long process.
Dru Johnson (23:06)
Do you think everybody is called to, I’m gonna use the phrase serve the poor, but I think we now know what you mean by it. ⁓ Do you think everybody is called to do that in some way?
Brian Fikkert (23:17)
That’s a great question. I’ve really wrestled with it a lot. ⁓ I think we are all called to care for the poor. I don’t think we’re all called to the same way of caring for the poor. So the truth of the matter is I don’t spend most of my time in frontline ministry. I think that my gifting is different. ⁓ I think that I’m ⁓ called to ⁓
help those who are doing that kind of frontline work. That seems to be where my calling is in the larger kingdom. And so I don’t think we’re all called to exactly the same way of being concerned for the poor. That having been said, usually I stop right there, but I was speaking a number of ago in a large church, very wealthy church, a very wealthy person came up to me afterwards and said, want to challenge you on something. He said, I generally agree with you.
But he said, think every one of us needs one messy relationship in our lives. And he said, I think we need it to remind ourselves of the gospel, to remind ourselves of how others are having to live. And I’m not going to say that scripture tells us that that’s the answer, but I think there’s something to that. I think that we have different callings. But if we’re so far removed from…
Actual relationship with any people in poverty. We tend to ⁓ categorize them. We tend to not experience the relational pain that they’re going through and so on and so probably at least one. But some people are called to be on board. Some people are called to just give lots of money. A lot of people think the message of when helping hurts to stop giving money. That’s not our message at all. Our message is. Stop giving money to stupid approaches. ⁓
Dru Johnson (24:54)
Yeah, that’s good to know.
Right.
Amen.
Brian Fikkert (25:10)
If it’s about relationship, we really need are donors to pay a lot of money for staff to hang out with poor people for long periods of time, which is far more expensive than dispensing soup. What we’re talking about is way more costly. So write bigger checks, just write them for different things.
Dru Johnson (25:34)
Right. giving money better or giving money to less stupid projects, I guess, that was the economist in you coming out. ⁓ That would include that local knowers matter here, Local knowers know how to use the money best.
Brian Fikkert (25:50)
Find a ministry that’s walking with poor people over long periods of time in highly relational and empowering ways that builds on their assets, that builds their dignity, that builds their capacity for work as an act of worship to God and service to others. Find ministries that are doing that well over long periods of time and support them. Write bigger checks.
because what they’re doing is really hard and it takes long periods of time.
Dru Johnson (26:19)
Yeah. Pardon the question, but is this just a Hayekian form of poverty relief? Okay. I had to ask. Okay.
Brian Fikkert (26:23)
That’s right.
No, no,
for the listeners, Hayek was a very conservative economist and he had many, many great insights and I don’t want to diminish those. I think one of his greatest insights is that it’s really about information. And so that aspect of his model, I agree with that information
is hard to steward and to transmit and so on. And so there’s a bias towards the local, but ⁓ I’m functioning of a somewhat different anthropology and understanding of structural injustice than he was. Yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (27:08)
I would hope so.
I think one of the things that you threw out along the way, this idea of structural injustices is a very difficult thing. mean, for me, when people say, it’s individuals who sin or it’s individuals who need to take responsibility, it’s not systemic racism or systemic injustice. That to me is just like a, me you don’t know the Bible without telling me you don’t know the Bible, right?
Let’s just walk through a few chapters here. So I wonder what your take is. ⁓ Were you raised in the church? Okay, so I was not.
Brian Fikkert (27:45)
yeah, yeah, my father
was a pastor in something called the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. So was raised very conservative theological tradition.
Dru Johnson (27:52)
Okay.
So then I’m very interested in your answer on this question is what, you know, besides American culture of individualism and bootstrapism, ⁓ what do you think in the church, particularly, why they hold that view so dearly and what work it does for them emotionally and spiritually and otherwise, yeah.
Brian Fikkert (28:17)
Well, certainly, Christianity in America has emphasized sort me and my individual relationship with God. so the language of church is a language of, I grew up, I was born in 64, so I grew up in the 70s and early 80s. And I used to get Campus Life Magazine, I loved it.
