Reflections on God and Money: Giving & Funding (2)

And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God… You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour… And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19: 10, 19:15 & 23:22

The above passage is from the Pentateuch, the Torah or ‘Old Testament law’, and the passage at the start of yesterday’s Reflection from one of the Old Testament’s ‘Wisdom’ books: both are important to Jews and Christians. In Islam, generosity is seen as a means to please God, and in Buddhism it is one of the ‘ten perfections’ leading to enlightenment. But there are many good reasons for giving to charity and other good causes that having nothing to do with religion.

Humans are wired for community. This means that we are incomplete as people if we do not interact with others, not just with the people we count as friends but others in our community. If we can provide for not only our essentials, what I call our ‘survival costs’, but also for some of the other things we want, our ‘lifestyle choices’, we should offer to help people who cannot afford their own survival costs or a few modest lifestyle choices rather than indulge our own wants.

Without humanitarian aid, given to and distributed through charities, a great many more people would be homeless, starving and vulnerable to disease following natural disasters and human wars. In addition, we all share responsibility for our planet: preserving the environment and protecting wildlife are causes worth spending our money on. As is scientific research that contributes to people’s general health and well-being.

And the arts are also worth supporting. Many years ago, I came across a saying that I think may have originated in Italy during the 1960s: ‘When you give to the poor, give tuppence (two pence) for bread and tuppence for art. I think there is merit in this, because we can cause suffering if we ignore people’s mental and emotional needs as we focus exclusively on their physical needs.

Such giving, however, is not necessarily, not entirely selfless: helping others to fulfil their potential helps us to fulfil our own. But once we get beyond these motivations, it is difficult to write meaningfully about generosity without reference to religion. Over the coming weekends I will be taking my cue from the Bible because there can discover financial principles that effect not just Christians and churches but also nations and the global village in which we all live. This is what I hope to explain next weekend.

_____________________________________________

Handling money and dealing with debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here. You are invited to put a link on your website to these Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Saturday, 2 March 2013

Giving & Funding (2)