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Join the Libertarian Christian Institute as each week they explore, debate, and analyze the issues that are directly relevant to the intersection of Christianity and liberty. Always thoughtful, frequently controversial, and never boring (trust us), it is our hope and prayer that The Libertarian Christian Podcast serve as a valuable resource to the Church for years to come.
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[00:00:03] Voiceover: Welcome to the show that gets Christians thinking about faith and politics. Get ready to challenge the status quo. Expand your imagination and tackle controversy head on. Let's stand together at the intersection of faith and freedom. It's time for the Libertarian Christian podcast.
[00:00:22] Doug Stuart: Welcome to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network. My name is Doug Stuart and I have a special guest with us today. His name is James Whitford. This is his second appearance on the Libertarian Christian Podcast. Uh, James, it's been a while. You were back in episode 218. Uh, and I'm really excited to have you on today. Uh, but I want to give you an introduction here. You're the founder of true Charity, a local initiative in your area in Missouri. You can remind me the city, uh, it's evolved into a national training organization championing the resurgence of civil society and the fight against poverty. Your work has been featured in publications like the The Christian Post, The Hill World News Group. You've testified before Senate and US House subcommittees. Um, and we're here to talk about your actual book. I'm going to hold it up here for those. I'm gonna hold it up here for those watching on YouTube. Uh, "The Crisis of Dependency: How Our Efforts to Solve Poverty Are Trapping People in It, and What We Can Do to Foster Freedom Instead". James Whitford, thank you for joining us again, Doug.
[00:01:20] James Whitford: It's great to be great to be back again. It has been a while. Good. Good to be here with you.
[00:01:25] Doug Stuart: Yeah. Well, I think the last time we chatted was prior to the pandemic. Um, and so I'm sure your life is, was changed during that period of time. And, um, we, you can, you know, fill us in on any of that as we, as we have this conversation in terms of your experience and stuff. But, uh, for those who are probably due to my show and haven't listened to episode 218 with you, um, what is? Tell us a little about your journey, how you became founder of Watered Gardens and now true charity?
[00:01:49] James Whitford: Sure. Yeah. Well, it was faith that led my wife and I in 2000. So it's been 25 years ago that we started a small little Outreach mission in Joplin, Missouri, very southwest Missouri. And, um, we called it watered gardens. And watered gardens is initially was kind of confusing to our community. People would call and wonder if we sold garden equipment or, you know, did landscaping or things like that. And so it always gave us the.
[00:02:18] Doug Stuart: Names with metaphors are a little bit tricky, right?
[00:02:20] James Whitford: But we were sure God gave us this name. We just know it. Uh, but anyway, it always gave us the opportunity to share the passage from which the name comes, which is Isaiah chapter 58, where God's really chastising his people for going through the motions of church. You might say, you know, but they're not actually choosing what God wants them to do, which is to help the poor. And and I love Isaiah 58:10, where, um, where the prophet says you should extend yourself, as some versions say, give your life to those who are afflicted and in need, and there are promises that are associated with that. One of them is you'll be like a watered garden and like a spring whose waters never fail. So it's a beautiful promise, really, of a flourishing life that, uh, comes through giving rather than just taking and hoarding. And so we had discovered that it caused us to launch this little mission, and it's grown over the last 25 years to be a five campus, uh, very holistic approach. Ministry. And Joplin, Missouri, that's meeting tens of thousands of needs and in a pretty unique way. And so, Doug, the history, like the evolution of the ministry really leads into the true charity, national work. Uh, when my wife and I started our ministry, we just had a lot of compassion for people. So we we gave a lot of stuff away. People would come in, they said they had a need. We'd try to meet it. And we realized pretty soon that the outcomes we'd hoped to see in people's lives simply weren't being achieved.
[00:03:53] James Whitford: So we knew we needed to change our model. And there were some things that happened that resulted in us realizing that we were actually causing dependency in people, rather than actually helping them be free from their from from poverty. We were we were practicing a form of charity that a lot of people would call "Toxic Charity". Now that's another book, "Toxic Charity". And in it the author delineates five steps to dependency, which are really key. If you give something to somebody once, they're going to appreciate it. But if you give the same thing to that person again, then they're going to develop an anticipation that it's going to come a third time. If you hand out the same thing a third time, then an expectation develops a fourth time, they'll feel entitled to it, and a fifth time they'll be dependent on you for it. So it's appreciation, anticipation, expectation, entitlement and dependency. And we knew we were guilty. We were doing that. And so we changed our model to more of an earning model where people are exchanging a little bit of what they can do for something that they need. Uh, we think this is a much more dignifying approach that respects the imago Dei, or the image of God and people. We're all made in the image of a creator or a great producer. And so we're intended to create and produce. Too often today, our charity is drowning out that drive to contribute what you can for something that you need. And I think we're drowning out aspects of human dignity when we do that.
