How often we hear quoted the ancient Chinese proverb: "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime." Though well-intentioned and-at first glance-logical, this adage does not really address the complex issues facing hungry people.

One of the inherent dangers in the saying is that it implies that people who don't have enough to eat are the sole cause of their predicament. The logic suggests that they are in control of their own fate, at fault because of their own deficiencies. And our idea of self-sufficiency, of "learning to fish," assumes that, if they learn our uniform (most often translated "Western") methods for growing food and supporting themselves, they'll be all right.

Another danger in the proverb is that it grossly oversimplifies the problem of food security. It encourages us to ignore a significant number of major factors that cause hunger. At work here are much more than ignorance or lack of tools. Before we ask them to fish for themselves, we must ask: Do the fisherfolk have access to a lake? Who owns the lake? Who controls transportation to the lake? Is it polluted? If so, who polluted it? Is it overfished by industrial interests? Who owns the hooks and lines?

Our global economy has turned even the most basic natural resources into commodities, making it sometimes impossible for people with plenty of native knowledge and expertise to earn a decent living or put food on their own table.

We as responsible people of faith should examine the roots of these problems. Political instability and vast privatization have led to circumstances in which knowing how to fish-so to speak-doesn't necessarily grant self-sufficiency. The raw truth is that people do not go hungry because they are lazy, or because they don't know how to fish. They go hungry because they don't have access to power.

The solution lies in helping people­around the globe, and in our backyards­to empower themselves. Instead of urging them to learn to fish, we should speak on their behalf regarding injustices barring them from food resources. That means we, who claim we care, should listen to people who work firsthand with the hungry and malnourished-and we should listen to the hungry and malnourished themselves. Once we have heard from them, we can set about to fight the oppression that causes their hunger.

Of course, this is not a popular rallying cry. It is much easier to fall back on a proverb that makes those of us in the developed world feel a little less responsible, a little less guilty. It is always easier to blame poverty on the poor.

In addition to our aversion of guilt, we also fear the idea of transferring power to the powerless. We fear that we may have to change our own lifestyles. We are also afraid because such ideas tend to draw enmity from the people who hold most of the power.

And we may not know for sure how to go about transferring that power. We will probably disagree about the best ways to begin. But it seems that, once we realize that some of those folks already know how to fish better than we do, we've made a very important step.

-Chris Bryan is a law student at the University of Chicago and a former Seeds of Hope intern. Katie Cook is the Seeds of Hope editor.

- Art by Melissa Storey and is used with permission from Lake Shore Baptist Church, Waco, Texas.

- Originally from the October 1997 Sprouts (Volume 19 Number 10)