Author’s Note: This article continues a series deeply influenced by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert’s When Helping Hurts, Becoming Whole, and A Field Guide to Becoming Whole. In particular, the framework of poverty as broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation, as well as the emphasis on moving toward wholeness in Christ, comes from their work. What follows is my own reflection on how those themes apply in the context of reaching people experiencing poverty to the point of homelessness at the Medford Gospel Mission.
In the last article, we looked at one root cause of poverty: false gods and erroneous stories of change.
We saw that every person lives by some story of change. Beneath the surface, each of us is asking what will save us, satisfy us, and make our lives whole. When we trust created things to do what only God can do, those false gods shape our hopes, our fears, our habits, and our direction.
But false gods and false stories do not float around in the air.
They take root in people.
That brings us to another root cause of poverty: broken people.
When we talk about poverty, it is easy to focus only on what is visible. We see homelessness, hunger, addiction, mental illness, unemployment, instability, and relational chaos. These things are real. They are painful. They matter deeply. And they deserve a compassionate response.
But they are not the whole story.
Material poverty is often what we see first. But beneath the visible crisis there is often a deeper fracture in a person’s relationships: separation from God, shame within the self, broken trust with others, and difficulty engaging creation through work, responsibility, stewardship, and purpose (Genesis 3:7–19; Colossians 1:21; Romans 8:20–23).
Sin has fractured every part of human life. Our relationship with God has been broken. Our relationship with ourselves has been distorted by shame, pride, fear, and confusion. Our relationships with other people have been damaged by betrayal, isolation, abuse, selfishness, and mistrust. Even our relationship with creation has been affected, including the way we work, steward our gifts, care for our bodies, and take responsibility for the world God has placed us in.
This is what I mean by broken people: not a special category of people experiencing homelessness, but the universal human condition after the Fall (Genesis 3; Romans 3:23).
I am not talking about “those people” over there. I am not creating a category for people experiencing homelessness as though they are uniquely damaged while the rest of us are whole.
That would be both untrue and unbiblical.
The truth is that all of us are broken.
For some, that brokenness shows up in material poverty, addiction, homelessness, isolation, or despair. For others, it shows up in pride, greed, anxiety, control, bitterness, seeking comfort, or spiritual emptiness.
One kind of brokenness may be more visible than another, but visibility is not the same thing as severity.
At the same time, saying “we are all broken” does not mean that material poverty is no different from any other struggle. Homelessness brings a particular kind of suffering, vulnerability, and urgency. The point is not to make every form of brokenness into the same experience, but to remember that the path toward restoration is relational, spiritual, communal, and practical, not simply material.
This matters when we think about poverty to the point of homelessness.
It is easy to look at someone in crisis and define them by what is broken. We can see the addiction. We can see the poor decisions. We can see the burned bridges. We can see the instability. We can see the consequences.
And while those things may be real, they are not the whole person.
People are not problems to be solved, fixed, or managed. They are image bearers of God, carrying a dignity that no hardship can erase (Genesis 1:26–27; James 3:9). However broken a life may seem, that story is not over. None of us is finished. We are all people in need of grace, and we are all in need of restoration.
At the Medford Gospel Mission, this conviction directs both what we do and how we do it.
Our goal is not simply to help someone survive homelessness. Our goal is to help people move toward wholeness in Christ.
We want to see people restored in their relationship with God through the hope of the gospel. We want to see them restored in their relationship with themselves, learning to reject shame and rediscover their God-given dignity. We want to see them restored in relationship with others through honesty, accountability, forgiveness, and community. And we want to see them restored in their relationship with creation through work, responsibility, stewardship, and purpose (Genesis 1:28; Genesis 2:15; Ephesians 2:10). 1
That kind of restoration is rarely quick.
Human brokenness is complicated because people are complicated. A person may carry trauma from childhood, years of addiction, untreated mental illness, broken family relationships, criminal history, spiritual blindness, and crushing shame all at once.
At the same time, we should not assume that a person’s suffering is only the result of personal choices. Broken people are also shaped by broken families, broken communities, broken systems, destructive habits, trauma, and spiritual bondage. Sometimes a person has sinned. Sometimes a person has been sinned against. Often both are true.
That is why there is no simple blueprint that solves every problem for every person.
And yet, complicated does not mean hopeless.
The gospel tells us that human brokenness is deeper than we often want to admit, but it also tells us that God’s grace reaches deeper still. Jesus Christ did not come for people who had already made themselves whole (Luke 5:31–32; Luke 4:18–19). He came for sinners. He came for the weary. He came for the ashamed. He came for those who knew they could not save themselves.
He came to reconcile us to God (2 Corinthians 5:18–21; Colossians 1:19–20).
And that reconciliation is the beginning of restoration.
We need to know the God who made us, sees us, and calls us by name. We need to learn that our past does not have the final word. We need to be invited into truth instead of hiding, repentance instead of denial, forgiveness instead of shame, community instead of isolation, and hope instead of despair (Ephesians 4:22–25; 1 John 1:7–9).
This kind of restoration often begins in small ways.
Sometimes it begins with someone being treated with dignity after years of being ignored. Sometimes it begins when a person finally tells the truth. Sometimes it begins when a man opens the Bible and realizes God is not finished with him. Sometimes it begins when someone who has spent years running finally stays.
These moments may seem small, but they matter.
They are often the first signs that God is beginning to restore what sin has fractured. A person starts to see God differently. Then they begin to see themselves differently. Then they begin to relate to others differently. Over time, responsibility, honesty, worship, service, and reconciliation begin to grow where chaos once ruled.
This is not because the Mission has the power to fix people. We do not. Only God restores broken people.
But by his grace, we can create a place where truth is spoken, mercy is practiced, dignity is honored, and people are invited into the restoring work of Jesus Christ.
To serve broken people faithfully, we must hold truth and compassion together. Truth without compassion becomes harsh and crushing. Compassion without truth becomes sentimental and shallow (John 1:14; Ephesians 4:15). But when truth and compassion come together in Christ, they create the kind of love that does not merely comfort people in their brokenness, but calls them toward restoration.
This is why the Medford Gospel Mission fights poverty through more than relief. We walk with people through discipleship, accountability, community, recovery, work, spiritual formation, and long-term development.
If we want to attack the roots of poverty, we must address the reality of broken people.
And we must do so with humility, because that brokenness includes us too.
The good news is that Jesus does not turn away from broken people. He moves toward them. He restores them. He makes them new.
And by his grace, he allows us to be part of that work.
Poverty is not finally defeated when people simply have more things. Poverty is defeated as broken people are restored to God, to themselves, to others, and to the work God created them to do. 2
In the next article, we will look at destructive formative practices, because broken people are not only shaped by what they believe. We are also shaped by what we repeatedly do. And by God’s grace, those repeated practices are one of the places where restoration can begin.
Root Causes of Poverty:
- False gods and erroneous stories of change
- Broken people
- Destructive formative practices
- Broken systems
- Demonic forces
¹ Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself; Brian Fikkert and Kelly M. Kapic, Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the American Dream.
² See Corbett and Fikkert, When Helping Hurts, and Fikkert and Kapic, Becoming Whole, on poverty as rooted in broken relationships and human flourishing as restoration in those relationships.
Partner with us in God’s work of relational restoration.