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Giving Destroys the Soul
A joke is told of a man who is drowning 50 yards off shore. There are countless variations, but the simplest political version I know is that the Democrat throws the man 200 yards of line, then drops his own end. And the Republican throws 40 yards of line, because even a drowning man has to learn to help himself.
We think that charity is easy to define: it is helping people by giving them things. At least, that is what we teach children. And it is what liberals think “charity” is when they make the argument that Big Government is doing nothing more than what the Bible prescribes.
But this is a big mistake, even by the most well-meaning conservatives. Charity is not “giving people things.” Charity is about helping people. And there is a very simple proof:
“And when you cut the harvest of your land, do not remove the edge of the field when you cut it, and do not gather the leftovers of your harvest. Leave them for the poor people and the strangers – I am your G-d.” [Leviticus 23:22].
Simple enough, right? Command Peter to help Paul.
But if it is so simple that Peter should help Paul, why doesn’t the Torah just say, “when you cut the harvest of your field, give 10% (or 20%) to the poor people and the strangers.”?
The answer is simple enough: because it is not charitable to sap people of their own work, the pleasure and sense of accomplishment that one gets for working for our own crust, even if it is from someone else’s field.
The Mishnah (in Pei’ah) goes one step farther: one who does not let the poor people gather the produce in the field but rather collects it himself and distributes it to them is guilty of stealing from the poor.
Isn’t that amazing? The realization that, many thousands of years ago, societal laws were passed down specifically to help people help each other – by raising each other up, by growing each person’s sense of accomplishment and purpose. Welfare reform came before welfare.
Real charity is interpersonal, not institutionalized. Bureaucracies are not capable of connecting on a human level. All they can do is give people things, creating a long-term, useless, and wallowing underclass. When we want to do real charity, we connect people with each other. Peter’s field is available; Paul will come and work the corners. And both people become better for it.
Published in General
That’s one of my favorite parts of the book of Ruth, her taking responsibility for gathering the remains in the field. How else could Boaz and Ruth have grown to respect and love each other?
Yes! Even being able to offer a word of thanks/encouragement, etc., is work, too…Making sure that caritas has mutuality in it. Like this:
One of my absolute most favoritest song! (That warrants a grammatically atrocious sentence!)
Bringing light to the word.
Amen. When I was little, if a family were going through a rough patch, their church and neighbors would pitch in. Accepting help from people who know you makes you want to get out of that situation as fast as possible. Accepting help from the faceless government is all too easy, and the stigma is less.
God helps those who help themselves.
Once in a terrible flood, a man’s house was filling with water, so he went upstairs. Then the upstairs filled, so he went onto the roof. While he was sitting there, a rowboat came, and they told him to get in. He said, “No! God will help me.” So the rowboat left. Then a helicopter came, and through a megaphone they told him they would lower a rope. He said, “No! God will help me.” When the water rose and covered his roof, he drowned. As he was dying, he said, “God! God! Why didn’t you help me?” And God said, “Who do you think sent the rowboat and the helicopter?”
OMG This is the first time I’ve heard this as a song. I’ve known that story for years, but I can’t remember who told it to me, and I never knew it was a song!
Joel Mabus turned it into a song many years ago. He is another of our traveling Illinoisans. I believe he moved to Florida, or some such, last I heard, but for many years was here in Michigan.
There’s a reason we call over-giving to our children spoiling them. I strongly believe over-giving to adults spoils them too. Thanks iWe.
I understand what the post is saying, but I just want the world to know that the help, friendship, and outright material gifts that others have given me so generously throughout my life have not destroyed my soul. At least I don’t think so. :)
Because you viewed these as a hand-up and paid them forward.
Double-like!
Amen.
There was a time when American evangelicals knew all about this. Marvin Olasky is sort of an expert on this history and writes about it from time to time in WORLD Magazine.
Paul in the New Testament goes so far as to say “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”
This was sort of the idea behind welfare reform back in ’93 – a recipient could only be on welfare for a set period and then it would end; in other words, use that time to get settled and to get a job. Didn’t last though. I think the Left thinks along the lines, “There are so many poor and they all need help, but I can’t help them all! Who could possibly do that – wait, Government could help everyone! What a good use of our tax money, and I feel so good for contributing to the relief of the poor!” The average Progressive then comes to think that the poor have the “right” to the government’s meager handouts (including public housing and food assistance) and that therefore we all have the responsibility to provide that assistance. And if these things are “rights,” then we can’t expect anyone to individually pay for them – particularly if they have minimal incomes. Therefore, the cost of providing these rights to everyone must be spread among those who can afford to pay for them. Similarly, we all have the “right” to roads, and public transportation, and sewage treatment, and public water, and national defense. And if these things are “rights,” then it is the responsibility of the Government to make sure that all of its citizens can partake of them – you know, like the Constitution says, “to promote the general welfare.” As soon as something is made a “right,” then the Government must secure that “right” for everyone. The interesting inconsistency is that, according to the Progs, Government can demand that all citizens above a certain level of income can be forced to “give” money for the less fortunate, but the Government somehow can’t force the less fortunate to contribute to their own well-being and future advancement. [Admittedly, the Progs tend to focus on the poor who, for one reason or another, can’t seem to get out of poverty, while Conservatives tend to focus on those who mis-use the system to provide a minimal income with no responsibility.]
