Whether we call it social justice, God’s work, or something else, there are people on the left, right, and everywhere in-between working hard to study and solve the ills that infect our society, elevate humanity, fight injustice, and help those in need. These individuals often receive little or no public recognition. But there are also many who may be in the spotlight but, whether they realize it or not, are, at best, just in the way. Whether we are talking about traditional religions or their new secular substitutes, if you want to find the people who are making our world a more just place, don’t look in the spotlight. Look in the shadows.

My 42 years of life can be divided roughly into two periods. The first began with my birth in West Africa to Christian missionary parents. Though my family was forced to leave Africa when my siblings and I became deathly ill with malaria, our missionary-style life continued in Missouri’s Ozark region. My father pastored small churches and ended his career in ministry as a hospital chaplain, retiring only when the neurodegenerative disease that ultimately took his life rendered him unable to perform his duties.

In addition to providing spiritual guidance and comfort to congregants, hospital patients and grieving families, my father conducted a separate business as the owner of rental houses. This not only helped my dad support our large family, it also provided him a way to informally share the teachings of Christ through his day-to-day actions. He would allow renters to pay what they could, when they could, even if they fell months behind on their payments. He would drive renters who didn’t have their own transportation to doctor’s appointments, court dates and the grocery store. He would lend them tools, and sometimes money. His houses were modest and inexpensive, well-suited to the needy families, single mothers, ex-cons, and poor older adults who typically had no family support system. Renters sometimes took advantage of his kindness. He forgave them and stayed the course. I miss him.

In Africa, my mother educated women on hygiene and nutrition so that their babies and older children would have a greater chance to survive into adulthood. After returning to the United States, she worked for many years as a nurse. Once her own children were grown, she again felt the calling of missionary work. As part of a medical missionary team, she traveled to Thailand, Cambodia, Belarus and Haiti to deliver medical and educational services. Now retired and widowed, she volunteers at her church’s local mission, which helps feed and clothe the poor. I have no doubt that, like my late father, she will continue to serve the less fortunate as long as she is able to do so. That is who she is.

After finishing high school, I worked as a security guard and martial-arts instructor while attending the local commuter college in Missouri. During my senior year, and for a couple years thereafter, I worked in social services and community mental health as a case manager.

During that time, I witnessed the same symptoms of personal and family dysfunction that I’d become familiar with while helping my dad throughout my childhood with his rental properties. My clients consisted in large part of poor folks without high school diplomas or job training. Many had been abused or neglected by parents and romantic partners—and ignored by nearly everyone else. Some were homeless men plagued by mental illness and addiction. Others were women who loved their children but had proven unfit to care for them. I met young men who had promising futures until schizophrenia took hold of their brains, women who had accepted violent men as an expected part of life, young adults who gave up college dreams to provide care and income for relatives—and many others who, for any number of reasons, were simply unable to pull together their unraveled lives.

These clients typically presented themselves through a complex cocktail of toughness and fragility that can’t easily be described to those who have never lived or worked in this sort of environment. What I saw was not just a poverty of the pocketbook, but also one that extended to the culture, family and mind.

The second period of my life began when I decided to strike out on an academic path. I’d never really seen myself as an intellectual per se, but I’d come to enjoy scholarly research. And with a little nudging from a few of my former psychology professors, I took a shot at graduate school. With my wife and two small children, I left my hometown to pursue a PhD in psychology and become a behavioral scientist. I spent four years in grad school; then two years as a research fellow and assistant professor in England; followed by what has now been 11 years as a faculty member at a Midwestern American research university, where I study how humans seek meaning and social connection and what happens when these psychological needs are unmet.

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