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Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?
When you're a bystander, far from affluent, and one of nature's misanthropes, how do you make yourself reach out? I'm having the same trouble as the rest of the people I know balancing grace against fiscal and psychic realities. Should I be trying to?
1. Christian stoicism in the face of the suffering of others.
I’m disturbed by the attempts I see from very good people who are sickened by the misery of New Orleans to limit and control their emotional responses. I'm even more disturbed by my attempts (and I realize that though sickened, I am not one of the very good people).
I realize that empathy is painful and inconvenient, but it is also the price you pay for an expanded consciousness---in a word, for God-consciousness. You can help the people of New Orleans by offering such help as you can offer, whether it’s much or little. You can only help yourself by fully realizing that there is nothing but an imaginary gap in time and space between their reality (including their suffering) and yours.
This is not the time for Christian stoicism. I had to stop for a few deep, healing breaths when I read the account of Laura Bush’s alleged Christian stoicism in the face of the suffering of others---and I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume that she said plenty of other things that were not quoted. I have to stop again, repeatedly, when other very good people in whose goodness I believe recite what I’ve recently seen mislabelled as ‘the comforting platitude’ that ‘the poor are always with you.’
Deep, healing breaths! Deep, healing breaths!
That statement is not a platitude and it was never meant to comfort anyone. It was uttered in a specific context. Judas---Christianity’s first misguided do-gooder---outraged by the wastefulness of the use of a very expensive balm made from oil of nard to anoint Christ objects that they could have sold the same for a large amount of money and fed the poor. Christ responds (more or less) that the expenditure for the balm, in light of his specific mission and the fact that it’s a one-time thing, is entirely appropriate. He notes that he isn’t going to be around that much longer, but that the poor will always be around and they will always need help, so Judas should chill. In other words, this was a special case, and yes, the poor do need food and money and yes, you need to carry on providing it for him.
If there was one thing Christ was clear about, it was the duty of the community to care for its own. “As you do to the poorest and most miserable of my brothers, you do to me.” “It’s easier to get a camel rope through the eye of a needle than to get a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” “If you have two coats, and you see someone with none, give away one of your coats to the person with none.”
It’s not actually an injunction to impoverish yourself or to live in poverty. It’s an injunction to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I never thought about it until recently, but I think that the story of the rich man wasn’t intended to illustrate that the wealthy are barred from the “kingdom” but that if you invited them in, they [meaning 'we'] won’t want to enter. The admission price seems awfully damn high. What do other Christians (particularly the considerable number who are considerably more affluent than I) make, I wonder, of Christ’s rejoinder when asked ‘How do I sign up?’ ‘Sell everything you have and follow me.’
2. And I’m talking to myself.
Not that I am any better than other Americans who've always had all they needed (which for purposes of this note, is going to be my definition of 'rich.') I angered a lot of people at a meeting I attended the other day by saying that I now understand why it is so difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven because when given the chance, they just won’t. I was actually including myself in the category of those who hold back; though I am not by any stretch even what you’d call ‘affluent,’ I have almost always had or been given what I need to get by. Some of those present at the meeting agreed with me, but others were most offended, so rebuttals ensued.
The rich, said one, at some length, are absolutely crucial in the effort to rescue the poor of New Orleans. This billionaire is giving $X! Shaq O’Neill is giving shoes! Be comforted! The speaker herself/himself has little to donate, so we should all be grateful that the ‘haves’ are giving of their abundance! Another rebuked me (not directly, but by implication) for ‘pointing fingers’ rather than focusing on ‘helping’ (which is pretty much the line the Bush Administration is taking, though this person isn’t one who would normally wish to be aligned with that school of thought).
Another has ‘closed the door’ emotionally on the suffering till he/she can work out how to allocate emotion when bombarded on all sides by the images of despair.
I got the clear feeling that they were responding to what they perceived---misperceived as this note will explain----to my sense of my superior sensitivity, charity, and commitment to helping the poor of New Orleans.