Ok, I am going to play devil’s advocate :) Gleaning the fields is a practice from agrarian societies; we are no longer an agrarian society. So what exactly are we supposed to do? I don’t have children, meaning I have far more time than most people do, but I am helping my husband with his business and trying to help my two elderly parents and trying to find time for an aunt who doesn’t get enough of my time as it is: I don’t have the time or the energy or the inclination to adopt someone on welfare and try to morally reform them.Most people have even less time and energy to devote to such an endeavor than I do. I don’t own any farmland; I have no crops that they can glean. Giving away a few dollars as I am able is literally the only thing I can do, and I have no intention of stopping; if someone’s soul ends up getting destroyed that is on them, not on me. The idea that because we don’t want to let people starve to death we are therefore responsible for destroying their souls is highly problematic. In the final analysis, God is the only One who can save our souls, and we are the only ones who can destroy our souls: to say that one person can destroy another persons soul by trying to help them is ascribing far more power to the giver than he actually has, and taking all responsibility away from the receiver.
When I think of a world without welfare, the image that comes to mind is Les Miserables. Also, Magdelene Laundries. The world we live in now is far from ideal, but I think it’s better than Les Miserables. And the modern welfare state is preferable to what the Church used to do to unwed mothers. I doubt that the people who ran Magdelene laundries saved anybody’s soul, but they put their own souls in severe peril. As does anyone who becomes preoccupied with reforming other people. Or saving them, if you prefer to look at it that way. The vast majority of people do not have the time or the inclination to devote themselves to reforming the poor; given what the world has experienced with things like Magdelene laundries, I am very suspicious of anyone who does, and skeptical of the conservative idea that the Church can solve every problem.
Gleaning makes them put in some work for it. That’s been a component of attempts at welfare reform. We probably need more of that.
Ok, but doesn’t this run the risk of interfering with the economy? I have heard, for instance, that forcing people in prison to work takes work away from law abiding citizens; prisoners are cheaper, and that is a problem for law abiding citizens who would like to work for more than 30 cents an hour, or whatever it is that people in jail get paid. I understand that some people on welfare could get jobs but simply choose not to; unfortunately, that isn’t everybody on welfare. What do we do with people who are barely literate, or who have severe learning disabilities that have never been addressed? I am all for trying to help these folks catch up, but in some cases, that will take years, and in some cases, it will never happen. So, what do we with these folks?
We are commanded to love others as we love ourselves, and we do for them what we know should be done to/for us.
Those who can help themselves need to be allowed and even strongly encouraged to do so. Depriving them of the benefits that come from helping themselves is a form of theft.
Those who cannot help themselves need to be given whatever help is needed. But the operative notion is “need.” My local supermarket hires mentally disabled people as baggers, and they derive enormous pride from an honest job done well.
Agreed. Completely getting rid of all welfare is not realistic, but many things can be done to improve things. My experience with social workers is very limited, but I am horrified by the ones I have known: they are completely lacking in common sense. For instance, when I was in college, I was room mates with another student who had a child and was on welfare: she lived with a room mate in order to make her check stretch farther. When I explained the situation to a social worker I knew, she said “Wow, I never thought of that.” She spent a great deal of time complaining about the lack of affordable housing, but had never considered the possibility of some her clients taking on a room mate to cut down on costs. I also knew a group of nuns who were trying to help women recently released from prison: they actively discouraged the women from taking on any job that did not provide health insurance, which meant that none of the women ever took on any job, even though some of them seemed sincere in their efforts to improve their lives, but they were receiving horrible advice.
It’s like I said before, I am very suspicious of anyone who devotes their life to helping the poor: even the well meaning ones seem to just have no common sense whatsoever. I don’t know what to do about this.
Yep, and in the New Testament James tells us that it is just hunky-dory to help widows and orphans in their (times of) trouble.
And James had been reading OT prophets, one suspects.
