Informed Compassion Is Needed

The wife and I volunteer at an urban food pantry once a week. Our food pantry gives out food, hopefully, to those in need--at least most of the food pantry's recipients are in need. Our pantry gets its food from food banks and other sources. And one thing that is most noticeable is that there are too many times that the food most needed by those who come to us is not the food that is donated us. That doesn't mean that we don't appreciate the other food that was donated. It simply means that what those who donate to us were willing or able to share does not best match the nutritional needs of those who come to us.

Of course the above problem dissipates during the holidays. Why? It is because so much food is donated that there is plenty of the most nutritional food available to us fully stocked on our shelves. But during the non-holiday season, that isn't always the case.

The above scenario reminds me of a part of a journal entry written by the late activist Rachel Corrie about the homeless when she was 12 years old (click here for the source).

Bring on their hungry smiles.
We battle them with loose change,
Trying to send them back out of our minds.  

She continues that part of her journal entry by saying how we care about the vulnerable as long as we can keep our distance from them. And that is how it is with deliberately ignorant compassion. When our compassion is uninformed due to neglect or laziness, that compassion is usually more self-serving than exists to help others. Ignorant compassion is our way of having our cake and eating it too. For it allows us to both avoid guilt for not helping others and escape contact with those who receive the bounty of our charity.

If we are really going to help those in need during both the holiday and the regular seasons, don't just give. Educate yourself first. Investigate the needs of those you plan to help so that you can give what best serves them rather than what only serves you. Even if that investigation means coming in contact with the people you plan to help, please investigate. For those in need not only need our donations, they need for us to be truly interested and invested in them.

Paralyzed Parables From The Gospel Of Individual Liberty

There is a new emphasis on or definition of individual liberty roaming around today. The emphasis or definition being promoted by some conservatives goes like this: the only liberty is individual liberty. Thus, anyone who is tries to either prevent one from doing what they want or force them to do something they don't want is infringing on the other person's liberty and is thus using coercion. We should note two things here. First, this view of individual liberty is especially applied to business elites. Second, infringing on the individual liberty of people is, to some conservatives, the root of all evil.

This new view of individual liberty makes it absolute with some exceptions. No individual has the right to treat others unjustly as defined by the Ten Commandments or to infringe on the liberties of others. But no such exception is provided for democratically made decisions. That is, individual liberty, especially when exercised by business elites, trumps democracy. We should note here that democracies are exercises in corporate or social liberty. That is democracies are how groups of people decide how they wish to live with and relate to one another. So according to the new emphasis on or definition of individual liberty, no democracy has the right to infringe on anyone's individual liberties by giving them limits on or regulating how they are to treat others except for what has been previously mentioned.

Because of this new view of individual liberty, democracy is seen as a threat by conservatives. That is because binding decisions that are democratically determined can easily threaten individual liberty. Thus, the only alternative to democracy which these conservatives approve of is to support elite-rule, that is tyranny, provided that those in charge are the right elites--the one who protect individual liberties especially of the business elites.

But the conflict between the above definition of individual liberty vs democracy is not the main issue here. The issue is how does this new version of individual liberty mesh with the Bible especially when it comes to what the Bible says about helping others? To illustrate how this new definition might fit in I rewrote a couple of parables to accommodate the new view of liberty.

Matthew 25:31-46 gives us the parable of the sheep and the goats. In that parable, the final judgment divides all people into two groups: the sheep and the goats. Those who helped the least of Christ's brethren in this life ministered to Jesus by doing so and were judged as being righteous and were thus welcomed into heaven. Those who did not help the least of His brethren were condemned to eternal punishment. What is below is the rewrite of the parable assuming that Jesus subscribed to making individual liberty absolute.

At the end, there was a great judgment and all of the people were divided into two groups: the sheep and the goats. Jesus said to the sheep on His right, "Welcome to my kingdom prepared for you because despite the suffering of those in poverty, jail, or illness, you gave me the freedom to respond in the way I saw fit."  And the sheep replied, "When did we ever give you such liberty?" Jesus said, "Whenever you refused to make me feel guilty for ignoring other while trying to be more successful, or when you opposed those who would either make me pay my employees higher wages and benefits or require me to spend more to care for the environment, or when you voted to both reduce my taxes and cut government programs for social uplift you gave me that liberty."

 Then Jesus turned and scowled at the goats on His left and said, "Leave and go to the eternal punishment prepared for you and the devil. For when those in need cried out for help, you tried to take away my liberty to be a success by either making me be fair to others or help those in need." And the goats on His left asked him, "When did we ever take away your liberty?" And Jesus said, "Whenever you made me feel guilty for not helping those in need, or whenever you stood up for exploited workers, or whenever you voted for government programs for social uplift  you were attacking my liberty."

