Foresight, Charity, and Justice

A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, Virginia), March 25, 2007, by the Rev. Don Robert Johnson, a former Methodist minister, a former college chaplain, and Leader Emeritus of the Ethical Society of St. Louis. Rev Johnson will be in the pulpit twice a month during Rev. Brownlie’s sabbatical.

Readings

The First and Lowest Degree is to give–but with reluctance or regret.

The Second is to give cheerfully, but not proportionately to the distress of the suffering.

The Third is to give cheerfully, and proportionately, but not until we are solicited.

The Fourth is to give cheerfully, proportionately, and even unsolicited; but to put it in the poor person's hand, thereby exciting in him the painful emotion of shame.

The Fifth is to give charity in such a way that the distressed may receive the bounty and know their benefactor, without their being known.

The Sixth, which rises still higher, is to know the objects of our bounty, but remain unknown to them.

The Seventh is still more meritorious, namely, to bestow charity in such a way that the benefactor may now know the relieved persons, nor they the name of their benefactor.

The Eighth and most meritorious of all is to anticipate charity by preventing poverty; namely, to assist the reduced persons either by a gift or a loan, or by teaching them a trade, or by putting them on the way of business, so that they may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding up their hand for charity.

Maimonides, Golden Ladder Of Charity

The subject most often mentioned in the synoptic gospels is the issue of poverty and wealth. This subject occurs in one of every nine verses. (In Luke, in one of every seven verses). Some day we will have to give up completely the very common idea that to interpret the Bible is a matter of the mind of the interpreter, since the Scripture has various “meanings” and each adopts the one which “moves” him or her most or suits him or her best. Such a belief has been promulgated by conservatives to prevent the Bible from revealing its own subversive message. Without recourse to this belief, how could the West, a civilization of injustice, continue to say that the Bible is its sacred book? Once we have established the possibility of different “meanings,” each as acceptable as any other, then the Scripture cannot challenge the West. If one of these “meanings” were capable of doing so, nothing obliges us to take it seriously. Each person can legitimately accept the meaning which best suits his or her own thinking and temperament; that is why there are various meanings. If we find Matthew's assertion that “the gentle shall seize upon the whole earth” (5:5) to sound too earthy, it is easy to “interpret” the statement, saying that it refers to the domain of the heart; and everything continues peacefully as it was.

Jose Miranda, Marx and the Bible

The exploiter needs the charities as much or more than the charities need the exploiter.

Miranda, Being and the Messiah

In economic history one has to search rather diligently to find instances where the ‘haves’ of the possessing classes have willingly given up any of their privileges, the ‘have nots’ had almost invariable to wrest their rights.

S.L. Palmar, Uppsala Speaks

Giving is a potentially immoral act

Merrimon Cuninggim, Former President,
Danforth Foundation, Private Money and Public Service

There is plenty of charity, too little justice.

Dorothy Day

I must mention one other characteristic which has had a most fatal effect in perpetuating great social evils. This time it is a policy, and not a doctrine. It has been its invariable practice to denounce the individual victim, but to remain discreetly silent with regard to the customs and institutions which continue to breed such an individual. It ever strains at the gnats, but swallows the camels with uniform ease. It often wipes the surface of a festering sore of the body politic, and tries to cover and soothe it with the ointment of charity; but it never probes to the root of the malady, the seat of the corruption. It is there alone where true healing can begin.

J.C. Thomas, The Darkness, the Dawn, and the Day(1921)

Sermon

Cuninggim’s “Giving is a potentially immoral act” leads me to discuss first the interaction of giving and receiving. Robert Greenleaf, who worked for a foundation in India for several years, has written:

Anyone who has spent even as little time as I have in India cannot help having views about the whole aid giving, aid receiving relationship. It does not seem to me to be a sound basis for a relationship for one nation to be aid giver and another aid receiver for a long period of time. A one way flow of aid is all right for an emergency or a short period of readjustment, but not as a long term thing. I believe, further, that, on balance, the Indians have as much to give us as we have to give them (different things, perhaps, but just as much). And it seems presumptuous, over a long period of time, for us to assume that, because we happen to have a surplus of money, the giving should be one way. Therefore, I believe that if we want to continue to be useful to the Indians, we should use our resources as much to learn from them as to facilitate their learning from us.