[00:05:22] James Whitford: So we made this change, and when we did, we saw literally thousands of people who were coming through our doors every year stopped coming. They were they they ended up, of course, going somewhere else where they could remain dependent on handouts. And it was like an aha moment for us. We thought, oh my gosh, we need to do more than just change the the thought and the culture and the practice of ministry within our four walls. We need to see our whole community change. So we began to do PSAs and leader, uh, lunch and learns and different things like that to help educate our community about the importance of coupling compassion with common sense and really rethinking charity and poverty and the human person, uh, that grew into an the True Charity Initiative, which was initially a local work in 2012 and then in 2020 of all the years it actually grew out of that into a national movement. And today, uh, we have 257 churches and nonprofits across 35 states who are leaning into the true charity principles, which for us, those are three primary things we really believe the best charity is privately funded, outcome-driven and work-oriented. So we want to enter into reciprocity or exchange with people. We want to measure outcomes and we think stay away from government funding to get it done. So that's kind of the evolution of where we came from, the little ministry in 2000 to the national work we do today and helping others rethink.
[00:06:59] Doug Stuart: And you're involved in both. They kind of run simultaneously. Or is it just evolved from one into another?
[00:07:04] James Whitford: Yeah. Well, when you go to truecharity.us, it looks totally different than Watered Gardens. Org but true Charity is a subsidiary of Watered Gardens. Okay. The parent organization continues to remain as the the umbrella 501(c)(3).
[00:07:20] Doug Stuart: Yeah, yeah okay. Okay. You know, for for listeners and viewers of this particular show, uh, the the first one of, you know, charity should be private. That's not going to be, you know, at all consequential. What were the other two uh, you said they need it needs to be private, outcome-driven and based on work outcome-driven. I mean, generally speaking, nobody's going to object to that kind of thing. But what is the the core there on that third one where it's like work, work based.
[00:07:44] James Whitford: Work oriented, or sometimes we use the term challenge-oriented, and we just have to understand that, uh, if, we don't do that, the only other option is handout charity. Handout charity is going to march people into a pattern of dependency, which I think is a crisis where we have a national crisis of dependency, uh, today. And so the whole idea is, um, it really boils down to this concept of subsidiarity, which is don't, don't take from an individual what he or she can do on his own and give it to the community to do for him, but also don't take from the community what the community ought to do and give it to the government to do. So there's this concentric layering. That's the whole idea of subsidiarity, but it starts with a respect of the individual as, uh, having agency with and, uh, the potential and capacity to contribute. And so we really need to remember that. So before I ever got into this, Doug, I practiced physical therapy and I was from time to time called a physical terrorist. And that's because, you know what physical therapists do.
[00:08:59] Doug Stuart: I've done a different type of physical therapy before. You know, it's not from debilitation, but I understand. I, I grasped the.
[00:09:08] James Whitford: Right. Right. The idea is that what we do usually doesn't feel very good. But the truth is, if we don't challenge our patients to develop the strength and mobility they need to escape their bed of infirmity, they'll remain there until they perish. And that's true for especially for people who are really, like, in a hospital bed. They're stuck there. If there's not somebody who comes along and encourages, inspires and challenges them to develop the strength and mobility that they need, they're going to remain there until they perish. The same thing is happening with tens of millions of people in poverty in America today. We must, with compassion at the right time, implement challenge in order to help people develop the strength and mobility they need to escape their bed of poverty, and if not, they're going to remain there until they perish. My argument is that we have tens of millions of Americans who are on a trajectory today to die in dependent poverty, because we're not being work-oriented. We're challenge-oriented about our charity.
[00:10:08] Doug Stuart: Yeah. You know, I want to I want to ask a question. It's a it's a very detailed question about how you're doing this. So and I don't want to save it for later because I might forget. But how do you work with somebody who hasn't yet discovered that they have something to give? Like, they they might. Whether it's just a psychological, you know, they just don't have any either motivation or self, um, a self appreciation for what they're capable of. Maybe they're, you know, mostly an invalid or something like that where they're looking for something that, um, they need, they need to be fed. They need to, to have what they have a need that you can meet, but they don't see themselves as capable of contributing in some meaningful way. Um, my guess is that you have you and your team have found ways to encourage them and move them in that direction, but I'm really kind of interested in like, what does that actually look like? Because my personality is not such where I'm going to be an encourager, uh, in that direction. You're probably more in that direction than I am.
[00:11:05] James Whitford: Yeah, well, a couple of things. One, you know, when you use the term invalid, the first thing I want to say is there are times when relief just a one way, uh, handout is necessary. And we've got to understand that relief is not always a bad form of charity, but we, I believe, have gone from, you know, the Great Depression when relief was needed and we never got out of the relief business. And so there's a lot of one way handouts that continue when they shouldn't. Uh, so sometimes there is a need for relief. It should be short lived, and we really should be looking for reciprocity from the recipient as often as we can, because if we don't, here's the second point. We see learned And helplessness develop. And I want to be careful when I talk about the study that was done, I think, in 1967 by Seligman and learned helplessness. But it's very interesting. And later on they've proven this to be true, not just with the animals they did the research on, but in people as well. But the the research project was, uh, basically you've got dogs who are trapped and they can't get out. There's a shock plate. Can you imagine? 1967, they did stuff like this. There's a shock plate that kind of shocks the feet of the dogs. And in some of the some of the boxes that the dogs are being held in, they're, well, they're levers in all of them. But in some of them, when a dog hit a lever, it actually shut the shock off. But in some the lever didn't do anything. And so the ones where the lever didn't do anything, they learned helplessness.
