Charity: Turning Scandal into Virtue

After reading Jesus Freak by Sarah Miles I am even more convinced that charity takes a public scandal and converts it to private virtue.  The public scandal is our refusal as a nation to justly provide for folks who draw the short stick in an economy premised on a perpetual supply of short sticks.  No reputable economist believes in full employment and most peg the lowest possible unemployment rate in an advanced capitalist economy at 4%.  Of course, that number does not include the unemployable and the underemployed.  The reigning pseudo-scientific 'economic model' of morality frets constantly about the 'moral hazard' of providing a humane level of benefit for the unemployed, underemployed and unemployable even while admitting that our economy has no other means of meeting their needs.  Fear, it seems, is an essential motivator.  "We must be afraid of unemployment or we won't want to work," is the argument in a nutshell.   Conveniently the 'moral hazard' of excessive wealth is hardly mentioned.

And that is where charity comes in.  Charity - the voluntary redistribution of excess food, clothing, human capital and money  by a small minority of citizens - provides for those without the means of self-sufficiency while providing an opportunity for the charitable to grow virtuous.   Charitable organizations are often blatantly instrumental in their notion that charitable work is an opportunity for the giver to grow spiritually or ethically by attending to the poor.  Over time,  this reasoning serves to form a justification for the suffering of the poor who exist as a means for the generous to grow in compassion.  (See your average Community Service program) Suffering is a crucial unacknowledged article of faith in our secular creed which holds that suffering is essential for learning the virtues of hard work etc.  Ironically, the poor get no credit for the essential sacrifice and suffering they take on for the sake of an economy that will always leave some behind.  It is important to note the subtle ways that Christian theology has buttressed this meme.

My beef with Sara Miles is her rush to glorify her charitable work -and by extension herself as the hero of the story - without risking any larger analysis of the place of charity in society.  Is this a willful naivete?  As someone who has been intimately involved in the charitable sector for thirty years I have to wonder if in part it is just the well-worn charitable habit of marketing the work through constant cries of crisis and perpetual personalization of need.  The person - like myself - who asks uncomfortable questions about the effect of the "Free Food Industry" (See Sweet Charity) on local economies are dismissed as heartless scolds.  But what is the effect of free food dumping in poor communities?  How does it discourage the creation of a sustainable local food economy?  Who is doing this research?

Honestly, during my time as Executive Director of the largest food pantry in Trenton, I had to think that the last thing that small city needs is more charity.  If we could convert in-kind food donation to food stamp dollars for low-income clients we would achieve two goals: 1. Increased autonomy and dignity for our clients who could then chose food in the socially normal way,  2.  Increased cash in the local economy where our clients would shop for their food.  One irony of the free food industry is that the economic beneficiaries are the vendors and producers who are usually not located in poor communities.  If I donate a bag of food to a charity I usually purchase it in my middle class neighborhood.  USDA foods benefit agro-business. Mass food donations by Food Industry Giants like Kraft etc. benefit those companies by dumping surplus.  (Check the board list for Feeding America!)

What is wrong with this picture?  Charitable donation cannot aggregate enough funding to provide adequate food stamp style support.  Only as a nation -through the means of government- can we bring together enough money to have the desired effect.  And this is exactly what we refuse to do.  This is the scandal.  Charity - funded by a small minority of the populace - covers the scandal in a warm, if skimpy and fragile blanket.

At the end of the day, charity is a pea shooter in a tank battle,  a piggy bank in a scorched desert of massive disinvestment.   And it gets worse.  Clothing donated  in the USA to charities like Vietnam Vets are shipped in bulk to Guatemala where they undermine the manufacture and retail of locally produced clothing.  Charitable mission groups in Haiti constantly take work away from local workers during their one week mission 'experiences.'  We cannot afford pious naivete about charity.

Reflecting on Forgiveness

As I prepare to preach on forgiveness this Sunday I am struck by my inability to discuss it in secular terms.  For me, forgiveness unavoidably involves the intervening presence of God as the essence of all mercy and loving-kindness.  I experience forgiveness as a gift of grace, an encounter with the living God,  something coming into my life from beyond, or, in the language of the Gospel for Sunday, 'from above.'  Secular language of self-help and therapy tends to reduce everything to technique and lists of what one should do to achieve a desired result; i.e. instrumental reasoning.  Across my thinking I increasingly struggle to explain myself in the terms of the dominant ethical and practical discourse which is so infected with instrumental and economic reasoning.  In a later post, I hope to explore the wholesale abdication of moral reasoning to an economic model which I feel is a terrible and costly mistake.  Why do we take the market as our model for morality?  Do we really believe that cost/benefit analysis is an adequate moral guide to life?  As a follower of a God who is radically centered on mutuality with the other - both internally in the nature of the Trinity's dance and externally in God's outpouring into creation - it is hard for me to connect my fundamental ethical concerns with a world that favors the absolute sovereignty of the individual.  It seems to me that the comical state of American morality is best expressed as, ":I want everything that works for me and I don't want to make any sacrifices whatsoever."   The notion of sacrifice is almost inaccessible to the dominant modes of consumer driven discourse.  Even volunteering - under the mandatory community service paradigm - has become instrumental, i.e. volunteering to polish my resume or have an 'experience' of the poor.  I call it poverty voyeurism but that is a topic for another post.  It seems to me that a worthy spiritual test of an activity like volunteering - or to return to the initial topic forgiveness- is, "Do I risk and am I open to transformation in this encounter?"

Gospel for Sunday: Born from Above

John 3:1-17

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

"Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

As I reflect on the Gospel Text in light of our Lenten Preaching and Teaching theme of Forgiveness I am struck by how moments of forgiveness feel like "new birth."    The ability to forgive always comes to me as a gift and brings transformation in its wake, usually in the form of increased compassion and decreased tension.  As Annie Lamott says, "Resentment is like drinking poison expecting the person you resent to die."  What are your experiences of new birth?  The transition to Spring, for me, feels like forgiveness - the tight fist of winter relaxes and I am released into the warm, fecundity of longer days and lighter breezes.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I cannot recommend highly enough Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance.  It is more manageable and a quicker read than the classic Bethge biography of Bonhoeffer but equal in its impact.  While not a hagiographical text the story of Bonhoeffer's life always inspires me as a tale of courage and faith; a life I can strain to emulate but quite beyond my present capacity. Reading this book during Lent helps me think about how the ethical life causes us to face our many contradictions and the shifting sands of our fickle souls when we stand before the piercing, clarity of Gods gaze and try to meet the challenges of the world faithfully.  Bonhoeffer's involvement in the attempt to assassinate Hitler is a fascinating case study in ethical fidelity in a situation that may seem clear in retrospect but was not clear to most of his German contemporaries. His faith in the face of death is a true Easter proclamation.