In Luke 10:25-37 a man asked Jesus how he could have eternal life. Jesus responded by telling him to follow God's law. Jesus went on to describe God's law as loving God with one's whole being and loving one's neighbor as oneself. Below is a rewrite of the parable showing how Jesus might have answered using the absolute definition of individual liberty:

"You are to love God with your whole being and to love yourself before you love your neighbor. For you cannot love others unless you first love yourself."

The man then asked Jesus, "How can I love myself?" Jesus replied, "You love yourself in the same way that you love others, you love yourself by setting yourself free to see where you will go and what you will do."

So the man asked, "How can I set myself free." Jesus then told the man a parable. "A man was walking along a road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by thieves. The thieves beat and robbed him and left him to die. A priest came upon the man and crossed to the other side of the road and continued his journey. A Levite did the same. But Samaritan who saw the man stopped, applied first-aid, and took him to an inn where the man could recover. The Samaritan paid the innkeeper in advance and told him that he would return in case there were more expenses." 

Jesus then asked the man which person loved himself by setting himself free. The man replied, "Both the priest and the Levite because they were not compelled to help the man who was attacked." Jesus said, "Yes but the Samaritan was free too. Just because he helped the man who was beaten doesn't mean that he wasn't free. Thus all three loved themselves by allowing themselves the freedom to determine how they would react to what they saw. So go and do likewise knowing that whether or not you stop to help is not the issue, the issue is that you freely choose how you want to interact with those who are in need."

To be clear, this post is not against individual liberty per se. Such liberty is extremely important. This post is questioning making individual liberty absolute so that it always overrules democracy. And we need to remember that since power follows wealth, this absolute version of individual liberty will be awarded to business elites more than to those from any other group. So here, we need to maintain a balance between recognizing individual liberty with practicing democracy or we will lose our democracy. 

But more importantly, we need to see how destructive the absolute definition individual liberty can be to a Christian's faith. Here, one only needs to compare this version of individual liberty with the teachings of the Bible such as with the real parables referred to above. For what we will find is that adhering to this absolute definition of individual liberty will prevent us from using the Bible to know good from evil.

A Half A Thanksgiving Forever

R.C. Sproul Jr., the son of R.C. Sproul, wrote a Christianized Thanksgiving post (click here) for Ligonier Ministries last year. In that post, Sproul complained that sinful man is more troubled by what he does than who he is. His point here is that we seem to be content with ourselves if we don't act on sinful thoughts and impulses. And being so content, we underestimate who we are as sinners and who God is as a gracious savior. So if we were to really grasp all of this, we would have the most solid grounds for giving thanks and our thanksgiving would last all year round. And failure to be thankful is one of the most serious sins we can commit.

Sproul has a point here. We give ourselves false assurance over the sins we have refrained from committing even though our thoughts and feelings betray and condemn us. We are thoroughly sinful and knowing this helps us appreciate God's grace and that appreciation is the 'root' of our joy.

Likewise, Sproul points out that our level of thanks is all too often based on what is being done or not being done to us and what we are or are not getting. How comfortable are we? Are we getting what we dream of? All too often, the answers to these questions cause us to fail to be thankful. Thus, if we are to realize what God has done for and promised us in Christ, we should have a joy that produces a lifestyle of being thankful.

In all of the above, Sproul is right. But being right does not prevent one from being incomplete in what they teach. Whether Sproul says in other places what we will say here or not, we should point out that we should not base how we help others entirely on what he has written thus far. For if we do, for if we respond to those in need solely by teaching them how to be grateful in all circumstances because of what Christ has done for us, then we would have ignored James's warning in James 2:14-26.

In the passage cited above, while telling us that faith without works is dead, to not help those in need with physical goods when we can is to possess a dead faith. So while Sproul points out that the refraining from doing wrong can mislead us regarding our sinfulness, refraining from doing right can instruct us regarding the kind of faith we have. And we need both messages here because all too often the Church has held back from being involved with providing earthly help to people when it could because of its focus on Christ meeting our spiritual needs. However, if we are to read James, we find that such an abstinence shows our sinfulness just as much as harboring wrong thoughts and feelings as well as not being grateful to God.

Some look at Thanksgiving Day as a chance to help those in need by helping to feed the hungry. If we add that thought to Sproul's admonition to make Thanksgiving a lifestyle rather than a holiday, then not only should be grateful all year round, we should help those in need, those who cannot pay us back, all year round too.