But the image of the Christian life was always this, you know, 16 year old guy sitting on a rock next to a pond. And there was a duck in the pond and he was reading his Bible and doing his devotions. And dude, I’m all in on that. You know, I’m a pietist. It’s not all that I am, but I certainly try to cultivate piety and so on. But the images that we were all given growing up was sort of me and God out in the wilderness together.
Dru Johnson (28:53)
I could almost guess that next part, yeah.
Brian Fikkert (29:09)
And so just the image of that is highly individualistic, highly focused on me and my relationship vertically with God. There’s all that going on. Then there’s also just, ⁓ look, you know this better than I do, but there’s a high degree of ⁓ sort of moralism in American Christianity. We think Christianity is about doing the right things. And so if you can sort of say, look, ⁓
that person over there, I may not be that great, but I’m better than that homeless person. It cultivates the security that we’re looking for in our own righteousness. It’s a… Yeah, there is. That’s it. Yeah. And so that’s why I believe the gospel is the key. you know, look, ⁓ it’s easy to sit here on a podcast and talk about the wonders of caring for the poor in scripture. The truth of matter is it’s really hard work and most of us don’t want to do it.
Dru Johnson (29:45)
I feel like there’s a parable about this somewhere.
Brian Fikkert (30:05)
It’s not like this glorious thing where every time I’m with my friend Bob, I’m just having a blast. It’s not like that at all. It’s not. But what always happens is I start to get prideful and then I remember, that’s right. Well, I was dead in my transgressions and sins. Well, I was an enemy of the cross. And I, the distance between me and God is much bigger than the distance between me and Bob.
And so it helps me remember my own need for God.
Dru Johnson (30:39)
So you have a new book with Kelly Kapec, or Kapec, can never remember how he pronounces his name. Kelly, fantastic theologian there with you at Covenant College, ⁓ called Becoming Whole. So I wonder how your thought has advanced since ⁓ When Helping Hurts came out.
Brian Fikkert (30:58)
Yeah,
thank you for asking that. So becoming whole is sort of advanced when helping hurts. Basically what happened is, know, when helping hurts came out, I’d be speaking somewhere and people would come up to me with these very specific questions. Okay, Brian, we’ve read your book. We’re working on an island in the Pacific and there’s this weird bug that’s infecting all the crops. What do we do? I’m like, dude, I don’t know. I don’t even know geography.
Dru Johnson (31:04)
Okay.
You
Brian Fikkert (31:27)
It became clear to me that we couldn’t possibly come up with a list of what to do in every situation because quite frankly, we didn’t know ourselves. And then what we really needed to do is to impart wisdom that people needed to become the kind of people who were living into God’s great story and could start of improvise God’s redeeming story in a wide range of settings. mean, sometimes I give this example. ⁓
know, Sully lands the airplane in the Hudson River, right? And when you ask, they asked Sully, how did you do it? You know, or did you have training in how to land the airplane in the river? He goes, dude, nobody trains you how to land an airplane in river. He said, but I had so many hours of practicing that sort of my entire personhood kind of defaulted to know what to do in a new situation, right? And so this is about human information and you know, you’ve written so much on this.
Dru Johnson (32:19)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Fikkert (32:25)
And so what we decided to do was to say, let’s try to immerse the readers more just in the story. What is God’s redeeming story? And let’s just try to articulate that more fully and then articulate some practices that are consistent with that story. But the real thing here isn’t the blueprint list of principles. It’s the story. What is the story of God’s redeeming work? And the more we’re immersed in that, the more we can develop the
Dru Johnson (32:31)
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (32:55)
the unconscious sort of part of ourselves to default to the right things. And so that’s what the book is about. what we’re arguing is that American Christians are generally defaulting to the wrong story and everything we’re doing. And so that includes our work with people who are poor. In any situation we default to
Dru Johnson (33:12)
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (33:22)
our understanding of what human flourishing looks like and how you get there. And we’re trying to say the biblical account of what human flourishing looks like and how you get there is very different from the stories that we’re defaulting to. So let’s all of us start to try to default to the right story over time. That’s what we’re trying to say.
