On charity

This morning I attended my wife’s church, as I always do when she’s involved in the music program there (she’s a wonderful oboe player, and I’d never miss a chance to hear her perform [or lead worship, as Presbyterians call it]).

I am not a Christian, but I am often profoundly moved by Christian rhetoric. Today’s sermon was delivered by the Presbyterian Church’s Moderator, Rick Ufford-Chase (I’m not exactly sure what the Moderator’s job is, but suffice it to say he’s a very big cheese in the national church organization). Rick is very involved in helping migrant workers along the U.S./Mexico border, and he told us several stories about the people he has worked with.

His philosophy of charity makes a lot of sense. He doesn’t believe you should just write a check to your local United Way and leave it at that. He’s not even sure it makes a lot of sense to merely “volunteer” your services to a local charity once or twice a month. His idea of charity is much more personal. He believes that “people of privilege” should not only strive to help others, but become personally involved in the lives of the people that we are trying to help.

He told a story of a woman in Mexico he has worked with for many years. Impoverished herself, she has spent her life helping feed and shelter the many migrant workers who come through her town on the way to America. Fifteen years ago, after raising her own children, she adopted a girl and was now struggling to put her through high school. The girl had failed first semester’s courses, and she and Rick were working to figure out a way to help get her back on track. It wasn’t a one-way relationship, it was a discussion, with give-and-take, built on years of mutual respect. It was a concrete way to try to help one girl and her mother have a better life.

Rick asked the congregation, all members of a very affluent southern suburban community, to strive to do the same thing in their own lives — to build relationships with less fortunate members of our community. You don’t have to go far in my town to find people who are living in poverty. Expand your radius ten miles or so, and you can find many more. Expand it by another twenty miles and the number of those “less fortunate” probably exceeds a half a million. It’s easy for us all to hide behind bolted doors and windows, and to write a check and wish the problems in our back yards will just go away, but Rick was saying that’s exactly the wrong way to confront these problems; the answer lies in human, face-to-face connections.

It was a truly moving sermon. I hadn’t realized how much it had affected me until a few minutes later when we were singing a hymn about helping the poor. I wish I could remember the hymn’s title, but I had to stop singing when we reached a line about how most people will not experience a happy life until they die (and presumably go to heaven). I’m not often moved to tears, but this was one of those times.

Christians are fortunate, because the sadness of this statement is at least salved by their belief that the “noble poor” will ultimately be saved. For an atheist like me, it is doubly sad. I don’t believe the miserable, impoverished people of the Earth will eventually find happiness when they die. They will be gone, and they will have experienced nothing but sadness and pain.

I am sometimes tempted to become a Christian because it seems that the ancient myths of Christianity, along with the bonus incentive of a ticket to heaven for true believers, might be the best way to promote good works on Earth. I don’t doubt that inspirational leaders like Rick manage to convince many people to do many wonderful things.

In the end, however, cold logic and skepticism win out. We should do good things because it’s the right thing to do, not because God wants us to. I don’t think it’s right to argue that we should give up on Christianity because it hasn’t managed to eliminate suffering here on Earth, but I do believe a philosophy as powerful as that of Jesus shouldn’t have to invoke the wrath of an almighty God. Jesus was an incredible idealist. His ideas have been so compelling to so many that leaders from Charlemagne to George W. Bush have recognized that leveraging Jesus was an easy way to hold sway over the masses. This is not to say that Jesus was wrong; he was right! What’s wrong is to say “God bless America” while passing out corporate handouts and signing off on torture.

So I’m not going to become a Christian, but neither am I going to reject the many, many valid, important aspects of Christian philosophy. The hard part, as Rick pointed out at the end of today’s service (invoking E.B. White, no less), is trying to decide how much of our time should be spent improving this beautiful world of ours, and how much should be spent enjoying it.