What affluent individuals faced with the challenges of aid should not do is to take either of two paths of avoidance. the first path is to deny the facts about aid. Many affluent individuals take pride in being morally good people. Many, and especially those who already give to aid organizations, see giving to aid organizations as one important thing that morally good people do. These people sometimes find facts about the possible harms and uncertainties of aid as threatening to their own self-image, and so close their eyes to these facts. These well-intentioned people should be gently reminded: Severe poverty is not about you. Its moral importance is much greater than that of affluent people maintaining a certain self-image. It is imperative for all of us to try to reduce severe poverty, which means always focusing our attention on the world as it is.
The second path of avoidance is the selfishness of uncertainty, or "the paralysis of analysis." Individuals may become overwhelmed by the challenges of aid, conclude that they can never know what aid will do, and give themselves over to pursuing their own concerns. This is also not an adequate response.
Dear God, when I become a real, official adult person contributing real, official adult things to society and gaining a real, official adult kind of income, help me not to be tied to money as a slave to his master. Let me give it away freely but wisely, with the respect - but not adoration - it deserves; as a good steward of good gifts that you give to us for a short time here. Let me be free from those grasping desires, for grasping things, in turn getting grasped by them, attached to the world and its shiny, breakable things.
But before all of these things please let me find a job amen.
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