Dru Johnson (33:41)
Yeah, you know, the American story of flourishing, again, we lived in an immigrant community, almost entirely immigrant community, an immigrant church, and people had, not only, they’d come to America and stayed undocumented just to get what they, you they called the American dream, and they worked their tails off, ⁓ you know, in very difficult jobs ⁓ so that their kids could…
you know, go to good universities and they could have cars nicer than I’ve ever driven and they did it. They did all of these things. So it’s not just the American dream, it’s kind of the dream we set up for nations around us that think, you come here just to do this. ⁓ Do you sense, you work with undergrads, do you have any sense that that is shifting, that the American dream isn’t so luminous anymore?
Brian Fikkert (34:36)
So one of the things we address in our book is that
The American dream doesn’t work. That if you look at all of the evidence, what we see is ⁓ incomes and wealth continuing to go up and up and up. But all the indicators of ⁓ happiness, of wholeness, of mental health are just plummeting. Why is that? Well, apparently there’s something wrong with the story. And what’s so interesting is that most of us think
that what we should do is help poor people become like us. The goal is to help poor people become like Western Michigan, where you are right now. And I was raised in that kind of community. And so that’s our implicit view is help poor people become like us. Well, why? We’re miserable. All the indicators that are American are miserable. So it’s kind of like, we’re miserable, come join us in our misery. So we need a better story, right? And so this actually goes back to your earlier comments about systemic injustice.
Dru Johnson (35:31)
Thank
Brian Fikkert (35:44)
I don’t know enough about the listeners to this podcast, but what we’re actually arguing is that when the systems work perfectly in America, when they don’t, but if they were to work perfectly, they would crush us because these are systems created for a particular kind of creature that were not. So I’m an economist.
Dru Johnson (36:08)
Right.
Brian Fikkert (36:12)
And economists pretend that our discipline is value free. It’s just value neutral, which is just absurd. And the core of my discipline is this idea that everybody is a purely material creature. We call this creature homo economicus. That everybody is the self-centered, highly individualistic, consuming robot.
Dru Johnson (36:31)
yeah.
Brian Fikkert (36:38)
It would take a while to unpack all of that, but the basic idea here is that we have created a set of cultural systems and stories and practices that are the right ones if we’re that kind of creature, but we’re not that kind of creature. And so when the systems work perfectly, they’re great for homo economicus, but that’s not who we are because we’re not just bodies, we’re body so relational thingies. So it’s kind of like, you
Forgive the analogy, but when my students are starting to look at me cross-eyed, say to them, think of it this way. Imagine you’re an alligator and you’re created to live in the Everglades in Florida and somebody pulls you out of there and shoves you into Western Michigan. Well, you can’t flourish there. It’s too cold. It’s not made for you. Well,
Dru Johnson (37:26)
Right.
Brian Fikkert (37:30)
The storyline of scripture is how do we get alligators out of Western Michigan and back to Florida? We’re created for the dwelling place of God for a certain habitat of Eden. We’re not in that habitat. We’ve made a habitat for a different kind of creature. We can’t flourish here. So we gotta get back into the dwelling place of God. We gotta get back to Florida. Florida is a bad analogy.
Dru Johnson (37:46)
Yeah.
Well, even
worse, following the analogy out, is we’ve constructed simulations of Western Michigan in Florida for the allocator and said, go live in there, right? Like cold houses or something. Yeah.
Brian Fikkert (37:59)
That’s it. it. That’s That’s it. And so we’re
living in the wrong habitat. We’ve absorbed that into our inner beings, and it’s just the wrong one. And so what we’re arguing is we need to get back in the storyline of scripture, which is basically how can we get back into a habitat where
Dru Johnson (38:13)
Yeah.
Brian Fikkert (38:22)
we can live in a right relationship with God, self, others, and creation. And so it’s good news for the materially poor, and it’s good news for you and for me. And back to your question, our students are starting to figure it out. They’re looking and going, you know what? We’ve got older siblings or parents or whoever who have pursued this story, and they’ve got all the stuff in the world, and they’re absolutely miserable. We need a better story. I don’t think the church is doing a very good job of giving them that better story.
