In the last couple of years I have been to over 100 village churches in Uganda, Mozambique, and India. Notably, I have seen a great many things in regards to the impact of money from the west to the majority world. You may have heard me sharing some of this before.
The conversation is multi-faceted and complex. Basically, from what I can tell, money corrupts fellowship and ministry. Money from the west has created a stronghold in the thinking of many in developing nations.
A stronghold of thinking is a paradigm of thought that impedes and strangle-holds all healthy perspective and vision and resulting ability.
I would sum it up this way:
Money from the west keeps people in the majority world weak.
It masquerades as strength, but this is false. It makes people big in the eyes of others, but creates unhealthy dependance and, most notably of all, a complete block on creative resourcing within their own countries and contexts.
Without the ability for creative thinking there is no capacity. There is only struggle and victim thinking and a belief that money from the west is the only answer.
Yet, this simply is not true.
Much of what I see has been created out of good intentions. In the context in which I work it is the pastors of developing nations that expect the west to support the work they do.
Now, this would seem a good thing. Until one is with the people and see the entitlement and the broken thinking that has resulted. We have created a people, seemingly entire nations, unable to imagine, unable to vision, God able to grow and provide for them from within their own countries.
And while there are a few rare exceptions, I see this every single place, village, town, and country, to which I travel.
Relationships are both built and then destroyed by money that crosses cultures, contexts, countries. I haven’t seen one good thing come of this.
There are short term ‘good’ things of course. We can get all excited and feel good about ourselves for awhile (as long as we stay in denial), but long term, we as a body of people in the west gifting money (and things) to a body of people in the developing world, have made a great big mess of things.
In the last two weeks and in my reckoning of this (a deep grieving I’ve been thrust into this last month), I realized in my spirit and by The Spirit, that there is an idolatry of money from the west. We have exalted the west and made God weak. We have exalted money from the west and have kept entire nations crippled in victim thinking and in a spirit of entitlement out of which no good thing comes.
Here is a start to the undoing of this, the true emancipation of entire bodies of people that have been kept in bondage by good intentions. God help us.
“I come before you today God, in the name and the blood of my Lord Jesus Christ and I confess to an idolatry of money from the west. I have believed many lies about money from the west. I have thought that only money from the west will help me. This of course, is wrong. You are much bigger than money from the west. I am sorry that I have limited you in this way.
Today I say ‘No more!’ to an idolatry of money from the west.
Today, I reach back into my past to that point where this idolatry first took root in my life. I remove it in the power and name of my Lord Jesus Christ. I uproot this idolatry, leaving nothing behind.
I unwind the chains of this idolatry of the west from my being. I sever every link. I cancel the authority, assignments, and curses of the enemy that have been in and over and through my life due to this idolatry from the west. All this I send to the place where the true Lord Jesus Christ chooses to send it, in the name and the blood of my Lord Jesus Christ.
Today God, I receive from you your provision, from within my country, from within my culture, from your hand as you lead and guide. I release the west from any responsibility over my life. God, I trust you today for provision and all manner of good things.”
Cyndy Lavoie 