Genocide became an international crime about 60 years ago. But it has not lessened. In Darfur as many as 450,000 people have died from disease and violence and 2.5 million have been displaced since the fighting began in 2003. The United Nations reported that in the second half of 2006, 12 humanitarian workers were killed and 30 aid compounds were attacked.

We need more foresight and planning to be able to respond to dilemmas like Darfur. Otherwise, we end up, as in the case of Rwanda and Darfur, of being caught off guard, terribly confused and ponderously slow in acting.

Our efforts in social mission must be self critical. It is not enough to do good if we can do better. To discern ways in which our efforts can be more productive is a key in developing and practicing ethical foresight. This requires the hard work of thinking seriously and thoroughly about issues.

As an example, let me refer to the “Comment” essay by Michael Kinsley in the New Yorker, entitled “The Intellectual Free Lunch.” The essay refers to a Wall Street Journal survey of middle-class white males: while they share anger on many things, the subject that seemed to produce the most agreement is the view that “Washington should stop sending money abroad and zero in on the domestic front.” A recent poll showed 75% of Americans believe the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid. Respondents were asked how big a share of the federal budget currently goes to foreign aid. The average answer was 18%. The correct answer is less than 1%. Asked how much aid would be appropriate the median answer had been 5%-up to five times the current reality! The U.S. is 21st on the list of 22 wealthiest nations in terms of aid contribution to domestic national income. What this poll shows is how scandalously ignorant many of us are about the issues. What’s of more concern is that many defend their democratic right to be ignorant! In reality, four times as much money flows to rich countries from poor countries than the other way around.

In Private Money and Public Service, Dr. Merrimon Cuninggim, former president of the Danforth Foundation, suggests that

giving is a potentially immoral act. Its danger lies in its assumption of virtue. . . The relatively innocent desire to help is so thinly distinguished from wanting to be the helper. But the latter is capable of all sorts of distortions: wanting to be well known as the helper, wanting to dictate, to paternalize, to manipulate. Only by being conscious of the danger is there a chance to escape. In other words, (we) must believe in the potential immorality of giving.

A clear delineation and division of the nature, purpose, and result of charity and justice are our next tasks. (I am indebted to Education for Justice, Orbis Press for this insight)

Although charity may be the first characteristic that comes to mind to describe social involvement, justice is the dominant theme of social teaching. Barbara Ward in her commentary on Pope Paul's encyclical The Development of Peoples notes that

Charity, for all its immediacy and effectiveness, remains an arbitrary factor. The rich may give. Again, they may not. They expect, even if only subconsciously, suitable gratitude.

When we move into the field of justice, the need to distinguish between justice and charity becomes crucial. For many there is a tendency to confuse justice and charity. However, the practice of charity and the pursuit of justice are not the same. This is not to say that one is superior to the other. Each is essential in combating the ills that afflict humankind, but each has its distinct characteristics.

First let us describe charity.

One characteristic of an act of charity is that it is occasioned by an accidental event,–a flood, famine, earthquake; or an individual tragedy resulting from such things as illness, fire or highway fatalities. To provide charity in such cases is to assist the victims of large scale calamities or personal tragedies.
A second characteristic of an act of charity is spontaneity; in it there is no attempt to identify and cope with the causes of catastrophes. Relief measures are not designed to survey the root causes of disaster as such. Rather, the charitable donation is intended to move quickly to the victim.
Another characteristic of charity is that it is essentially a temporary provision. The victims must be provided immediate assistance to satisfy basic human needs, such as food, clothing and shelter; but, the expectation is that conditions will return to normal and relief measures will no longer be needed.
A fourth mark of the charitable act is that it is non controversial. Admittedly, donors are reluctant to give their money merely to vague goodwill projects, but when victims of natural calamities or individual tragedies are clearly identified, the dominant question usually is not whether to respond to the needy, but rather, how much should be given.

