Taking a Walk

The older I get, the more I believe we ought to be more charitable towards others. I doubt that we can fully understand the trials and tribulations of people, yet that doesn't mean we shouldn't be as considerate of what forces may or may not have affected their dispositions as reason might allow. It's a trope, yet there is a certain truth about walking a mile in your neighbor's shoes.

Still, I also think a line has to be drawn. Trying to be kind to my neighbor doesn't mean I have to agree with him. I can't see that the reason for walking that mile must be to accept his point of view (the feeling which I fear is typically meant when the line is invoked) but only to be more considerate of the challenges he faces. This can of course mean your changing your own mind. But not of necessity. Your neighbor might be wrong in his opinions and actions just the same.

I think what bugs me is that there's another side to that idea, one which rarely gets expressed. That is, your neighbor also has the responsibility to fit your shoes to his feet too, if the advice is to have any useful value at all. It is not a one way street. 

So, by all means, be considerate. But don't change your opinion unless that's really the right thing to do.

What we can do

Unless we are particularly blessed we struggle with things. It's simply part of the human condition. I think though that half (if not more) of dealing with the pressures and issues of everyday life lies in not allowing them to root at you; not allowing them to consume your being.

Lord knows I struggle with that. But to take the point further despite my own failures on the matter we really do need to learn, as that old saw instructs us, to know the difference between what we can and cannot control. Control what you can. Don't fret too much about the rest.

I can't control the recent events, peaceful protests or riots or whatever they actually are, in Portland. I can have nearly zero affect on them. As such, I need to pray that all will be well and let the problem go. It is not, and I do not mean this as flippantly as I may be accused, my problem, in any direct and immediate sense. We can apply this salve to quite a lot of troubles in the world too.

I am not in any way, shape, or form saying that we should not do anything at all with regard to Portland, or COVID, or world peace, world hunger, or world insert your own pet cause here. But let's face it: what all can we do? After voting and talking among your friends and being charitable with your money and time, what else is there that a little man or woman can do? Because in the grand scheme of things, most of us are, on Earth, little men and women.

Where does that leave us? I believes it leaves us at the task of making ourselves better by looking at the ways we can directly help others. I don't expect that when we meet St. Peter at the pearly gates he's going to sit back, fold his hands across his chest, let out a heavy sigh and ask "So why didn't you end the crisis in Portland?" I suspect, unless you were at the time of Portland unrest the President of the United States or Mayor of that city, we will be asked questions like, "Why didn't you offer to jump start your neighbor's car that bitter winter morning?"

"Why didn't you buy that street urchin something to eat?"

"Why didn't you give your change to Ronald McDonald House?"

If we do those things or a great many similar others we may well become big men and women to those folks. We certainly will become better men and women ourselves.

Bleeding Charity

“Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.”

The above quote is from The Great Divorce, an intriguing novel from Mr. C. S. Lewis. It isn't about divorce as you likely might think, but about the divorce, the gulf, between Heaven and Hell. The quote comes in response to a soul which is rejecting the offer of Heaven due to his own pride. The scene is very fitting for this Easter Day.

God has offered us everything we could ever want, a happy and eternal life, if we would just take it. All we have to do is be sorry for our sins and try to make ourselves better. He doesn't expect perfection but He does expect the effort. And He is willing to help us make the effort. All we have to do, as the priest told us at Mass today, is receive it. Receive His love and we will be given it in the form of complete and total happiness. It is, yes, charity.

And that is my Easter message to you. Ask for it. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity.

The Devil's in the Details

Back in the 1970s and 1980s there was a wonderful Professor of Philosophy at the University of Detroit named Dr. Carlo Grassi. He was one of those teachers who made you want to learn simply by his own excitement about the subject. Perhaps that is why we think of him now; but that is also a point for another time. Right now we want to consider one question which he frequently asked. He didn't really ask it in search of an answer; it was a question meant to provoke thought. And that it did quite well. The question was: as government takes over more and more charitable works and taxes us to pay for them, how responsible does that leave the person for being charitable?

The most obvious inference, and one he readily conceded, is that it lessens the person's obligation to help others. We're biased, perhaps, but we agree with that. The next question becomes, is that a good thing?

Do we really care for people when we ask (and increasingly demand) that someone else, not me, of course, but, in this case, the government, do what we ought to do ourselves? What kind of person will that make us? Will we become more considerate, more, ahem, charitable, in our dealings? Our will we become less truly concerned with others, because someone else should deal with them, another obvious inference in demanding government aid to whomever? Or worse, will we become actually more intolerant of them?

