{"id":9924,"date":"2024-10-10T02:12:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T02:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9924"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:57","slug":"no-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9924","title":{"rendered":"NO HARM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over the last couple of years, my appreciation for Mission Resource&#8217;s approach to ministry has only deepened. We offer microloans to struggling businessmen and women &#8211; mostly in Ghana, West Africa. Many have pointed out that there is a huge difference between offering a hand UP and a hand OUT.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I saw plenty of handouts during my time in Haiti &#8211; some coming from my own pocket. And there is a time and place for straight up gifts of money and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But you sure do see a lot of helplessness fostered by such handouts over time. Not to mention dependency and even entitlement.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was thinking the other day that we often assume the cure for poverty is just an injection of money. But it&#8217;s rarely that simple and straightforward. Poverty is at least as complex as any disease and every situation is different and deserving of careful diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the missionary\/philanthropist ought to abide by the rule which governs medical doctors: First, do no harm.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last couple of years, my appreciation for Mission Resource&#8217;s approach to ministry has only deepened. We offer microloans to struggling businessmen and women &#8211; mostly in Ghana, West Africa. Many have pointed out that there is a huge difference between offering a hand UP and a hand OUT. I saw plenty of handouts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9925,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9924\/revisions\/9925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}