You Could Be Next In Line at the Soup Kitchen

Opportunities to help people are abundant. If you've got a passion for something, there is an organization you can give to to support your cause. Or, if an organization to support your cause really doesn't exist, you can start your own foundation! Worried about hunger? Donate to the Chicago Food Depository, which can feed millions in the Chicagoland area for cheap. Passionate about cancer? Walk in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and help raise millions of dollars. My point is, people get involved and contribute to their community in a thousand different ways. However, is this really all out of good will? Do we give freely without wanting anything in return? Whether it be a tax deductible donation or to simply feeling good about ourselves, doing a service project isn't always just about helping people.



In The Poisonwood Bible (read a summary here), the Price family is on a one year mission to the Congo in effort to spread Christianity. However, the help and assistance isn't well received by the Congolese people who do not wish to convert or adopt western ways. Nathan Price, the father and minister, however, insists that the family stays, despite being isolated and rejected from society. Why is it that Nathan wanted to stay? In my opinion, I think that Nathan cares more about not looking like a failure and being able to claim personal success (such as baptizing many Congolese people) than actually changing and helping the lives of the Congolese. Nathan's pride gets in the way of actually accomplishing a worthwhile mission. He believes he is superior to the Congolese due to his skin color and wealth, and hence he and his mission are valuable to the Congolese, even if they don't realize it.



Pride is a major issue not only in The Poisonwood Bible with Nathan and some of the other characters, but often in society and community service as well. My question is, can service further solidify class and class stereotypes? Does a person feel they are superior because they can help others and don't need the help themselves? Often when people do a community service project they say "I got so much out of it." Why is this? Because you feel like you are helping people? When people give to Amvets Clothing do you secretly think to yourself that you are happy to be on the giving side, not on the receiving side? This week, my mom had eye surgery. Ever since, we have been having meals delivered right to our door at 6 p.m. every night. Normally, we are on the side of always cooking meals for those in need. To be honest, it's quite weird receiving all this help with meals and people driving us around because my mom can't drive. This is no way shifts our place in society, such as we don't go down in class because we are receiving help, but I can see that if this continued for an extended period of time, a family might feel they are inferior because they are always receiving help, always the "charity" of another family. The truth is, that could be anyone's family. No one is better just because they are serving the food, not waiting in line for it.



Community service, when done right, can obviously be very beneficial to a society and help improve the general social welfare. However, I believe it is important to be sensitive to the different societal attitudes that service, such as mission trips or feeding the hungary, can promote. Just because you are on the receiving end of aid doesn't make you inferior, just like the Congolese weren't inferior to Nathan just because they were poorer or weren't Baptist, and just because your situation, financial or non-financial, allows you to give instead of receive this year, doesn't make you better. It just makes you human, and often just plain lucky. You could be next. Next year, it could be you on the receiving line of the soup kitchen. Giving and taking is all part of the cycle. Let's just not let it define us and our place in society.

-Emily