Reddit Reddit reviews Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help, And How to Reverse It

We found 4 Reddit comments about Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help, And How to Reverse It. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help, And How to Reverse It
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4 Reddit comments about Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help, And How to Reverse It:

u/fencerman · 9 pointsr/UpliftingNews

Counterpoint: Charity done for PR can often be worse than useless.

http://www.cracked.com/article_23626_5-times-music-industry-charity-hurt-more-than-it-helped.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/giving-to-charity-can-be-harmful-2013-11

https://www.amazon.ca/Toxic-Charity-Churches-Charities-Reverse/dp/0062076213

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9681699/How-charity-makes-life-worse-for-Africans.html

Now, it's POSSIBLE for charity to help - but making a positive difference overall is actually really damn hard, and someone in it for their ego or public image is not doing the work to make sure their actions are helpful.

The lesson is, don't judge someone when the check gets signed. Judge it only when they've done the follow-up later on and proven it really helped; THEN you can give them credit. And if they never follow up and check the consequences of their actions? Fuck 'em. They're wasting your time and everyone else's.

u/hithazel · 5 pointsr/quityourbullshit

> Do some volunteer work sometime, and spend a few afternoons having to politely give free stuff to people who already have more money than you do. You'll change your attitude.

I think that one of the biggest reasons that people are so concerned about this fraud is that they can see and experience it, or at least imagine it. I've actually worked in this field for the last two years and I've volunteered periodically before that: what you are describing is an example of toxic charity.

On the other hand, the abuses of the campaign finance system or of investment and banking corporations like Goldman Sachs are much more difficult to wrap your head around and as you said, seem to be intractable.

That doesn't mean we should fall into the psychological trap of spilling ink and dedicating more and more outrage to things that really, frankly, do not matter.

>Right. We should totally ignore ISIS. That'll make the world a better place.

I actually believe this. ISIS is no more brutal or evil than the Mexican drug cartels or Boko Haram, and US intervention in the middle east is at least partially responsible for the birth of ISIS. We have now entered the fourth generation of blowback from political meddling in the middle east that traces its lineage back to the Ottoman Empire and colonialism. As recently as two years ago, we were hearing that this Bashar Assad person was an evil menace that had to be stopped, only to see him supplanted almost entirely. Before that, there was Osama, Saddam, and various other players, many of whom had at one point been US allies or received covert military or financial support from the US.

The point of terrorism is to terrorize a population, and it is insane to let the deaths of a few people (even the tremendously unjust deaths) redefine the entire media narrative and policy priorities of a country where orders of magnitude more people are dying of preventable accidents, illnesses, and diseases.

u/shamrockjew · 2 pointsr/Showerthoughts

Yes, but there's a problem with charity--even charity done with good intentions--when it is done without fully understanding the needs of the community you are trying to help. Toxic Charity by Robert Lupton is an excellent read and gets into the problem and how to fix it.

u/aggieotis · 1 pointr/worldnews

The article I linked happened to be talking about the recession, but the numbers are still split about the same even before the recession.

No matter which way you slice it, the majority of church funds are spent on facilities and staffing. The next category is entertainment for club-members. The last and smallest category is what would be considered 'good works' be that in the community, or (even less) in the world at large.

>Most of the US churches are doing works outside of the US.

It's a fallacy to think that a significant amount of funds/effort from US churches are being done to help the world at large. And even when they are 'helping' it's often done in a manner that's poorly thought-through and emphasizes the 'feel goods' of church members over the 'needs met' of the people it's meant to help. (See: Toxic Charity)

Sure there are some churches that are better than others. (You should see the financials of some of the mega-churches in the DFW region, they're pretty disgusting.) Some churches really have low facility costs, volunteer ministers, and focus on building up the world around them. Sadly they're the minority.