Bhojraj Bhatta
Charity (giving to the poor and needy) is an ancient Hebrew concept recorded in their Scripture and practiced from time immemorial; not a philanthropic concept but a concept rooted in the very idea of the justice of God. God is a just God and therefore he demands his creatures, the humans, to practice social justice by extending charity to the poor because no one chooses to be poor but happens to be poor due to the circumstances beyond one’s control. Therefore, a Hebrew, i.e., as the people of God, has a God ordained responsibility to look after the welfare of the poor and the needy in order to maintain the privilege of being the people of God. The key scriptural teaching on the topic is recorded in Leviticus 25 and particularly the verse 35 captures the concept of Hebrew understanding of tzedakah, which the Amplified Version attempts to translate it with its full force as; “And if your [Israelite] brother has become poor and his hand wavers [from poverty, sickness, or age and he is unable to support himself], then you shall uphold (strengthen, relieve) him, [treating him with the courtesy and consideration that you would] a stranger or a temporary resident with you [without property], so that he may live [along] with you”.
Starting from this verse as the highest degree of charity where the self-respect of the beneficiary is not taken away, Moses Maimonides, a 12th century Jewish philosopher and the expert of the Law of Moses, categorized the eight degrees of charity that vary in their level of nobility. According to Maimonides, the lowest form or the first degree of charity takes place when one gives to the poor and needy grudgingly. Second degree is when one gives less than what is supposed to be given but gives it cheerfully. Third degree is when one gives only after being asked by the needy. Fourth, when one gives before being asked as he sees the need. Fifth degree is when the beneficiary does not know the benefactor. Sixth, when the benefactor does not know the beneficiary. Seventh, when neither the benefactor nor the beneficiary knows each other. Eighth and the highest form of charity takes place when there is a sense of mutual partnership based upon mutual respect in which the benefactor strengthens the hands of the beneficiary so that the weaker party does not fall into poverty. This highest form of charity also can be done in three different orders; first, it can be done by offering help without any condition so that the weaker party can stand on his/her own feet. Second, it can be done by offering a job or a share in one’s business, and third, by offering a loan so that the weaker party can become strong enough and return the favor without any loss of self-respect and dignity.
In all these degrees of charity, the most important element for Maimonides was the preservation of human dignity and self-respect of the beneficiary. Just because one becomes poor due to the circumstances beyond one’s control does not take away the God-given human dignity from that individual and therefore, the one who is not poor needs to realize that human worth does not consist on material possession but on how one relates to God and fellow human beings as Hillel the great Jewish teacher had said that the sum-total of Torah is to love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, Charity to the poor and needy has continued to be one of the cardinal pillars of Jewish society in every age, and Christian concept of giving is directly derived from the Jewish traditions and writings. Jesus made this principle crystal clear when he put himself in the place of the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and the prisoner and whatever the people did or did not do for any of these above mentioned categories of humans, they did it to him (Matt. 25:35-40). Jesus never failed to emphasize the need to give to the needy, and remembering the words of Jesus on this topic, Paul quotes his words “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts. 20:35) because somehow in the practice of charity there are only a few who can do it in the sense of the highest degree as defined by Maimonides where the recipient’s self-respect remains intact. Otherwise, in one way or the other, the recipient feels falling short of the dignified humanity when s/he finds the self in the state of a beneficiary.
But the fact of the matter, as Jesus said, is that we will always have the poor and the needy among us (Matt. 26:11) and therefore, the act of charity must continue regardless of its varying degree of nobility until the complete justice of God is achieved in the coming reign of God. Until the kingdom of God is fully realized, we must do all we can to practice the act of charity with the aim of doing it from the highest degree and history is filled with examples of such charitable works. The Roman Catholic Church is better credited for this noble task and examples of many saints like Francis of Assisi, who, while selling his father’s merchandise, saw a beggar, ran after him and gave away everything in an act of charity for which he was painfully ridiculed by peers and badly scolded by parents that broke his heart. But he went on to inspire millions of others and today we hear names like Francis Xavier, Mother Teresa and so on.
Protestant church is also equally filled with people who achieved great feat of remarkable charitable work even though at times the over emphasis on the doctrine of “justification by faith alone” minimized the value of charity and ethical works. People like William Colgate (Colgate-Palmolive), whose business brand covered the globe, is known to have given ten to fifty percent of his profits to various charitable institutions. George and Richard Cadbury inherited their father, John Cadbury’s small chocolate enterprise and turned it into a worldwide business. Cadbury brothers not only inherited their father’s business, but they also inherited his strong faith in God and dedication to charitable works. Unheard in their times; they treated their employees with utmost respect and provided them with everything that a normal business owner would need to have a loving home and healthy family with full access to life and leisure. They also saw that their father’s wish to make their locality free of alcohol was a way of serving wider community because John Cadbury believed that it was alcohol that made people poor and rob them of joy and happiness from their families and therefore, the Cadburys committed their lives and earnings in replacing the alcohol with drinkable chocolate and tea; after a century of George’s death in 1922, their desire to make their locality free of alcohol lives on and even the giant of a departmental store like Tesco cannot sell it in its local units there. Such stories of great charitable works by Christians could be found in every nation of the world; the difference might be that they had no one to document their story.