[00:12:34] James Whitford: So much so that when the dogs were out of that and they were in a different situation where they could easily jump over a barrier and escape the shock, only the dogs that had working lever levers, who had not learned helplessness jumped out, but the ones with learned helplessness, they just sat there and took it. Well, I think we're seeing a lot of that in, uh, America today. A lot of learned helplessness. People are not coupling the fact that they have agency. They can make decisions. They can they can begin to work to escape poverty. They just don't realize that anymore. And so we have a job to do. You know, it's interesting now that I think about it, in that study, uh, if you kind of read the tail end of it, they actually helped the dogs that had learned helplessness to escape that scenario by literally moving their legs and helping them, like physically assisting them. And then they realized, oh, I'm not helpless. It's similar with people. We do need to come alongside people. We do need to be hands on. We've got to be willing to, uh, well, you know, Isaiah 58:10 says, extend yourself. There's a portion of your life you need to give to people. But what this means is we can't do mass food distribution tasks that are like government mandated and think that anything's going to happen. This is very individual face to face. It requires understanding the nuances of the person and what's going on. If we're going to help people escape poverty, it's going to be one at a time.
[00:14:04] Doug Stuart: I had I had known of the phrase learned helplessness. And I think a lot of people, especially people who think a lot like you and I do. We've heard that I didn't actually know it was a study, to be honest, and it just makes intuitive sense to me. Maybe it's because I'm a parent. Um, and, you know, your kids can sort of you can you can sort of watch yourself do that for your kids. And you're like, oh, wait, they're learning to just depend on me. And, you know, I know I need to, as a parent, help them depend on their own initiative and their own capabilities and strengths. One thing that I love about your book, and it's interesting that it doesn't it actually comes out in the title, it says, and what we can do to foster freedom instead. So if astute readers of the book, I'm looking down here at the title Crisis of Dependency How Our Efforts to Solve Poverty are trapping people in it. And then here's the contrast. Well, what can we do to foster freedom instead? Now, every libertarian is going to look at that and say, yeah, that sounds great, and you really do. You're not using the word freedom just on the cover just to kind of get us, you know, to kind of get the American conservative, libertarian liberal spirit to, to read your book. You truly I mean, you quote Frederic Bastiat, you quote John, uh, John Stuart Mill, you dive into you you really, uh, what's the word in you dig in on the freedom mindset. So I really appreciate that. Of course. And I know all of our listeners would really love that. Um, why is this such an important concept? And, and when and, you know, give us some examples of how you apply that to your ministries.
[00:15:32] James Whitford: Well, yeah. It's interesting, the book initially, uh, was going to be titled Liberty, uh, I think for Liberty and charity or Liberty and Charity and I, and I was told by people who were smarter than me that that probably wouldn't sell. So isn't that sad, Doug?
[00:15:52] Doug Stuart: Hey, you know what? It's great. I whatever gets them to read the book, right? Like the content is, you know. Yeah.
[00:15:59] James Whitford: No, no, that's so. But but for me, I've, I have just seen over the years those two things, uh, they're so symbiotic in my opinion. Um, if we want to, you know, live in a society that's free, we're not going to be able to escape the need for good, compassionate, uh, sometimes sacrificial charity. See if we if we're willing to sacrifice our liberty for a utopia of sorts, then, uh, then then we're just gonna be looking to the government to try to solve the problems. Uh, hey, look, can't we just redistribute the wealth here? I mean, there are billionaires out there. Let's just make sure the poor have enough. Okay? Quit dealing with the official poverty measure. Let's look at the supplemental poverty measure, because we're we're we're lifting people out of poverty by redistributing wealth. Well, we're not really we're actually trapping people in a form of dependency. And so the ideas of liberty and charity come together very closely. I'm thinking of what Marvin Olasky wrote and "The Tragedy of American Compassion". He wrote that dependency is merely slavery with a smiling mask. We've got to be asking ourselves, what's our charity doing? And not just on the private front, but the public front as well. Public charity from the government, private charity from organizations. Is our charity fostering freedom, or is it creating a dependency and a form of bondage instead? And um, and so yeah, I do get into a lot of that. I, I think, um, you know I do. I do agree with I mean, when I read Bastiat's "The Law" and I thought, oh my goodness, uh, that's so clear that if, uh, if a, if a person cannot, uh, take from someone and give to another without it being called theft, how can we, uh, authorize the government to do that? And I think we've abandoned a strict interpretation of the Constitution that would say, look, there are an enumerated list of powers, and taking from the rich to give to the poor is just not one of them.
