Empowering destitute people towards transforming communities

5“Inside-out” missions as the healing of people’s inner pictures

When doing missions with the destitute, we will (sooner or later) be confronted with their hurts, anger, withdrawal, self-pity, or any number of other dysfunctional emotions. What then? As remarked above, destitute people have often been described as markedly mistrustful and suspicious of helpers, and as greatly valuing their autonomy (Frances & Goldfinger, 1986:579). Do we give up when confronted with anger? Do we walk away from their brokenness, or mistrust or suspicion? We cannot! Not if we want to be true to God. Rather, we must attempt to understand, so that we can help them to become whole again. This calls for “healing”, a process where we help people to heal from brokenness towards SHALOM. Much can be said about empowering destitute people to become whole again, and many “methods” can be explored. However, the “healing” dealt with here can best be assisted by using a model that works with people’s inner pictures.
In the footsteps of the work undertaken by “Perspektief Opleidingskollege”, the counseling team at Alberton Lewenssentrum developed a model for the healing of people’s inner pictures.
The model states that every human being draws “inner pictures” which represent how we feel about ourselves on the inside. These pictures are the combination of the beliefs, convictions and ideas people have about themselves, as they are formed by our own experiences and reactions to these experiences, as well as by the reactions of others towards us. The situations and physical realities we experience also contribute to the way we think about ourselves (our inner pictures), as follows:

God

Our Reactions

Life/ people triggers us to feel

5.1Love, position and worth

God created every human being with a need to experience “love, position (I want to know I am important) and worth (I want to know I make a difference or mean something)”. We perpetually attempt to satisfy these needs through our relationships with other people. However, the best of these relationships will only partly be able to satisfy our need for love, position and worth (perhaps 80%, for instance), because sooner or later there is the possibility of conflict in any relationship. This is true (to a greater or lesser degree) of all our relationships. The exception is God’s relationship with us (not our relationship with God, which is often also characterized by strife). Only God can fully supply (100%) our needs for love, position and worth. Therefore, only when people understand and consequently build their personhood on who they are, for God and in God, will they be empowered to maintain an inner resolve regarding their love, position and worth, even in the face of adversity. They will feel loved, feel important (having a position) and feel they have meaning (feeling worth) – and then act accordingly.

5.2Fear, guilty, worthless

What often happens in people’s lives (perhaps even more so in the lives of the destitute), is that we are “triggered” to feel fear, guilty or worthless on the inside, possibly by other people (what they say and do towards us), our circumstances or situation (like the calamity of being trapped in the poverty cycle), or even by ourselves (if we engage in negative self-talk and feelings of guilt). Continuously living out of these feelings will break down people’s sense of self-worth, dignity and personhood, even to the extent where they become completely despondent and suicidal in their behaviour.

5.3Aggressive, arrogant and self-exalted

This represents people’s reactions when they are triggered into drawing inner pictures of fear, guilt and worthlessness. These reactions might be manifested towards the inside and/ or the outside: people may either take their reaction inside by internalizing their fear etc., or they might take it outside by externalizing and lashing out. This will alter the way in which a person manifests his/ her reactions as follows:

	Aggressive (anger)	Arrogant (“My way or the highway”)	Self - exalted
Inside	withdrawal	quiet resistance	self-pity
Outside	fighting	domineering	selfishness

These reactions and their variations can often be found among the destitute, especially when helpers reach out and try to connect for the first time. Because many destitute people have been hurt and abused so often, they are broken down to such a degree in their personhood that they lash out or withdraw in order to try to protect themselves.

The healing of these inner pictures requires that people be introduced to God as the only “person” who gives unconditional love, position and worth. As they grow in understanding this, they become empowered towards SHALOM. The danger is that we will coerce people to accept God, but this must not happen. However, as helpers doing missions with the destitute, we do manifest a different reality, in which God plays the key role.
For helpers, the understanding of people’s inner pictures assists in three ways. Firstly, it highlights an approach that should communicate and generate inner pictures of “love, position and worth” in the lives of destitute people. Secondly, it aids helpers to understand initial negative and/ or hostile reactions by destitute people towards attempts at outreach or engagement. These reactions can then be related back to inner pictures of fear, guilt and worthlessness, and then they can be dealt with constructively. A helper understanding that the anger (or arrogance, or self-exaltation) of a person she is reaching out to simply means that the person might be afraid of being abused (again) will then know that she should not be dismayed by such behaviour. Thirdly, an understanding of peoples’ inner pictures highlights the importance of helping people to see themselves as God sees them, and to view themselves in the same light (for we were made in the image of God).