KINGDOM MINDED – The Offical Blog of The Young Adults of the LaGrange District

Binyavanga Wainaina

I have heard it said that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once spoke, “The only reason to look down on someone is if you are going to lift them up.” Today, I wanted to highlight an interview I heard on the radio with Binyavanga Wainaina, who is described as “one among a rising generation of African voices who bring a cautionary perspective to the morality and efficacy behind many Western initiatives to abolish poverty and speed development in Africa.” I was really impacted by his perspective on aid, and it caused me to really take a look at my own motives in missions and in being a Christian in general when reaching out to others.

A lot of people arrive in Africa to assume that it’s a blank empty space and their goodwill and desire and guilt will fix it. And that to me is not any different from the first people who arrived and colonized us. This power, this power to help, is just about as dangerous as hard power, because very often it arrives with a kind of zeal that is assuming ‘I will do it. I will solve it for you. I will fix it for you,’ and it rides roughshod over your own best efforts.      -Binyavanga Wainaina

Anyone doing missions will certainly be able to take something away from this interview, which was on the program “Speaking of Faith” with host Krista Tippet. Click here to listen to the program, “The Ethics of Aid.”