My time in war zones has left me with many questions. Should I be there at all? What would Jesus have done? Here are some biblical insights that have helped me on my way.

Should we give humanitarian aid?

Most Christians will have few problems with the need to help with physical needs in an emergency. Indeed, the biblical mandate to love our neighbour is exactly the same one that makes medicine a legitimate occupation! Loving our neighbours as ourselves involves rescuing them from physical damage, from physical need and from judgement through proclamation of God’s salvation. This is reflected in the life of Jesus who both ‘went about doing good and healing’(Acts10:38) and ‘went about the villages teaching’ (Mk 6:6). He sent out his disciples to ‘preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick’ (Lk 9:2).

So we have a remit for both practical help and evangelism. But in three camps in which I worked my Christian agency had to submit to the rules of UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees): no proselytising, no introduction of Christian literature and no organising of worship. How would you respond to this? Would we be only half Christians if we agreed to this? I was helped by the passage in Acts 6:1-4 where Stephen and six other disciples were called to concentrate on ‘social action’ amongst the Hebrew and Greek Jewish widows so that other disciples were freed up for evangelism and prayer. So we don’t all have to be involved in both aspects of witness all the time. In each camp God found others to do the evangelism. They were usually camp occupants and therefore much more effective witnesses than ourselves. Our team could quietly encourage them and pray for their work.

How should we give aid?

We should be imitators of Christ, giving aid with love. But how does that affect the type of help we give? Can we give the wrong type of help? Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37, see box below) to answer the lawyer’s question ‘who is my neighbour?’ However, the parable also demonstrates how to give the right sort of aid.

The Samaritan was a neighbour to the man because he helped him in his moment of need. War brings with it so much need. Insecurity, loss of family, isolation, hunger, fear. Christians working in war-zones will find limitless need and countless neighbours.

This can of course be overwhelming. I can remember many occasions arriving in camp to find hundreds of people just waiting... just waiting for me! Being overwhelmed can be quite an oppressive feeling, as any houseman knows. My heart would sink, I would feel isolated and inadequate, and be wondering where I would find love for all these people. As a result I would feel even weaker than when I set out for the camp. And then the devil had me on that slippery spiral downwards. I stopped looking to the Lord in my state and then lost out on his strength and love. So I needed to pray urgently for his help to regain my spiritual balance. I would also pray that he would show me to the right patients - not necessarily the ones at the head of the queue! And amazingly my experience was that he did.

We can be comforted in such a situation that both Moses and Jesus had similar experiences with demanding crowds. Together with prayer they both used practical ways to avoid being overwhelmed. Moses’ father-in-law had to tell him to delegate to avoid ‘wearing yourself out’ (Ex 18) whilst Jesus invited his disciples to escape the crowd in a boat, ‘Come with me to a quiet place and get some rest’ (Mk 6:31). I was glad that there were usually medical assistants I could delegate to and a land rover to get into at the end of a long hot day. Jesus knows that our finite bodies need rest.

Show compassion

‘When he saw him he had pity. He went to him...’(v33-34). Unlike the priest and the Levite, the Samaritan saw the man’s need, he was moved and he acted. This is the definition of compassion. However, we may fail to have compassion in one of these three ways. First, we may choose not to look (even the priest and Levite did that!). Do you expose yourself to the daily tragedies in lives around the world by reading Tear Times (available from Tearfund) or watching the news? Second, we may choose not to be moved. I would probably sleep better tonight if I chose not to think about what the people starving in the horn of Africa are going through right now. So we must pray and be ready to have our hearts moved. Third, we may choose not to act when we are moved. Action may not mean going oneself (although this happened to me twice after watching the news), but it may mean giving money or praying.

Take practical action

‘...and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine...’(v34). The Samaritan didn’t give simply what he wanted to give, or out of duty, but because compassion for the man drove him to meet his need. So good humanitarian aid is giving what is needed. That isn’t always what happens. For example, I remember working in the refugee camps in Northern Iraq when five or so very large container trucks arrived from Spain. The drivers were on a tight schedule and so hurriedly dumped the containers’ contents right in front of the cereal distribution store for the camps. They contained second-hand Spanish clothes, including some very fashionable high-heeled boots and handbags. They had been delivered without consultation about the real needs of the Kurdish refugees who were returning home from the hills of Turkey. The Kurds weren’t especially short of clothes; nor would they choose to wear clothes of this kind. The piles of clothes stood in the way of distributing badly needed food. Then it rained so the distribution of essential items was interrupted to deliver the clothes before mildew set in. A few days later a truck containing a renal dialysis machine arrived from Switzerland. And then there was the truck of French chocolate croissants for the Kosovan refugees in Albania! Every emergency operation has events like this. Yet it isn’t just the distant donors that get it wrong. How often did my patients or staff need a hand held or a hug and I was fussing about the paperwork or already preoccupied with the growing queue behind. In each circumstance I needed to keep asking myself what real needs I could lovingly meet.
I have quite often been asked what best to give in this or that emergency. Often, especially if the precise needs are not known, money is the best thing. It is easily taken across country borders, is flexible in usage and boosts the local economy.