[00:18:13] James Whitford: And and I, I know I sound like a radical to everybody but your listeners. And so I, I don't always I don't always speak so candidly. But the truth is, yeah, we have got to get away from this redistributionist, uh, thinking and and realize that the way we're going to live in freedom is understand that we're not going to be able to redistribute. Uh, and we know that the freer nations, they have lower regulation. They've got lower redistributionist policy. We know that. So we want to be a free nation. Well, we're going to have to get away from redistributing goods and giving it to the poor. What does that mean? That means we are going to have to step in as local, you know, compassionate Christians in our communities. We've got to step in and be ready to help those who are struggling in poverty. And in some, some ways, Doug, we're starting to see a little bit of that with some recent legislation that's actually going to result in some folks coming off of the welfare rolls. And so we I think we have an opportunity. Civil society has an opportunity and the church to step in and do a good job here.
[00:19:21] Doug Stuart: You know, um, I want to I have a thought. And then I have a kind of a follow up question. I, I've often wished that there would have been a figure, you know, Barack Obama for for all of his faults, he was a very good speaker. He was a very good motivator. He was able to move people to action. And so if we could go back in time and give him this book 30 years ago, and he latched on to that, I could see a president saying, hey, we're going to eliminate all of these, not because there's some, you know, ideological principle of government shouldn't be doing it, but a, a firm belief that the American people will rise to the challenge. And, you know, I'm not a huge like, strongman, uh, myth believer, but that would be kind of a good direction if we could find a president who empowered people to to do things as opposed to. Well, Obama's phrase was, the government is the things we do together, which, you know, makes me facepalm. Of course, just like probably you, um, I think the the the one objection. I wouldn't even say it's an objection, but one consideration with, uh, what you said there was that we're we're not really lifting people out of poverty.
[00:20:26] Doug Stuart: We're creating dependency is that you have Christians, whether left, right, or just, you know, good intentioned people who aren't thinking deeply about, you know, step two, step three, step four, the way you are. Um, look at that and say, well, no, look, I you know, I can't I can't solve every problem. Um, I have agency. God's put it on my heart to donate to this charity or to that charity or to, you know, volunteer in a certain way. And I'm going to help this person and, um, you know, that's that's between them and God as to whether or not they become dependent or, you know, I'm just following what my heart is. You know, what God is telling me in my heart to do or leading me to, you know, putting in front of my path. And I'm saying yes to it, um, you know, and people kind of maybe not everybody, but a lot of people might just shrug off the whole like, well, you know, it's a systemic problem, of course. But, you know, I can't change that. But I have money and I need to give to this poor person who lives near me.
[00:21:17] James Whitford: Yeah. Well, I think, um, let's take panhandling, for instance. We know that, uh, I think the last study I was looking at was somewhere around 98%, I believe, of folks who were holding a cardboard sign at a corner saying, you know, will will work for food or God bless or what have you.
[00:21:35] Doug Stuart: Yeah. Homeless. Anything will help.
[00:21:36] James Whitford: Yeah. Anything will help. Right. That a lot of that money is actually going to feed some sort of an addiction. And so I think we've got to take the responsibility to consider that handing money to somebody on the corner might actually be the same as handing them, you know, another another hit. Yeah. Right. And so where are we really helping people or are we hurting people? So I think we've just got to we've got to, uh, realize or accept that there is a toxic type of charity and there's a, a true or more effective type of charity, and we need to wrestle with that. And I don't think it's responsible to simply say, hey, this is not on me. You know, I just I've got something to give. I want to give. Well, I think what we need to do is say we need to we need to give responsibly. And again, kind of going back to Isaiah 58:10, the idea is you're not just passing a meal across a counter, you're not just handing cash out at a corner, you're doing more than that. Apart from relationship, the gospel really isn't going to be communicated, and the transformation we hope to see in lives isn't going to happen. So we've got to be willing to develop relationship. And within relationship that's healthy. You're going to see accountability. That's going to be a part of it. You're not just going to continue to give in that relationship. It becomes a very unhealthy codependency between someone who's dependent and someone who's paternalistic. So I think as as givers, we've got to wrestle with those ideas.
[00:23:06] Doug Stuart: Your book, I know you were developing it, you know, six, seven years ago when we last talked or I guess pre-COVID. Um, and you said it took a little bit of a hiatus a little bit, and now it's now it's here. Um, your your ministry really grew and it expanded in a lot of ways. So then why why a book? Were you encouraged by other people to do it? Was this just something on your heart you wanted to expand to people who aren't in the trenches with you, so to speak, and doing that.
[00:23:31] James Whitford: I really I mean, it may sound strange. It was nothing more than just feeling like God was compelling me to do it. I had I had a lot of this kind of almost built up in me that it was trying to come out in some ways, and so I just could feel that. And I felt like God was saying, write it. And so I went ahead and just, uh, and did it. But that was really the idea. And, uh, but it's it's doing well. It seems like it's being I'm really excited that it's being taken up by policy leaders across the nation and have heard have heard about that. I'm excited about that. Uh, because again, I mean, earlier, I think, uh, you said something about the government empowering local people. And as soon as you said it, I thought, truth be told, if the government will simply withdraw itself, you're going to see a natural like a vacuum of for civil society to step in, which we've seen. I mean, you can look at the disasters that occurred in Florida with the hurricane season, or you can see, like in my own city of Joplin, Missouri. In 2011, an EF5 tornado came through and rendered 7000 people homeless immediately. It was a horrible disaster. It wasn't the government who was there. It was compassionate citizenry that stepped in to do rescue, relief and restoration.
