What does it mean to help?

That seems like a simple question. And many times it is. But as someone who has been working in human services for more than 30 years, I can say that it is also vexing at times.

We've all heard the Chinese proverb "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." And yet we still seem to be much better at giving fish than teaching people how to do it for themselves. Why is that?

I think there's several reasons. The first being that when a man is starving, its perhaps best to go ahead and give him a fish to eat. When resources are scarce, you have to choose priorities carefully.

But secondly, if you've got the money to buy the fish, that first part can be easy. It doesn't ask much. Teaching, on the other hand, is a much harder task. It requires more of a personal investment. And that's where it gets more complex.

That kind of helping was described well in the book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Phillip Hallie. Its the story of Andre and Magda Trocme who led their small village of Le Chambon in France to save over 5,000 Jews (mostly children) during WWII.

In describing Andre's ability to inspire that kind of action, here's what Hallie wrote:

But he did not give it (this celebration of life) to Le Chambon in the way that one gives money to the poor or gifts to friends. Trocme gave his aggressive ethic to them by giving them himself. Aside from the distinction between good and evil, between helping and hurting, the fundamental distinction of that ethic is between giving things and giving oneself. When you give somebody a thing without giving yourself, you degrade both parties by making the receiver utterly passive and by making yourself a benefactor standing there to receive thanks - and even sometimes obedience - as repayment. But when you give yourself, nobody is degraded - in fact, both parties are elevated by a shared joy.

Its in the act of giving oneself that I think we find the answer to what it means to help. But that is much harder than simply giving a fish to someone who's hungry. Why is that?

I believe its because we often confuse our own needs with those of the person we want to help. Certainly it feels good to give food to a hungry person. No one expressed that better than Daniel Berrigan.

Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for the meeting of your eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to loose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.

If we think of it metaphorically as any kind of helping, that "meeting of your eyes across a piece of bread" is one of the most amazing things we can experience as human beings. It meets a need that we all feel in our depths. But thats OUR need being met. There is nothing wrong with that feeling. We need to embrace it - but recognize it as our own. When we do that - we can distinguish between our need to have that experience and the hungry man's need for food.

I'm one of those people who doesn't believe in true selfless altruism. Arthur Miller explored this question in his play After the Fall and summed it up well with this line:

To go to someone with the lie of limitless love is to cast a shadow in the face of God.

We lie to ourselves and those we might help if we assume that the giving and receiving is only a one-way street. As Hallie said about Trocme, he knew that a benefactor expects thanks (maybe even obedience) in return. But when we are aware of our own needs being met in the transaction - honesty, integrity and respect infuse it with reciprocity...and the magic of "help."