Expend money and time

‘Then he put the man on his donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him’(34). The Samaritan used his own costly resources of materials, money and time. Loving costs something of ourselves. The nature of this cost will be different for each one in different situations. One painful discovery I made whilst working in the Rwandan camps in Tanzania over a period of months was that probably the majority of our hospital staff were stealing from us regularly. Most were taking small amounts of medicines or IV fluids to sell at the markets to supplement the relatively small salary we were able to pay. Some were into the big time and actually ran private pharmacies! Many of the staff were aware of the precariousness of their life in the camp, especially if they had been involved in the genocide and were being sought by the Rwandan authorities. For them the hope was to steal enough to purchase an illegal Kenyan passport.

It was hard working so closely with those that were daily deceiving me and as medical co-ordinator I had the unenviable responsibility of investigating thefts and disciplining the staff appropriately. However, I couldn’t sack half the staff so I concentrated on the big thefts! This was demanding enough when I really wanted to get on looking after patients. But harder than this was the necessity to enter the camp each day with a determined attitude to forgive and love those who were stealing.

Another hard thing for me when working in an emergency setting is to be prepared to relinquish my spare time and willingly respond to people’s needs. Thankfully there are rest times but you are never quite sure when they are going to end: with the arrival of a car with a women in labour, by an invitation from a local clan leader to join him for cola and goat meat, or with a request to phone someone’s long lost relative in Germany. I keep thinking ‘Can I afford to give up this time’ which is another way of asking ‘Can I afford the cost of following Jesus?’ This question is much easier to answer if I establish exactly whose time it is. Giving God back what I have already acknowledged to be his is much less painful.

Provide continuing care

‘The next day he took out two small silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. "Look after him," he said, "and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have."’(v35) Loving humanitarian aid needs to go beyond the immediate need. The Samaritan didn’t just patch him up and leave him but looked also to his long-term needs. These can be very diverse. They will often go beyond emergency curative care to preventative health programmes such as immunising children. Summer tented homes may need to be changed into more substantial winter ones. Local jobs can be created through interest-free loans for micro-businesses. Seeds can be supplied for next year’s harvest rather than creating undue dependency on the ration.

Give selflessly

The Samaritan gave all this help without attracting attention to himself and his generosity. There is a culture within aid work that encourages self-publicity, partly to raise funds, partly because it seems to make everyone feel better about themselves. Charity workers drive around in big four-wheel drives emblazoned by their logo and sometimes their flag. Christian agencies can be tempted along this path and a wise line has to be drawn between where information-providing ends and self-publicity starts. We worked hard at our friendships with those in secular agencies who were often instinctively suspicious of the Christian faith. Our team was aware of the potential to witness to the non-Christian expatriates around us, as well as the refugees. But it still needed guts at our regular discos and parties to let them know that it was to Jesus, not to ourselves nor our agency nor our donors, that all honour and glory was due.

A final observation

Working in disaster areas I have often felt physically, mentally and spiritually weak. I have often looked around the chaos and distress and wondered how I can make any difference. I have also doubted how God can work in such situations, when everyone is so preoccupied with their own pain and physical needs. But, as in those dark days between the crucifixion and the resurrection, God can work most powerfully when all earthly human strength seems to have vanished. God uses natural and man-made disasters to break and re-mould individuals and races. Key to this process is the world-wide crescendo of loving prayer which a disaster brings forth. This transforms the hearts of those going through this suffering and enables Christian helpers on the ground to work more effectively.

There are now small churches with faithful Christians in many towns in Kurdistan and Kosova in previously staunchly Muslim areas where Christian witness before the disasters was all but absent. Remember this when you see the next emergency unfold on your screens. Take heart and pray. He is able to ‘immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine’ (Eph 3:20).