[00:24:49] Doug Stuart: Yeah. Recent hurricane. Last year's hurricane in North Carolina, for sure.
[00:24:53] James Whitford: Yeah, yeah. And so I feel like sometimes we I think as a, as a society, we've just we've become too dependent on government. We tend to look to the greatest source of power to accomplish something. And, uh, yet it's it's inappropriate and it's failing. I mean, you look back, since the programs got launched in under LBJ in 1964, poverty, the poverty percentage hasn't really changed. It's between 11 and 15% for the last 60 years. But one thing that has changed is we now.
[00:25:25] Doug Stuart: Par for the course for American wars.
[00:25:27] James Whitford: Yeah, right. Yeah. We should.
[00:25:30] Doug Stuart: End.
[00:25:30] Doug Stuart: This war on that. Yeah. We're not making any progress. Sorry I interrupted you. My bad.
[00:25:34] James Whitford: No, no, no, you're so right. And unfortunately, they're, uh. They're utilized for political gain far too often. You know, I mean, we want to be the one who launches a war and has the cause and. And the truth is, this has been an utter failure. And now we have even more people today, in the last let's see, since about 1980 or so, we have more people now in deep poverty than we do that are not in deep poverty, which is below 50% of the poverty line. So the poverty percentage hasn't really been changing, but people who are in poverty are actually getting worse. And so that's a lot of that's manifesting in the increase in homelessness that we've seen in the last decade or so. So yeah, this whole idea of, of handouts and, and, and government funded welfare is not doing any good. It's addressing symptoms, but it's not addressing the source. And I like to I like to tell folks, I think that when we address symptoms only, we actually inflame the underlying pathology. Kind of like addressing the symptoms of a diabetic who's feeling lethargic, lethargic and thirsty. We might give them an ice cold Pepsi or Coca-Cola, but the truth is that's going to do them more harm than good. We're just addressing the symptoms now. Poverty. If that's the diagnosis, what are the symptoms? I don't have cash. I don't have food. I don't have a roof over my head. Well, how are we going to address those symptoms? Well, we can hand you cash out at the corner. We can hook you up with SNAP, the food stamp program, and we'll get you into a HUD housing project that's addressing symptoms. And I believe it's actually inflaming the pathology. It's making things worse in our nation today, and we've got to stop it.
[00:27:15] Doug Stuart: I had a question there that I was about to ask you, and I'm like, I'm drawing a blank here. So until I remember it. Um, let's talk about the the idea of empowerment, because I think there's a lot of I think it came to my mind. Here we go. Um, I would imagine that any far left leaning person sitting here hearing you say exactly what you just said, that we don't want to create people who are dependent. Uh, we want people to be empowered to, uh, take, take advantage of their own lives and, you know, rise to the challenges that that life sets for them. And so that in theory, we don't need charity or for that matter, handouts. The problem, of course, is there are people advocating for programs that do just that. And it seems like nobody really wants there to be this idea of dependency. Even people. I mean, again, I'm assuming the best of even people who might be on the far left saying, well, we need that. Um, they don't want dependency. They just want people to not be destitute, and they don't want people to be really poor. And so your book really describes and sometimes by example and sometimes by just, you know, citing policies like IRS codes that won't allow, uh, your organization to take money from, uh, Feeding America because you can't do it for exchange of services, like just things like that almost are the biggest perversion in this whole landscape than just people wanting other people to be dependent. Because I don't I don't I don't truly believe that anybody wants that.
[00:28:42] James Whitford: Yeah. I don't know that I disagree with you there. I, I do think that there can be ulterior motives to redistributionist policy, which is to remain in a position of power. So I but I don't know that that's really that would probably be fewer than, than the majority of, of left leaning policy makers. I think most of them do have a they they sense a responsibility for one reason or another to do something. But, but, but we've got to look at, you know, are the means to the end. Right. And is the end working? I mean, so we need to look at both outcomes as well as, as well as is this really, uh, the right and biblical means by which this should be done. Um, you know, Jesus said, give to Caesar what is Caesar's. And I always say, yeah, but don't give to him what is not his. And so.
[00:29:36] Doug Stuart: Yeah.
[00:29:36] James Whitford: Right. And I think and I think we've got to ask, is this really right to do this? And and you're right, I think that, you know, for the most part, people don't want to see people trapped in dependency. Uh, but we do need to ask ourselves, like, what is the flourishing life? Okay, so that's because everybody that's the that's like the opposite. That's the flip side of that coin. We don't want people in dependency. Okay. What do you want? We want people to live a flourishing life. Okay. What is that? Well, for me, the flourishing life has three basic elements. You've got to have freedom. You've got to have vision for the future, and you've got to have purpose in what you're doing. And I think, you know, it kind of makes sense if you think about flourishing and the idea of, you know, growth and movement like that. Uh, life, a vibrant life. Right? Well, you've got to be free if you're if you're not free physically, if you're not free spiritually or socially, you're not going to flourish physically, spiritually or socially. You've got to have freedom. That's important. Uh, but you also need to have a vision for the future. If you have no vision about where I want to go or a better tomorrow or a hope for, uh, the next five years of my life or whatever that might be. Well, we know without vision people perish. And so vision is incredibly important to that as well. But we also need to have a sense of purpose. Purpose being, for me, that's like the nexus of spiritual formation or my relationship with God, vocation and vocation and how I'm serving people and evangelism. How am I sharing my my faith or the transcendent with my family and my community? So evangelism and, uh, and and spiritual formation and vocation, where those three combine, I think is like the core of real purpose. So those are the things that I think that are elements of a flourishing life. None of it has to do with handouts or welfare.