Dru Johnson (38:51)
Yeah. Maybe it’s time to listen. ⁓
Brian Fikkert (38:55)
I
mean, Dru know, I teach at Covenant College. We’ve got great students. Many of them come from, most of them come from very godly ⁓ Christian households. But the message that we have raised our kids on is what you would call maybe the forensic aspects of the gospel. The idea that the primary story of scripture is that I’ve sinned against the righteous and holy God.
Dru Johnson (39:19)
Hmm.
Brian Fikkert (39:24)
I deserve eternal punishment and Christ through his death and resurrection pays the penalty for my sins. I believe in all of that. I believe in all of that. But then the alarm clock goes off on Monday morning. Now what do do? We haven’t given people a story for Monday through Saturday. And so we just default the only story we’ve got the story of the American dream is not working. So what I’m finding is this, my students are longing for more. So the stuff I’m talking about right now, it doesn’t go down hard. They literally sit in class and cry like,
Why have we never heard the fuller story of the coming of the kingdom? This is what we need. This is liberating. It’s a really rich kind of moment in teaching these young people.
Dru Johnson (40:01)
Yeah.
I mean, I’ve said it a hundred times, but I will say it again. The scripture is the best liberal arts program out there. The best liberating art.
Brian Fikkert (40:11)
It is.
It is.
Dru Johnson (40:16)
⁓ Okay, before we let you go, I would like to hear more about the Chalmers Center because you direct that and it’s doing more than just your own projects, right?
Brian Fikkert (40:22)
Thank you.
Yes, thanks for asking that. know, both when helping hurts and our book Becoming Whole are really ⁓ manifestations of the work of the Chalmers Center. There’s a sense in which they are a diary of what we’ve been learning as an organization. The Chalmers Center is an outgrowth of Covenant College, and we initially said that our goal is to equip the local church to minister to people who are poor.
in more effective ways. And so we said, we don’t want poor people to ever hear of the Chalmers Center. Rather, we want them to see the local church in their community as the embodiment of Jesus Christ. And so towards the end, we designed various solutions that churches can use both in the US and around the world to address poverty with a particular bent towards work, helping people to be able to work and support themselves through their work and glorify God in the process. ⁓
That was the foundational beginning. The Lord continues to broaden our work. And so right now we would say something brought, we change our mission statement about once every 24 hours. So I’m not sure where it is right now, but it’s something like we’re trying to change the paradigms and practices of poverty so that all stakeholders can flourish. And so we’re speaking in the space of business and philanthropy and social enterprise, all kinds of things. But the core idea is really God’s.
theory of change. What does human flourishing look like and how does God typically help us to get there and what are some practical tools and principles we can use to live into that story? And so it’s not a think tank, it’s more like a ⁓ applied research and training kind of center that equips churches and Christian ministries all over the world.
Dru Johnson (42:18)
More like a lab than a tank. Yeah.
Brian Fikkert (42:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it took a while.
We design stuff and then we disseminate it so others can use it. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (42:24)
Yeah.
And you also put out Practicing the King’s Economy, which again, if you’re a church or parishioner thinking about how do you actually do these things has great biblical theology in there and might be the most readable book on biblical economics I’ve ever seen in my life. So I never hesitate to recommend that. So we have three books, When Helping Hurts, Practicing the King’s Economy and then Becoming Whole, right?
Brian Fikkert (42:49)
Yeah,
so basically, Dru, there’s a theme here. They’re all co-authored. I don’t actually know anything. just co-authored with really smart people, and they put my name on it.
Dru Johnson (42:55)
I noticed that you co-author, yeah.
Yeah.
I think, I suspect you co-author so you don’t have to do all the writing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s for sure. Well, Dr. Brian Fikkert, thank you so much for your work over the decades and thank you for sharing your wisdom with us.
Brian Fikkert (43:06)
⁓ It all depends on who the co-author is.
Thanks, Dru it’s a joy to be with you.
