Charity: Cruel to be Kind

 

As I noted in yesterday's post, I waded into a vast ocean of TV channels at my brother's house in Pittsburgh over the weekend. I came to a show on a obscure station where some individuals of various economic ideological stripes were debating charity and government (the proper role thereof). It was considerably more cerebral  than the Sunday morning shouting heads shows but there were sparks flying nonetheless due to the conflict of worldviews. Maybe bashing brains like bumper cars would be more like it. The background of the show was reflecting upon  the legacy of Milton Friedman, the Free Market economist.

I struggle with Jesus's command to give away our goods to the poor without seemingly any regard to how the charity might effect them positively or negatively. If our charity creates in recipients an in-depth expectation and indolence, is not that causing people to sin? Something He (Jesus) expressedly warns against in the strongest terms by saying it would be better if a millstone were hung around our neck and then tossed into the sea. And not to swim.

This is the Jesus that runs counter to our popular imagination who never talked about the reality of Hell and judgment. The kinder, gentler Jesus of the 21st century who is co-dependent on our approval. Jesus is kind, but it is a kindness that can also look like cruelty to a therapeutic culture where right and wrong choices are always someone elses fault. This is serious stuff. If children are taught that they should expect others' generosity as a right and not an act of voluntary charity, are we not inculcating a sense of unhealthy entitlement (sin) by our example?

Today I watched a student on the lunch detention/study hall I was monitoring toss a perfectly good and uneaten cheese sandwich and apple in the trashcan. The sandwich that is subsidized through taxpayer monies. He was on lunch detention and he was not enamored by the meal accompanying his offense of running late for school more than the permitted allocation. Is this not criminal? A hungry football player fished it out of the can, reasoning that it was still in its brown bag. At the least, the child should have offered the food up before throwing it away. His attitude was something I am pretty sure sitting on his back side for  half an hour was going to fix. How about going hungry long enough that you don't take food for granted? Hunger is a good teacher on the value of food, all food.

When Dorcas died, as told in Acts 9:39, we see a touching scene of gratitude:

"Then Peter arose and went with them. When he had come, they brought him into the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas made, while she was with them."  As noted a couple of verses before, "There was a believer in Joppa named Tabitha (which in Greek is Dorcas). She was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor."

Tabitha/Dorcas "helped" the poor. They had not tossed their garments that she made for them because they were not the most recent style or in season. The clothes became a symbol in her death of her kindness and generosity and the poors' appreciation of her. It is a poignant turn of events that shows that something was profoundly right about her charity Rather than inculcating expectation, her charity met a real need that probably would have gone unmet had she not taken up her needle and thread.  Her charity was personal, out of her own pocket and own hand, and costly. It wasn't the poors' right to own her labor and goods, she gave them willingly, not under coercion from Caesar. The leader of a culture that devolved into "Bread and Circuses." And hungry Lions.