[00:31:29] Doug Stuart: Yeah, yeah. Do, um, you know, for for this, for this audience, uh, it might be helpful to share some of the specifics on how the government has gotten in the way. Um, I think the like I just mentioned one with Feeding America, but I think there's these sort of structural things that, like, people just aren't aware of. There were a handful of them, and I was like, wait, what? Like, you can't do something for service or whatever. And, uh, anyway, I don't know what other what other ways in which that people get it because it's easy for this, you know, for me to be like, oh, it's just the government's fault. And we can sort of shame the government. That's easy to do. But, you know, you gotta bring the receipts.
[00:32:06] James Whitford: Well, yeah, we need we've gotta I mean, the blame is the blame is on us. We need to be.
[00:32:12] Doug Stuart: We need to be fair.
[00:32:13] James Whitford: Yeah. I mean, to, you know, for the most part, uh, we've gotta we've gotta take ownership of that. Here's an example, Doug. Uh, um, in my state. There once was the definition. It was a definition. It was a state definition of employee. Okay. So it was a very simple definition. And it was anybody who exchanges something for what they want or need. Uh, so this was uh, or who's receiving something from an employer based on what they give or do. And so this was a basic it was a very basic, simple definition of employee. And unfortunately, when we took a turn and started saying, you know what, rather than just give you this meal again and again and again, rather than just provide this stuff out of our thrift for you again, we want you to earn it. Are you able to do 30 minutes of stuff in our workshop today? We call it a workshop because we've learned work awakens worth in people's lives. So people will craft goods that go to market, or they'll help in with recycling, or they'll do something in our coffee business. They're going to help a little bit, maybe 30 minutes, an hour or two hours, and they earn a voucher that they can then use to trade for something that they need out of our thrift or what have you.
[00:33:27] James Whitford: That's such a I mean, it's such a great transformation of our ministry that's respecting the inherent dignity in the person. But before we had the state law changed, we had to pay work comp, work comp insurance on all of those people, even if they were coming in to earn a meal voucher for 30 minutes of of exchange of their service, they were considered employees by state definition. And so there it was, costing us money in order to really do something that is healthy and good and esteems the person. And yet it was costly to a nonprofit. So we got that, that that definition changed in our state. So any nonprofit can now enter into basic exchange with people who are in need without being constrained to the formal definition of an employer employee relationship. Now, other states can do that too, but those are the kinds of things that are out there that are restrictive. You might say.
[00:34:24] Doug Stuart: I can imagine somebody objecting to that, because now there's going to be all these people who aren't the recipients of the of the, you know, the, the recipients that you're talking about, but are people who are now going to abuse the system and try to avoid paying taxes. And I just all of the unintended consequences, which I'm like, yeah, I don't really care about that, because if somebody's avoiding paying taxes, that's a that's a win win. Oh, it sounds.
[00:34:45] James Whitford: It sounds like what you're what you just envisioned to me is a free market.
[00:34:49] Doug Stuart: Yeah, right. Yeah. I don't think anybody listening to this conversation is objecting to what you just described.
[00:34:56] James Whitford: No. It's interesting. I've never thought about how it could go. Uh, grow into that. But right now, of course, one thing that's nice for us in this kind of exchange system is that we're not having it's not a means tested welfare programs, which are saying, well, you got to fall below a certain income threshold in order to be a recipient of this. We don't even need to do that look right. If you've got money and you want to buy something, we'll sell it. If you don't, that's okay. You can earn it too. And so it naturally kind of self-selects to people who are struggling and they are in poverty. Yeah, but but, uh, but we're giving them that opportunity to change something that they need, they have for something that they need, which is so human. I there's, uh. What is it? Uh, well, the the line is reciprocity is at the heart of what it is to be a human being. So reciprocity is at the heart of what it is to be a human being. It was Pope Benedict in 2009. So, uh, but and and if our charity is not calling on reciprocity, if it's not calling for something from the recipient, then we're actually dehumanizing the person. And it's kind of a hard pill to swallow. But sometimes I'll even go so far as to say to people, you feed your domesticated pet one way every day with no expectation of anything. We should not do that to people.
[00:36:25] Doug Stuart: Yeah, that's a it's.
[00:36:27] James Whitford: A hard pill. But but it's a truth in my mind.
