When Helping Hurts

The end of Church services on Robben Island (famous prison of many anti-apartheid political activists) came about in an unexpected way.  According to our guide who had been incarcerated for 5 years there, in the early years of Robben Island maximum security prison, the prisoners selected a denomination to invite over each Sunday.

One Sunday, the prisoners noticed that the visiting minister had brought a newspaper to the service in his briefcase.  When he wasn't looking the prisoners stole it.  Any news from the outside world was highly valued by the prisoners, at least one of which was a thief as well as a politician, but I repeat myself (adaptation from a Mark Twain quote).

Another visiting minister realized the prisoners' desire for news, and so would deliberately place his briefcase in such a way that the paper could be readily stolen.  The newspapers were then discovered in searches by the wardens.

The wardens then marked a newspaper brought in by the minister.  After the church service the wardens searched and found the marked newspaper, and knew its obvious source.  This led the prison administrators to ban the use of the outside ministers and replace them with prison chaplains.  The prisoners strongly protested the change, and boycotted the services, thus effectively ending organized worship services for the next 20 or so years.

I am sure the erring minister had the best of kind intentions.  But, the law of unintended consequences is so often at work.  What the minister intended as a help to the prisoners effectively hurt their spiritual fellowship opportunities, at least the organized ones.

A wise friend gave me a book a few years ago titled, When Helping Hurts.   The book gives many practical examples of efforts to help that end up hurting.  We need to think about this.

We ought "...to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share," I Tim 6:18.  But we also ought to be wise about it (Prov 1:5

).