life is in black and white...right?

…No, no actually it’s not. Now when you’re little, things do seem to be in black and white. Take the dentist’s office, for example. Sweets are bad because they make your teeth fall out. So, brush your teeth for exactly the amount of time that it takes to hum “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” and you’ll never have any problems. Of course when you pass the age of 5, you learn that sugar is okay in small doses and you don’t actually have to hum a full song every single time you brush your teeth, but moderation and obsessive compulsiveness aren’t terms you usually find in a child’s vocabulary.

Even grown-ups see some things in black and white, though. Funding child exploitation is a bad thing. Giving poor people money so they can go to the doctor is a good thing. Helping helps. Hurting hurts.

Black and white. Right?

Well, as in many places, here in Cambodia, black and white fight against one another in ways you wouldn’t normally expect. For instance, what if I suggested that child exploitation isn’t too terribly bad after all, even in a country that thrives on a tourist industry centered around sex trafficking? And what if I argued that giving poor people money so they can go to the doctor is actually one of the worst things you can do for them, even though thousands die of improper and non-treatment every day? What if I said helping can hurt?

See, now, things just got a little confusing…things just got a little gray.

Let me try to explain.

Dancing is a culturally celebrated and revered form of expression in Cambodia. At the opening of a Women’s Conference a few weeks ago, for example, our translator Tola danced a “Blessing Dance” for all of us, welcoming both nationals and foreigners to the conference. Just like kids in the US are taught how to hold a fork and knife correctly, boys and girls in Cambodia are taught how to dance – it’s been a part of Cambodian culture for centuries.

There are also many orphanages in Cambodia. Contrary to popular belief, many children in these orphanages have at least one living parent. But because the tourist industry is booming in Cambodia, and tourists are bombarded with signs like “Orphanage, 2 km, Dance Entertainment, Tourists Welcome” when they get here, orphanages actually make more money per child from tourists who go to see orphans dance traditional Cambodian dances than many families are able to make on their own. In some cases, dividing the family by sending a child away appears to be the best option, even when the possibility of the child being exploited and developing attachment disorders (as is often the case in orphanages that entertain many outside visitors) is high. Even when most orphanages don’t know what a child protection policy even is. Even when it rips families apart for good.

So on the one hand, you have the black. Sometimes orphanages purposefully keep orphans in poor living conditions to pull at the heart strings of visitors and tourists. Requiring children to work for their keep is against child labor laws (although those are broken all over the place here) and is destructive to children’s self-image, demeans their view of their own self-worth, and teaches them that it is okay for others to use them to make money (which easily leads to them succumbing to sexual and other forms of exploitation later on).

But on the other hand, you’ve got the white. The child will receive education, food, and a safe place to sleep that’s not in a slum. He or she will likely be cared for until he or she is at least 16, which is a much better scenario than most children living in Phnom Penh’s many slums could possibly hope for. You see, most “street children” as they’re called here pick through trash heaps for glass and plastic bottles to sell instead of going to school, hoping to get a few cents each day from a middle man who then sells the bottles for a bit more. An orphanage with adult supervision, meals on the table three times a day, and classes is a much more appealing alternative.

Hm. That’s a little gray.

This mom lives on my street. She collects glass and plastic bottles during the day and washes them on the sidewalk outside her door at night so she can sell them for a bit of money the next morning. (Her son is about the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen!)

Switch gears for a minute and think about the insane poverty in Cambodia for a moment. Most people here earn somewhere between $1 and $2 per day, per family. Now picture paying for rent, food, and…well, that’s about all you can cover, really. Schools here are free, but the uniforms aren’t – a uniform half a month’s rent down the drain, per child. And health insurance, preventative vaccinations, prescriptions? Unless someone’s so bad off that they’re dying, it just ain’t gonna happen.

Within this reality, it sure does seem like donations from well-meaning sponsors should go directly to funding patients’ entire medical costs, including all prescriptions, treatments, and follow-up appointments. It helps. Right? But check out what hospitals have found: when 100% of medical support is always provided for patients free of charge, it’s not actually valued. You know those free samples that sales people try to force into your hand as you’re walking through the mall? Of course you throw them away in the next available trash bin. It’s kind of like that. There’s no investment, no partnership, no incentive to take advantage of “free” because, well, it’s free. But it’s much deeper than that, as well: you’re flirting with the distinct difference between enabling and empowering. When health services are provided for free, local people are enabled – permanently placed in the “recipient” category – while donors are in the “donors” category. Us, them. Rich, poor. Being classified forever as the needy person in that kind of relationship does something irreversibly destructive to a person’s dignity and feelings of self-worth as a child of God. Helping can hurt.

That’s why Mercy Medical Clinic, one of CHAD’s partners here in Cambodia, has developed a graduated system of payment so that patients have both the opportunity and responsibility to invest in their health care. Depending on a patient’s income, he or she pays 80%, 50%, or 20% of their own medical costs and the hospital and partners like CHAD cover the rest. (In special cases, 100% of medical costs are covered, though it’s more the exception than the rule.) It’s actually worked out phenomenally well, and more hospitals and health programs are adopting their own versions of graduated healthcare assistance.

It’s taken a long while for hospitals and community development programs to get to this point, though. It was pretty gray for a pretty long time. Even with this newly implemented system, each individual case seems to have its own shades of gray, its own very legitimate reason to be an “exception” to the rule – the hospital should cover 100% of their costs rather than just part – than an adherent.

While wrestling with whether helping helps or hurts, the blacks start to bleed into the white. Suddenly, things aren’t so easy anymore. There’s charcoal gray. There’s slate gray. There’s steel gray. There’s that gray that people have the audacity to call “silver”…but it’s still gray. It’s almost too much to take in. Oppressive, even. It’s just so gray.

But what would happen if we decided not to play the world’s games according to the world’s rules? What would happen if the church decided it wanted to do more for orphans than fund institutions that “seem to be the best option out there”? What would happen if the church partnered with more organizations that valued the long-term holistic health and realized self-worth of individuals rather than quickie, fix-it, Band Aid methodologies? What would happen if we paid attention to how our help can hurt? What would happen if we dared to let our creativity bloom with ideas of how to celebrate the dignity, worth, and holistic well-being of every one of God’s children?

Well, call me a dreamer and an idealist, but we might start to see the world as it was meant to be: dazzling with hope, love, peace, and color. And that, I think, is something worth wrestling for.