Give it Up, Christian

A Series on Giving: Part One, Introduction

Before President Trump, before SNAP, before Clinton’s welfare reform, before the Great Depression, before the Industrial Revolution, before, before before…Christians have been commanded to give. To give generously. To take care of the poor, the needy, the widowed, the weak. It’s the cornerstone of our lived-out faith, appearing in hundreds, if not thousands of passages. Google, “Bible passages about giving” or any related topic such as needy, poverty, weak, alien, and see what comes up.

A few passages I’ve noted include: Luke 3:11, Psalms 37:21, 2 Corinthians 9:6, Matthew 6: 19-21, Romans 12:13, james 2:15-16, and Nehemiah 8:10. This only scrapes the surface of how we, as children of God, are to give, both to those in our community of faith and those outside.

While the concept of giving can seem so clear and obvious, how we give as Christians is too often informed by culture over Scripture. Yes, Scripture meets us in our given cultures, but it transcends culture. Too often Western Christians are left with a watered-down faith and outlook as they misread scripture with Western eyes.

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes is one of a handful of books from my time in graduate school that I return to again and again. Bookshelves the length of the short wall in my office are to my left, and as I wrote the last sentence I turned my head, my eyes landing right on the grey spine bearing the title. I reach for it so often, muscle memory knows exactly where to pluck it from. While I will likely explore the meat of this book in a later post or later series, I want to give a taste of what’s to come with a question posed on page 111, in regards to the preceding chapter on individualism vs. collectivism as it relates to societies. E. Randolph Richards asks, “How Christian is the concept of self-reliance?”

How Christian, indeed.

It can be all too easy to look around and see churches or Christian organizations advocating for a hearty “bootstraps” approach to giving, and in another direction one might find reckless and mismanaged organizations which end up helping no one. However, the drumbeat of the American Dream is a concept of self-reliance that causes a lot of plotholes, but moreover, isn’t biblical. I’m not suggesting there isn’t any self in daily life, or that we have no control over our circumstances, but Scripture asks us to look beyond that, Christian. Not to cast it aside, but look above and beyond.

In the wake of the current government shutdown (which might end today) and various responses all over the political spectrum, I will be publishing a series of blog posts about the Christian response to need. A series on the Christian response to politics might also be warranted, but I’d rather cut right to the more pressing issue: those in need are in our midst and we, as Christians, have a biblical, God-directed obligation to help. At all times, in all seasons, under every government, until Jesus returns. Period.

In preparation for this series, I returned to another graduate school book, a tome titled, “An Introduction to Biblical Ethics: Walking in the Way of Wisdom,” by Robertson McQuilkin and Paul Copan. I have other works by Copan, and trust his scholarship, and this particular book is full of great scholarship on many topics, by way of introduction, as the title suggests.

I’ll be quoting this work a bit coming posts, as well as Catholic scholars and other notable Christians as I try to help us find a “third way” of sorts to help those in need. Not the ways of the government, or the world, or even our given culture, but in the ways of Christ.

I’d love to write a whole scholarly article on the topic now, but I want to be realistic, and keep these posts to digestible chunks that folks can really consider and discuss, if they so choose. I’m not trying to be the Atlantic, though I appreciate what they do in terms of long-form content. But for the sake of my executive function, and yours, I’ll keep it a little tighter. Full transparency, though, this will be the shortest post in the series.

Tune in tomorrow for what I hope will be the broadest, umbrella-like post in the series: Capitalism, Socialism, Christ.

Until next time,

andrea

photo credit: freeimages.com/victomar