[00:36:30] Doug Stuart: Yeah. Um, you know, that's probably a good opportunity to switch to kind of segue into the, the other R word reciprocity, but relationship. Uh, my guess is that people who are giving something that 30 minutes to an hour of something in exchange for a voucher, you are in your ministry creating relationships with people, uh, not only just through that, but in other ways. Can you talk a little bit about the the key to a relationship? Because if I'm not mistaken, I think the line in your book is that most that's that's one of the key reasons why people are poor. It's not because they don't have income, it's because they don't have friends. I think that was the line in the book.
[00:37:04] James Whitford: Yeah, no. That's true. I, uh, I mean, and that's pretty easy to see if you or I ended up in a really tough time. We've got the social capital around us that we can lean on. Somebody that's going to be able to help us through the tough time before we land on the streets. And so relationship becomes incredibly important building social capital. And there's been all sorts of great research that's come out recently about the connections that are made us, what we would call bridging social capital, which is a little bit different. You've got two types of bonding social capital and bridging social capital. They're both relational in nature. The bonding social capital is where, um, you know, we hang out with people that are kind of like us and they're in the same socioeconomic strata. And, uh, but bridging social capital is when I'm developing relationships with somebody who's not necessarily like me. Maybe it is a person who's more affluent or is doing better in business or what have you. And the research is showing that the more those types of connections are made between the poor and those who are not poor, that bridging social capital is developed Develop the the greater their their their income mobility. So if we really want to see people step into a prosperous life, we need to make sure that there are people who, um, are not poor, who are actually developing relationships with those who are. So it is. Yeah. It's an incredibly important, uh, important.
[00:38:36] Doug Stuart: So, I mean, to put it in sort of a crude way. In other words, you don't want Elon Musk writing checks to help the poor. You want him hanging out with those who are poor and helping them and having a relationship.
[00:38:48] James Whitford: That's exactly right. Or he can write a check to my mission and we'll do it. So.
[00:38:55] Doug Stuart: I understand.
[00:38:56] James Whitford: No, but you're on it, Doug. That's exactly right. The idea is, and I think that's an important point, too. I mean, as far as donors and there's a chapter in the book for donors to be thinking about, who am I giving to? What organizations am I giving to? Am I giving to organizations that are being investigated, developing real relationship with people. Measuring outcomes. I mean, that's really important because, uh, what we found as a ministry was that when we took a turn and made our charity more developmental in nature, all of these people ended up going somewhere else. And we realized bad charity or "Toxic Charity" actually crowds out good, effective charity. And we've got to ask ourselves, how is bad charity being funded? Well, it's being funded through policy or philanthropy. So we need to educate policy leaders and donors and philanthropists to understand that the policy and where the dollars flow is incredibly important. Again, I think you and I would say the government shouldn't be taking money and flowing it anywhere. And as far as private charity, philanthropists need to understand that there are good charities that are going to do a good job of developing relationships and help people escape poverty. And there are those that aren't.
[00:40:08] Doug Stuart: Yeah, well, it sounds like your view is is very kingdom based.
[00:40:11] James Whitford: Yeah, I think I think so. I mean, you know, I, I'm, uh. Yeah, I'm, I'm a Christian living in the kingdom. I'm living the kingdom life. And all of this makes total sense to me.
[00:40:22] Doug Stuart: Yeah. No, I mean, the reason I say that, I say that with a nice big smile, because a lot of the times there is a a way of thinking about charity as like, well, it's one thing we do as a Christian. It's the, you know, we help those who, you know, either can't help themselves or those who are just a little bit behind or whatever, you know, you help them up the ladder, so to speak. Um, because it's either out of a sense of Christian duty or compassion or all of those other like, really good reasons and motivations. But to have a vision, uh, you talk about I think it was it, was it visionary versus a utopian? Um, right. Yeah. You have a vision for seeing something, and you've walked through the step by step to kind of work toward that direction, as opposed to just saying, oh, you know, it'll be nice one day in the Kingdom when, uh, you're actually working that through. Um, uh, actually, can you talk about that, that contrast the visionary versus the utopian way of thinking?
[00:41:15] James Whitford: I think, yeah. And I mean, this is just, uh, there are people who've spent a lot more time on concepts like this. But for for me, utopian, utopian perspective is, look, I see an end that's beautiful. And however we can get there, whatever the means are, let's just do it. And, uh, and for me, a visionary is someone who actually is thinking about a beautiful vision in the future. But there are steps that you're going to have to take to get there. And and so we're not trying to do shortcuts. And in fact, there's a parable that I put in the book about, uh, a short, you know, um, some, some government leaders that decided to take a shortcut. And they, uh, what they do is they find out in the end of this parable that it didn't work. There really are no shortcuts to, uh, to to a free society. It's you don't to a beautiful society. There's no shortcut to that. And and the other thing that the parable points out is that there's a lot of beauty in the journey. And so when we're relational with people who are struggling in poverty, suddenly the whole feeling of poverty begins to be lost.