In that last point we can see why the left, who wants more government and less individual responsibility for caring for others, wants to limit trans fats and soda consumption. Now that their ally, the government, is paying for so many things and their taxes are footing the bill, then they have the right to monitor what people eat and drink. In short, in the name of helping the people, they begin to despise and terrorize them in the minutiae of their acts.

This is not to say that all government charitable works are evil. But it is to say that the devil's in the details. Do we like the details when governments being to assert that abortion is okay but you better not let yer kid have a 20 ounce Coke? Should we like them?

The devil is in the details. Chew on that for awhile, and then let's have a serious discussion about charity.

Government Help is not Charity

Is government aid charity? What brings this question up is Mitt Romney's explanation for his electoral defeat: the President offered gifts such as health care to the voters. The former Governor said more, but one illustration is enough. Basically, he alleges that Barack Obama bought the election.

Which us back to the original point. Many people will read this and similar stories and go on to defend the President's acts as charitable. But is government aid charity?

This is not to question the safety net factor. There is certainly nothing wrong with having in place government programs which help those in true need. If you cannot feed yourself or your family under your current circumstances, if indeed you do need health services which you cannot provide for, then it becomes rational for the government to offer aid when, if, or as necessary. Even that is rife with peril, however: it can (and has) lead to dependency and the sense of entitlement, and it can lead to the government deciding who gets what. A simple look at Ethiopia during the 1980s shows what government control of resources can lead to in the extreme. Don't think for a moment that that can't happen here. It may be in the far future if at all, but it can happen here. With the distribution of food, and with health care too, quite honestly.

So is government aid charity?

Well, is it charitable to vote for people to take money from people who are not you in order to help people who are not you and who you do not know? Or is charity something you are supposed to do for the sake of others who cannot, at a given time, help themselves? This is the problem with liberal and Democratic voters. They believe that they are doing their duty towards society by making someone else do their charitable work. Yet however good that work might be in itself, its morality becomes questionable when it is supposed to be your work. Demanding that the government do your work is not charity. It is at worst lazy, and at most, theft of the wages and resources of others.

So, finally, is government aid charity?

No.

True Conservatives are Compassionate

A writer on AOL, Jill Lawrence, asks the question of whether the 'compassionate conservatism' of George W. Bush is dead. In supporting her point, she offers a laundry list of things which various Republicans and Tea Party favorites espouse: getting the federal government out of the education, unemployment, and even social security markets, to cite a few. The obvious insinuation is that anyone who supports such ideas are callous.

It is an unfair and irrational perception. Why is it that if someone is against, say, the federal Department of Education, it is assumed that they are against education as education? We have yet to hear a Tea Party maverick assert that children should not be taught to read, write, and cipher. Likewise on health care: no one is saying that the folks who need a doctor's care or hospitalization should not get it if it can be had. No one in the GOP asserts that we should not put in place in our nation the mechanisms which will allow anyone and everyone truly seeking gainful employment to have a decent shot at it.

What it all boils down to, again, is philosophy. If you're a big government tax and spend liberal, then any opposition to Washington being involved in our day to day affairs is immoral. Period. Yet if you believe in the sanctity of the individual then you believe that his freedom to choose what he wants out of life, among his legitimate options, is what will in the long run best promote decent education, affordable heath care, and an environment where jobs can be created and maintained through human ingenuity and industry rather than by government command.

In short, conservatism and conservatives aren't ogres. Indeed, they give more charitably than any other political group, of their time and money. Sure, the liberals give: but that's the practice of giving your money to other people. It is not true charity. Indeed, it is patronization on the one hand, and to a degree (because not all government spending is wrong of course) organized theft on the other. That does not promote goodwill or compassion. It creates jealousy of the worst kind: that because person A has something and person B does not, then there must be something wrong with the system. That is not charitable. It is, however, in the long run a recipe for dictatorship.

Today's Gospel Reading

"Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood."

-The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 12, vs. 43-44

It is easy for any of us to give of our excess. But to give out of our own need is difficult indeed. Yet it seems to be precisely the sort of thing which Christ asks of us: give until, or even if, it hurts.

C. S. Lewis once said that that is the true measure of our charitable giving: if it doesn't affect us, we aren't giving enough.

So that's what He wants: he wants all of us, all that we have. So long as we hold back anything, we are not fully within Him. And how can we hold back when the One who walked among us held back nothing?