That is not it at all. It’s true I was angry, but it’s because I have a problem that is the opposite problem of the person who was working at a way of ‘closing the door.’ And I am not worried that others might not do enough but that I won’t. I am certainly worried about the fact that I never really gave much thought to doing anything about the miserable lives of the urban poor till now. I am one of the people this article was talking about.
3. The fair market value of a charitable act.
First, I am not ripping on the wealthy as a class. Most of the people I know (excluding myself) are relatively affluent. But I am greatly worried by the way in which Americans, presented with the opportunity for charity, always think first about their constitutional right to property and next about the potential inconvenience. ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves.’ ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ Those platitudes, however comforting, carry anything but a Christian message.
And I am just as prone to these concerns as anyone else. It’s part of the reason why I am so angry: I am angry at myself and at the fact that my first response to another’s pain is to ask myself, ‘How much charity can I afford?’ The question isn’t unreasonable, but practical, and it’s one that we eventually all have to ask, but I am angry that it is my first response.
And the fact is that almost all of us end up doing less than we can afford. ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves.’ ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’
Does God (or whatever you choose to call the big It/Him/Her you secretly believe is somewhere looking on) know the fair market value of a charitable donation? I certainly believe that those who have been favored with great wealth will want to give as much of it as they can spare, which is exactly what I am doing and exactly what the person who rebuked me is doing. From a spiritual standpoint, that is. Christ remarked that the impoverished widow who contributed her two coins to the treasury from a spiritual standpoint made a much more significant donation than the wealthy men who gave far a smaller proportion of their much more significant wealth. We do what we can.
Should I be grateful to those who can do more? I am grateful, certainly, that there are people who have more that they can contribute. I honor them for seeing the need and for stepping forward to do what is needful. I also honor this woman for what she has done. But I am not grateful. I am not grateful because I sincerely believe that to do a charitable act is to feed one’s own soul and that these acts ultimately inure to the benefit of the one who gives rather than the one who receives.
(And no, the ‘benefit’ to which I am referring isn’t entry into some gateway to a happy Afterlife. I don’t have a theory about the afterlife. Christ said: The kingdom is here and now. I don’t really speculate much about what follows.)
The chance to do a charitable act is a sort of grace. The ability to do it is another. The wealthy who can donate shoes and money and food are the lucky ones.
4. The smell of the despair and other barriers.
Second, I am concerned at the way in which we (by which I most definitely mostly mean ‘I’) separate ourselves from participation in the communities to which we belong. I am particularly prone to this because by nature I am extremely introverted. Brushing up against other people, even very good other people like these makes me feel exposed and bruised. After prolonged bouts, all I want to do is crawl off into a corner and wipe away the lingering traces. I am that introverted.
The fact is, I don’t like other people en masse. I love a select few, quite like another few, can tolerate still others in small to medium doses, dislike on or two, and am mainly (though benignly) indifferent to the rest. I'm not friendly by nature and I've never had that much emotional energy. The best I will ever manage, I imagine, is to treat other people as I would wish to be treated by someone who is a proper Christian.
So I am definitely brought face to face with my own very serious limitations by an event like this one. I don’t want to have someone I don’t know living in my house. I don’t want to get up close and see the despair in their eyes.
But in the kingdom of the poor, we are all equally poor (and, if you believe the rest of the story, equally rich). There, there is no 'us' or 'them' and certainly no isolated 'I' who gets to pick and choose between the worthy' and the un-.
I tried saying it aloud to my husband, a much kinder person than I am. “I don’t want to give up any of my few [they really are very few] indulgences so other people can eat. I don’t want to give up going out to dinner so that animals can be rescued. I don’t want to give away clothes I still might want to wear some day so that other women can have clothes. I don’t want to give up my vacation plans so…..” My voice trailed away as he just looked at me steadily.
And that’s when I realized that the times have changed, though I fear only temporarily, my definition of 'a good life' and that in fact I totally do.
RELATED LINKS
“There by the Grace of God Goes Somebody Else”: The Demands of Charity
“There by the Grace of God Goes Somebody Else”: Empathy---that pity that is akin to love
Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?
“Walk Me Out in the Morning Dew, My Honey.”
The Displaced Poor of New Orleans: It’s All Working Out so Well for Them!
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