Do you care for others in the way God cares for you?
This Christmas I am finding it interesting to listen to conversations about ‘charity’. We can now choose to be charitable, choose the cause we ‘partner’ with, choose what we give and when.
Occasional media characterisations of welfare recipients as ‘bludgers’ do not encourage generosity, but I fear feed cynicism that filters our choices about how we give and who is deserving of assistance.
These media images don’t reveal the physical and emotional pains and complex elements of disadvantage that combine to make people vulnerable. Yet we watch and too easily judge.
Most individuals and families who are vulnerable have not chosen their lot. Why would they choose to labour under disadvantage and hardship? Certainly, some have made poor choices, but so does everyone - the poor are no more culpable than the rich.
If you are single and unemployed with no children the most you can receive on the Newstart Allowance is $243 per week. If you are single with children you receive $263 per week. Would you chose that?
What Anglicare Sydney sees is that vulnerability can be random, often driven by unforseen circumstances like sudden illness, an accident or relationship breakdown.
Mental illness too knows no social or economic boundaries.
I suggest that imposing judgement on others and conditions for offering assistance is not God’s way, and it should not be ours either.
Tim Keller explores the concept of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor in his book, Generous Justice. In the chapter titled, ‘Justice and your neighbour’ Keller unpacks the parable of the good Samaritan to illustrate the extraordinary generosity of care and love that God shows this world and wants His people to show others.
Crucially, Keller points out that the man by the side of the road was not a Samaritan, but a Jew. He who needed help was, in the context of those times socially ‘superior’, in the eyes of Jesus’ audience, to him who ministered care.
You were by the side of the road, helpless until Jesus picked you up and mended your wounds. He has not harboured prejudice against you.
Therefore we are not in a position to judge what others deserve because God has lavished His grace on us while we were undeserving of it.
As we celebrate the grace of God given to us in Christ let us resolve to give generously, love outrageously and die a swift death to prejudice and accusation toward those in need.
And let our indiscriminate generosity to meet the physical and emotional needs of others adorn the gospel message that Jesus Christ alone meets the great spiritual need common to all people.
God’s grace demands it. God’s grace enables it.
Grant Millard is the CEO of Anglicare Sydney
