As Christians we are to love our neighbors as ourselves and when someone needs help we should do our best to help him/her. But how far do we go in not being taken advantage of?
An example is a friend I used to work with needed rent money and was so upset over the fact that she could get evicted and she had 2 boys at home. I was all set to ask my husband if we could help her out until she showed me her brand new purse and said she was a bit of a shopaholic. Right there I knew that she had gotten herself into her situation by making poor choices. I wasn't going to stop her from seeing there are consequences to our actions. I don't know how she got her rent money but she never got evicted and continued to go shopping.
So how far do we take it so we don't get taken advantage of when we want to help people?
This is an interesting problem.
My experience is that usually the people who are the most vocal about their need are the ones with either the least actual need, or the need created by their own bad decisions. The person you mentioned clearly created their own misfortune by spending money that should have gone on rent, on the new purse. Maybe she actually had more money than she was letting on, maybe someone else got a sob story and handed over some cash, thereby enabling the bad decisions.
The problem I'm always aware of is that the people with the greatest need are often the people who are the least vocal about it. I often compare and contrast two people I knew at the church I attended before moving. One (I'll call him Paul) had an attitude that was largely "(expletive) my life" and would often complain about all the things going wrong for him and how he couldn't do much, could never catch a break etc. He was able bodied, able to work, always had money to go out to eat and yet apparently couldn't afford to spend less than the cost of dinner out on things that would have kept him occupied and addressed his issues. The other person (I'll call him Dave) was able to walk, just, leaning heavily on two sticks. He held down a job as best he could, although his mobility issues sometimes meant he had to take time off at short notice. Fixing things around his (ground level) apartment were just physically beyond him - it's hard to operate tools of any description when you need at least one hand on a stick just to stand. This guy never complained about his life, ever. One day he asked me if I'd be able to help him with a problem with his front door - any time I was free, if it wasn't too much trouble. I went to have a look and found he hadn't been able to lock his apartment properly for three days but hadn't wanted to make a fuss. When I fixed it for him he wanted to make me cookies to thank me for my efforts.
It's easy to find people like Paul, the ones who could help themselves but don't. It's harder to find the people like Dave, who really need help but don't shout about it. For me my primary concern isn't so much that my money might end up doing little more than buying Paul a beer, as that the money that might have helped Dave with something essential ended up buying Paul a beer.
Even having said that, people like Paul may still need help but the help they need is more about teaching them to budget than giving them more money to waste. The eternal question is whether they want the help or if they just expect someone to hand over free money so they don't have to change anything. My experience is that people like Paul want stuff with no strings and any attempt to encourage them to help themselves is met with accusations of being judgmental or interfering in their life.
Since people like Dave are hard to find my best thought is to consider giving specifically to something like an alms fund at your church if such a thing exists, or working with a very local charity that has people on the ground to see those who are in serious need.
