People As Projects

People should never be reduced to this, but oh how common it is. I see it frequently within the church and society as a whole. We often reach out to others by offering practical help, a relationship or both. This is a good thing, but I think our motivations are sometimes problematic. We can engage in these acts of kindness, because it boosts our feelings of self worth and benefits our mood. ("The antidote for being loved is to love.") We also use it to make ourselves feel important by putting ourselves in a mental state of superiority over the person we are helping. I've been struggling with this recently, because I see it happening around me. I am disturbed and this has caused me to question whether I have been guilty of or currently am practicing people projecting. (Yes, I regularly invent new and useful words. One of my favorites is spyful.) I like to think that I don't treat people as projects, because I have experienced what it's like to be one myself. Unfortunately I don't think this necessarily makes one immune. So how do you know if you are treating someone like a project? I think it comes back to motivation and the heart. Do you truly care about the person beyond their needs? Would you be their friend if they were not in a position of great need or if certain people had no knowledge of your actions? I think another way to asses motivation is to evaluate how the supposed projector talks about their supposed project. If the focus is on improvement and success as defined by the projector, rather than the transformative process, it is likely that there is something wrong. If both people can't be equally transparent and share life together then beware, projecting is likely taking place. Does the person who sees themself as the helper continue the relationship long term or do they remove themselves once the other person has sufficiently gotten back on their feet?

So where does projecting come from? I think it often comes from people in places of leadership who feel the heavy weight of should. I'm not condemning short term service like volunteering with an organization or really acts of kindness in general, but rather am asking the question of, "why do we do what we do and is this good?" This is about relationships where one person approaches another under the guise of true friendship, when in fact ulterior motives govern the relationship- motives that the projector has likely not realized exist.If motivating factors include anything other than genuine care and concern about another individual as whole, then we are deceiving ourselves by believing and acting as if our actions are for the benefit of the person we are trying to help.