AnderspeaK
Charity
Story of Charity
To love human beings in so far as they are nothing – that is to love them as God does. —Simone Weil .
Charity may be the least understood and most maligned of all the virtues. Among the early Church Fathers, it was the most important virtue – some even calling it the source of all other virtues – even so, it is too often misunderstood.
Talk about charity in the common sense of giving something to the poor, and you will be met with a flurry of defensive reactions, which taken together would lead one to believe that charity is altogether a bad idea. Examples range from “ennabling laziness” to “perpetuating a system to keep the poor poor,” etc.
Our story involves our own stories’ commitment for movement from the deadly sin of Greed toward the eternal virtue of Charity.
Chapter One:
Born from Greed
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. –Erich Fromm
We talked about covetousness in part during The Story of Kindness, because envy is a kind of greed. Just as envy corrodes the soul by badly wanting something one neither needs nor ought to have, Greed destroys by becoming itself a consuming hunger. Moving beyond greed and its acidic character is a high bar for us all. It will be easier if we can train our hearts to sincerely love Charity more than the stuff that feeds the fires of greed.
Chapters Two & Three: Sufficient Grace
I can’t get no satisfaction – The Stones
I shall not want. – David (Psalm 23)
Something has to happen in the heart to move from can’t get enough to be able to say, I have enough. What must happen to people in order for them to experience contentment? Does wealth cure greed? Sure, like smoke cures bacon. We need to pursue the heart of David even as we increasingly long for the good of others. Knowing that God has done all things for us is sure helps.
Chapter Four:
The Giving Tree
It is more blessed to give than to receive. –Jesus
In Acts 20:35, Paul quotes Jesus’ words which appear in no other gospel.At the heart of Charity is simply that we should have generous, cheerful, giving hearts. We seek the blessings that come from giving of ourselves in every way. We long for that happiness.
To be a giver is to be a lover. To give and to love are very often the same action, the same attiude, and the same heart. It is the heart we see in Christ. It is where we intend to grow.
Chapter Five:
I Was Hungry
“Love is not patronizing and charity isn't about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same -- with charity you give love, so don't just give money but reach out your hand instead.” ― Mother Teresa
One of the most brilliant and amazing parables of Jesus is that of the final judgment found in Matthew 25. It is here that The Lord reveals the endgame of human life and history. Assembled before the judgment throne of God Almighty, humanity stands in anxious anticipation of its eternal destiny. To those who practiced Charity, God reveals that the goodness was all done to Him. Likewise for all who withheld their goodness and neglected Charity – they neglected God himself.
This parable reveals God’s wonderful care and what is an almost mischievous sort of incarnation; namely, that God chooses to appear among us in the midst of the poor, the naked, and the imprisoned.
The short lesson is this: if you have any interest in God whatsoever; or any drive to seek and find Him, then you have no better place to go than to the downcast, the destitute, the depressed, and the defeated. God is to be found there and among them. The spiritual gift given to all who search there is what we call Charity.❦
On Virtue
Virtue and the Virtue-focused mindset
To live a moral and virtuous life is certainly a part of Christian discipleship, but there is a real difference between moral-focused and virtue-focused mindsets.
To be moral-focused means that one attends to the particular moral issue involved, for example, speed limits while driving. A moral-focused mindset concerns itself with the particulars of the law and seeks to define the boundaries of where it does and does not apply.
To be virtue-focused means that one attends to character more than the particulars of the law. The moralist is concerned about speed limits; the virtue-focused mindset seeks to form courteous, considerate and safe drivers. The focus is not on the speed limit itself, but on what things characterize what we would call good drivers and how those qualities can be reproduced.
The chief drawbacks of a moral-focused mindset is that it gets caught up in arguing exceptions to the rule—Is it okay to break the speed limit if you’re driving someone to the emergency room?—and borderline cases (Honest, officer, my speedometer is inaccurate because I have installed smaller tires). The inevitable result is some form of legalism–attention to the law instead of obedience. Self-righteousness thrives in moral-focused mindsets, and much time is lost deliberating the specific boundaries of each specific law.
A virtue-focused mindset avoids legalism by attending to the main goal: growing into good character. Character-formation is necessarily a virtue-focused activity.
The Bible gives us our basis for this mindset. Not only is legalism regularly and roundly denounced by Jesus whenever he addresses the “righteousness” of the Scribes and Pharisees, but Paul, in following Jesus, eloquently states the principle in Philippians 4:8:
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Paul sets our focus away from picking nits, straining gnats, or otherwise looking for evidence of specks in one another’s eyes.
Holy Spirit vs. Law
We remember that we are no longer people of the Law now that Christ has fulfilled the Law’s purposes. This doesn’t mean that we are lawless or that we have freedom to do what we want in spite of the Law, but rather that we have a completely different mindset in Christ.
Those who are in Christ have the Holy Spirit working within them. The Holy Spirit is the source of all good fruit—all of those qualities of character that are desirable—things true, honorable, just, lovely, noble and commendable. The Law cannot make us any of these things, but the Holy Spirit can and does.
We Christians are the ones who say that our righteousness is neither in ourselves nor in our capacity to obey God’s Law, but rather in Christ alone, who gives his righteousness to us as a free gift through faith. Our righteousness is to believe in and trust in his righteousness. To trust in him means we live with vision—a mindset focused on he himself—and we set our head, hearts and hands into following him. We follow by imitation, the goal being that we would not get in the way of the Holy Spirit’s work of writing Christ’s righteousness into our lives.
We Can Be Heroes
What is a hero? In short, a hero is one in a story who embodies at least one virtue.. Even anti-heroes, like Don Draper of Madmen or Walter White from Breaking Bad, carry us through their stories because of some good their character contains, even if it is only a love of justice or love of family. In any case, a hero is an embodiment of virtue. The hero of a book, play or movie can be anything else, but they must embody at least one virtue or else the story fails.
Think of your favorite heroes from the past. Can you identify what virtue or virtues made them heroic? Did your affection for that story heighten your desire to be virtuous in a similar way? Did you every feel charmed into desiring goodness as a result of a story?
In Jesus we find not only virtue, but in every virtue. We have in Jesus the ultimate hero—the hero in whom we find every hero and everything heroic. As it is the aim of every Christian to grow into the image of Christ (by the Spirit’s work), our discipleship is made up of following and emulating him. Is it even conceivable that in focusing so completely on the good character of Christ that we could ever stop dwelling on all that is good, noble, true, pure and excellent?
I think not, and at the end of the day, that may be the entire point.