The actions of the Good Samaritan are a classic example of the charitable response. The parable is silent about any attempts by the Samaritan to survey the root causes of highway banditry in Palestine, or to determine why the particular traveler had been victimized, or to analyze the cause of clerical indifference to human tragedy. The Samaritan, confronted by the victim on the roadside, promptly provided immediate, temporary, and adequate assistance.

People should not abandon acts of charity, but rather, these acts of charity must be done in such a way that the charitable act does not negate the demands of justice. For example, to aid the victims of natural disasters is worthy; however, if this is the only way in which we minister to human needs, then we have failed. Charity and justice must complement each other. Given the human condition, the charitable act can become a substitute for the pursuit of justice which is often a more controversial mode of action.

To deal with the issues of justice demands a different set of responses. Conditions of injustice are not accidents. To relieve the victims of injustice demands that (1) the root causes of injustice be identified and removed. This requires (2) persistent and concerted effort; and (3) short term, sporadic efforts are both inappropriate and ineffective for such a mission.

The victims of injustice frequently live in conditions similar to those suffering from the effects of major disasters: wretched housing, inadequate food, insufficient medical care, marginal educational facilities. The scene, on its face, may appear to call for acts of charity, important in their own way. However, the search for root causes is likely to uncover not an isolated event, but rather, institutionalized conditions which violate the human dignity of groups of persons. To fail to grapple with this institutionalized violence is to fail to be allied with and to minister to those who hunger and thirst for justice.

The episodes in Exodus of Moses liberating his people aptly illustrate efforts to remove root causes of injustice. Moses did not appeal to Pharaoh for teams of Egyptian volunteers with medicine and food to enter Jewish forced labor camps, nor did he call for a charity ball. On the contrary, he challenged the institutional injustices of Pharaoh’s system, even disobeying unjust Egyptian laws; and ultimately he led his people to a new freedom and a new identity as a people.

Charity is an option, may be an act of self interest only (in which one feels good inside), can serve as a tax deduction, and often serves as a means of power–with strings attached, an obligation of indebtedness may be implied, and indignity may be the major feeling of the recipient.

When one looks at larger issues of foreign aid, international debt, and self development the reality of charity as an immoral act becomes magnified. Foreign aid, as it generally is structured and implemented means the poor in a rich country support the rich in a poor country. Justice, on the other hand requires change, deals with value systems, and results in a long term potential of equality and mutuality.

This issue is relevant everywhere, not just in Darfur. UNICEF ranked 21 industrialized countries in six categories: material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own subjective sense of well-being. The U.S. was last for health and safety, measured by rates of infant mortality, low birth weight, immunization, and deaths from accidents and injuries. The United States and Britain ranked at the bottom of a U.N. survey on the well-being of children in wealthy countries. The Netherlands topped the report issued by UNICEF, followed by other European countries with strong social welfare systems: Sweden, Denmark and Finland (http://www.unicef.org/media/files/ChildPovertyReport.pdf).

A Washington Post report last month mentioned twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver, who died of a toothache. A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him. If his mother had been insured. If his family had not lost its Medicaid. If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find. If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died. Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care (Feb.28,2007).

Charity is a valuable tool of ethical living. Immediate issues of survival and human need require a charitable response. However, charity has its limitations and its extremes are ethically dangerous. Whenever it becomes an end in itself–then its usefulness has been abused. Justice must be its logical end. Without the judgment of justice to keep it honest and ethical, charity becomes the pimp who controls the victim for a system of immorality and injustice. May we refuse such immoral charity and strive to integrate charity and justice in all our ethical practice. Let us join in these sentiments:

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie—
Dust unto dust—
The calm sweet earth that mothers all who die
As all must;

Mourn not your captured comrades who must dwell—
Too strong to strive—
Each in a steel-bound coffin of a cell, buried alive,

But rather mourn the apathetic throng—
The coward and the meek—

Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak.

Ralph Chaplin, Bar and Shadows, 1921.

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