[00:42:26] James Whitford: And one of the things I think I mentioned in the book are the the students in our long term residential recovery program who come out and spend a week with me and my wife on at our home, you know, and we'll have a handful of them out and they'll spend some time on our property. We'll fish together, we'll work together. We'll be outside together, you know, around a campfire together, breaking bread together. And when we do that, there's nobody who's feeling poor. Even though if we were to look at their income. These guys who've come off the streets or out of prison or whatever. Yeah. They're poor, they're in poverty by all statistical measure. They're going to be in the data set. But here during that week of relationship poverty seems to be completely obliterated. Obliterated. And I just think, uh, that's a really important thing for us to remember. It's not about a utopian end. It really is about the love that we can live in, in healthy relationship with one another as we move toward a freer society.
[00:43:28] Doug Stuart: What? Um, let's wrap up with this. What questions should people be asking when they when they want to give or or for that matter, even maybe volunteer and get involved in certain ministries? You know, you can go online and you can see their financial stewardship and, you know, whether or not they have integrity and transparency and, and all of that. But beyond that, what are the probably more relevant and harder questions to ask that you can't quite get in a five minute, uh, Google search?
[00:43:53] James Whitford: Sure, absolutely. Uh, one thing I would recommend is if you go to true charity members, then you're going to see our member map there. So you'll be able to see charities and churches across the United States who are leaning into these ideas of true charity privately funded, outcome-driven, challenge-oriented approaches. Um, so that's that's one thing to do that might give you an idea of where you want to volunteer or maybe where you want to give, but you still need to you still need to ask the questions. And I think a good one is, are you receiving any sort of funding or resource that's tying your hands and not allowing you to to practice more relational charity that might adhere to the adage. From 1899 it was printed on the back of Charity Organization Society pamphlets way back in the late 19th century. And it said intelligent giving and intelligent withholding are alike true charity. So if you're receiving resources not allowing you to withhold at the right time because that might be the better, more right and compassionate thing to do, but it's forcing you to just hand out, hand out, hand out. You. A donor needs to know that we don't want to fund organizations that are under those types of constraints. Um, I think another one is what outcomes are you measuring and and listen to what the leader says, because if they start talking about how much food they gave away or how many nights of shelter they provided, or how much cash they distributed, those are outputs. They're not outcomes. And I think the donor has an opportunity to educate and maybe assist, point them to truecharity.us, because we'd love for them to join our network where we can help equip them to become more effective, uh, in what they're doing.
[00:45:38] James Whitford: But but the whole idea of looking at outcomes like building social capital, advancing education, helping people into independent housing, long-term job stability, I mean, these are things that we should be looking at in our charity work, and a donor should ask that question. And then sometimes I would even say, can you show me how you measure this stuff? I'm interested in seeing that. And, uh, and that can be very helpful to understand what the organization is doing in the way of capturing, uh, data. That's important to help them modify the organizational practice as it goes on. That's just now that's kind of advanced. I mean, when you're talking about the soup kitchen, kitchen or the food pantry, that's going to be something that would be like seem unreachable. But we have developed an outcomes toolkit, and a lot of organizations and churches are utilizing it to develop outcomes for their organization. So it's possible to do. But I think that asking if they're getting any resource that, uh, you know, is that's tying their hands, asking if they're measuring outcomes, and maybe the last one would be what? What are your expectations of your clients? What are the expectations of your of the recipients of your charity? And find out if they have any expectations. And always remember that expectations are not bad. They're great because an expectation communicates I believe in you and no expectations. Communicate. I don't believe in you. So if we really want to erase the whole us and them thing, let's bring people into the marketplace of exchange and realize I've got something. But you do too. Let's figure out how we can swap. And we're going to esteem people and elevate human dignity when we do it.
[00:47:27] Doug Stuart: James, um, you talked about true charity. Is it true charity? Us.
[00:47:31] James Whitford: True charity?
[00:47:32] Doug Stuart: Us, us. Okay. Um, is there anywhere else people can find you online? I really appreciate what you've created, the book that you've created, uh, that you've written. Um, it is definitely right up the alley of what the Libertarian Christian Institute is doing in terms of, um, not actual poverty relief, but in terms of the type of message and the type of mindset that people ought to be ought to be in. So I really appreciate that. If are you on social media? If so, go ahead and share with our listeners where they can find you.
[00:47:58] James Whitford: Yeah, well, I'm not a big social media guy. I have a LinkedIn, uh, count. And honestly, Doug, I don't even know my handle. But. Okay, but you can find me on LinkedIn, and, uh, would would that would be great. Uh, but. And then the book is, um, true. Is an easy way to get to that. And, um, and then we also create a mentoring tool for people at us. So that's another website. If you want to get into a relationship over a 40 week period with somebody that may not be like you, Life Deck is a tool that can help you, uh, just step into that very easily. So life us is helpful.
[00:48:41] Doug Stuart: Okay, excellent. Well, James, uh, thank you again for coming on here. Um, I really appreciate this conversation. I appreciate your contribution. And, uh, hopefully I'll chat with you again a little more soon than we did the last time between Doug and.
[00:48:54] James Whitford: I want you.
[00:48:54] Doug Stuart: This.
[00:48:54] James Whitford: Time. I appreciate your guys's work so much. And so thankful for your voice in the space. So, uh, glad to be with you today.
[00:49:01] Doug Stuart: Yeah, well, thanks for that encouragement.
[00:49:03] James Whitford: Appreciate it. You bet.
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