But the dawn of modern Protestant Christian missionary movement brought a new dimension to the age old concept of charity; a new dimension in which the innocent and the noble face of charity has been badly marred or destroyed. This modern missionary movement primarily began in societies where the protestant doctrine of God’s election and predestination was dominant; these societies placed a higher value on themselves compared to those which were non-Christian and considered as either heathens or savages. When William Carey tried to persuade his home church for the evangelization of the inhabitants in the islands of South East Asia and Oceania (he was touched by the writings of James Cook, an explorer who discovered and described about the inhabitants of these Islands on his journals as savage tribes so different and lost from the rest of civilization), an elder stood up and yelled at Carey saying, “young man, if God wants to save the savages, he does not need your help, he can do it himself”.
But people like Carey, Judson, Hudson, Livingstone and Brainerd were the ones who took upon themselves the God given mandate of evangelizing the heathens in every possible land, it was a sense of knowing that all men are equal and are in need of a savior who can not only see them free from sin but also from the savage life style. These early trailblazers of modern mission did not care so much about material possession; rather they gave their very lives for the sake of the people of their dream. But as the fruits of such missionaries work began to reach to the civilized world (western world), the disparity between the savage and the civilized also began to come to the fore. Wherever the colonial conquers went, they were only interested in exploiting the savages, but when the missionaries came along, they saw the exploitation and the suffering of the inhabitants in the colonies. Prior to the arrival of the colonial rulers and their missionary companions, these savages and the natives of the lands had their own way of life and sense of identity. The Chinese, Indian, African and the Native American civilizations had been in existence for thousands of years before they saw the faces of European conquerors and missionary compassion. These civilizations had their own set of values and worldviews, but when the European civilization, empowered by the biblical revelation and scientific discoveries, confronted them, the futility of their value system and the credulity of their worldview became apparent. The missionaries from the European civilization saw the sufferings in these lands and attempted to alleviate it through possible charitable contributions from the people in their homeland. In order to enlighten the populace in their homeland for the great need of charity in these colonies, the missionaries began to look for ways and means of communication; they began to write about these needs and the backwardness of these savages. As the means of mass communication developed over the centuries, the missionaries used them to their best effect and the whole western world came to know the limitations of these people and the limitless possibility of helping them wherever they may be found. The age old Charity found herself being married to modern Protestant Missions and the result was the birth of Inferiority followed by Deception.
The trailblazing missionaries like Carey, Judson, Hudson, Livingstone and others accomplished their monumental missionary achievements by maintaining utmost respect for the natives in their mission fields. They literally laid down their lives in the mission field (For example; Carey came with one way ticket and never returned to England for the rest of his life). They buried their children and spouses in the lands they felt called by their God. So long as these kinds of missionaries were in the mission fields, they embodied the highest form of Charity that Maimonides described. They did it for the love of their fellow human beings with utmost respect. As long as they were alive, they refused to give birth to either pride or pity; superiority or inferiority.
But as the romance of these early missionaries faded away, a new breed of missionaries began to arrive in these lands with their ship loads of western material comfort that exposed the nakedness and the destitutions of the natives in the mission fields. The charity became institutionalized and the missionaries became the mediators between the benefactors and beneficiaries. Mutual love and respect died, but inferiority and deception came alive in the minds of the natives while the missionaries tried in vain to wear the garment of Charity. The missionaries enjoyed the garment of Charity because it gave them immense sense of self-worth and leverage over the lives of their spiritual subjects. Over time, the distinction between a missionary white man and non-missionary white man disappeared.
In the language of science; after knowing for centuries that the Sun is stationary, every morning we call it a Sunrise. Likewise, white missionaries wore the garment of Charity for so long that even today when a destitute white man walks in the streets of India, China, Africa or anywhere else in the so called third world or former mission fields, he ignites a powerful spirit of expectation in the minds of the natives. In my own nation, when a wealthy Nepali family walks in the restaurant or hotel, the reception would be very cold. But when a white back packer hunts for a cheapest meal and a room, s/he would be surrounded by the whole staff willing to offer anything s/he demands. Such reception is not from the heart of hospitality but from the mind of expectations because when Charity had married with European Christians missions, inferiority was born and deception was the second child. After the death of Charity, their mother, Sister Inferiority and brother Deception have been most successful in modern native Christian missions.
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