Our welfare was meant to create dependency. There is no other explanation as the destructive effects were known when Johnson declared war on poverty and the results have been worse than we might have imagined. These programs are among the most evil things we do. We don’t have the political courage to eliminate them, but we could transfer programs to the states and they to the cities and towns, with declining budget heading to zero fairly rapidly and zero mandates. Some states will figure out how to run such programs with minimal damage, others will learn, some wont and some my eventually end them. The only thing they’ll have in common is that the people who pay for it will have a little more say and that may make administrators a little more accountable. Washington can never be made accountable, they will never be able to run such programs without doing more harm than good. It is important that Washington money and mandates end or there will still be no accountability. There are many people who can’t take care of themselves and do not have family to help them, but they are not voters and in many if not most cases are not program beneficiaries. When churches and local groups ran these things there was personal knowledge of the circumstances so they did more good than harm. The good samaritan didn’t know the man, but he could see that he was clearly a victim, was not responsible for his pitiable circumstances and so could help him in his moment of need. Helping widows and the orphans was aimed at widows and orphans known to the community, not at promoting single motherhood in the abstract which has been the predictable result.
Amen.
Yes, it is realistic. If the poverty rate hasn’t changed in the decades since was created, in spite of the enormous growth in the economy in the intervening years, getting rid of welfare entirely could only help.
It seems to me you are looking at the well-intentioned but twisted social “safety net,” seeing the disfunction, and assuming that’s all it can be. As for unwed mothers, they were in sorry circumstances prior to welfare, and are in sorry circumstances with welfare. But welfare has induced 30 times more women to engage in it, thanks to the perceived lack of consequences.
The simple fact is that welfare traps people into “entitlement” dependency, ruining their lives, but creating the voting block socialists intended. Good intentions were used to sell this road to hell, but it wasn’t inspired by good intentions.
As for panhandlers on the street, if you can’t take the time to personally intervene with a meal and a conversation, so you can determine why they are there, save your dollar bills for a private charity that puts people on the street to do so. A local homeless shelter/food pantry/soup kitchen can be your agent. Giving cash to panhandlers is like giving a drunk a drink, if not literally.
People in this nation are, by and large, not living in poverty as it has been understood since the dawn of civilization.
Poverty used to mean, not getting enough food. We don’t have that problem here.
If you want to take a utilitarian view, the best thing for the economy would probably be a short unemployment benefit to keep people from going bankrupt between jobs and no redistribution beyond that. Anyone who doesn’t work long term starves, put the kids up for adoption.
All wealth redistribution is going to affect the wider economy. There’s a really simple overriding thought I have here. We have some number of people in our society. We’re going to make sure everyone gets fed. If we have a bunch of people being fed without producing anything we all end up with less stuff.
In a more practical sense, one of the options for work requirements would be training. To maintain benefits, we would require some amount of work or school.
Even people who are barely literate can work. They may not earn a lot, but I think we would all be better off if we can figure out how to get them working even if they don’t earn much.
There are true charity cases. Our current system is not good at separating those who can’t work from those who won’t. The best single reform would probably to move all these programs to lower levels of government. Get the bureaucracy closer to the people.
There’s a lot going on here, and I’d like to proceed slowly.
In Biblical times, the overwhelming assumption was that men would do the work, almost always brute agrarian work, and so, who did you give alms to? Widows and orphans, because they had no working men to provide for them. The beggars were almost always crippled and lame in some way. The rest (i.e., men) were expected to work, and charity covered the people who had no men to provide. You had an economic model that was true for most, and for those people who didn’t fit, charity covered the gaps.
That men-as-provider, agrarian model … just doesn’t apply anymore. Charity is still a way to provide for the people who can’t provide for themselves – – but the mechanics of “providing” have changed dramatically.
If we lived in a perfectly balanced economy, where anyone who wants a job can have a job (not just any menial job, but something that can pay the bills), and therefore giving him money instead of requiring work will necessarily destroy his motivation to work, then you can make a broad statement about how giving alms would destroy the soul.
But we don’t live in that perfectly balanced economy. A lot of people don’t have adequate jobs, and that isn’t because they’re too lazy to work. Even in a perfect economy, there are people who are handicapped, and a large number of people are mis-educated … i.e., trained for jobs that don’t exist anymore, or a bunch of jobs that demand specialization that isn’t widely available … or, more commonly, these people’s education simply sucks. They’re not competitive in a competitive job market, but they need to eat as much as everyone else.
Unless you think that our economy is already offering plenty of opportunity and the only reason people don’t work is because they’re lazy, then we (as an economy and society) need to anticipate the “gaps” and finds some way to cover them. You can’t just say, broadly, don’t provide. How do we provide for people who cannot provide for themselves?
(Note: that doesn’t mean government bureaucracy, but it means we have to do something.)
As the Good Book says, “Give a man a fish and you can brag about its size. But teach a man to fish and you can laugh at his misfortunes.”
The majority of charitable giving should be informal. Helping people as individuals treats souls, forges personal bonds, and encourages attention to individual circumstances, including challenges of character. Programs treat statistics and operate according to lawyerly codes.
But there are some acts of charity which cannot be offered alone. Stopping a genocide by war, for example.