Exploring Generosity As An Act of Faith

Poverty, regardless of your belief system, is appalling.

We see people who are homeless in prosperous western cities, suffering from hypothermia when the winter snow falls. Then there are the victims of violence, refugees driven from their homes because of war in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Lebanon, and elsewhere. And we are all too aware of natural disasters, famine in Sudan, the hundreds of thousands of people in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa living in extreme poverty, floods in Bangladesh, and fires ravaging Los Angeles. There may be some who witness these events and remain unmoved, but their hard hearts do them no credit.

Besides ordinary human decency, what can stir us to respond and help eradicate this evil? What can move the human heart?

Almsgiving: A Shared Value Across Faiths

Almsgiving is integral to the three great monotheistic religions. In the Qur’an, for example, faith and good works are linked repeatedly. True righteousness is indeed to have faith in Allah, but true righteousness is also ‘to give of one’s wealth, though it may be cherished, to the next of kin and the orphans, the destitute and the wayfarer, to the needy and for the redemption of slaves’ (2:177).^[1]

Similarly, in the Torah, almsgiving is a sacred obligation: ‘If there is a needy person among you, one of your kin in any of your settlements in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kin. Rather, you must open your hand and lend whatever is sufficient to meet the need.’(Deuteronomy 15:7-8).

And in the Gospels, when Jesus is asked which is the first of the commandments, his answer combines a fundamental declaration from the Book of Deuteronomy, ‘You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ with a command from the Book of Leviticus, ‘You shall love your fellow as yourself’ (Deuteronomy 6: 5; Leviticus 19: 18). Love of God and love of neighbour—a care for those in need—are inseparable in each of these religions.

The Puzzle of Poverty in Christianity

Within Christianity, however, poverty can also be something of a puzzle. What we find appalling can appear to be presented as positive. A key example occurs early in St Luke’s Gospel. After spending a night in prayer in the hills and then choosing twelve men to be his apostles, Jesus comes down onto the plain and starts to teach the large crowd of his followers that has gathered there. He begins by proclaiming what we know as the Beatitudes. There is a parallel version in St Matthew’s Gospel. But in the Lucan version, the Beatitudes begin with a startling declaration: ‘Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’ (Luke 6: 20). Is that really so? Is poverty the key to the kingdom, a condition to which people should aspire in order to go to heaven? It has certainly seemed so to some. We may think with admiration of St Francis of Assisi and the austerity of his life, and I have never forgotten a friend of mine telling me how as a young man he had tried to follow that Franciscan ideal. But after a while he abandoned it. He came to realize that he was just scrounging off his friends. 

A Deeper Meaning: Poor in Spirit

Selling everything we own to follow Jesus does not prove that we are perfect. Circumstances vary. In the Gospel of Mark, there is an occasion when Jesus heals a man who is believed to have been possessed by demons. As Jesus was continuing on his way, this man, now cured and filled with gratitude, begs Jesus to let him come and follow. Jesus refuses his request and instead tells him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you’ (Mark 5: 19). 

One clue to resolving this puzzle is to recognize that this praise of poverty is not a way of encouraging destitution. Monks and nuns take a vow of poverty, but they are not committing themselves to being destitute. What then is being affirmed when we acknowledge something virtuous in living poorly? It will help to consider Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes. 

When we turn to it, we find Jesus does not declare, ‘Blessed are you poor’, but ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (Matthew 5: 3). The qualification, poor in spirit, is not a cunning evasion, letting wealthy people off the hook. It is to be understood rather as a clarification of the declaration in Luke. Instead of that stark statement that may seem to glorify material poverty, it is asking, what is our disposition? It is not wrong to be rich. On the contrary, wealth makes caring for those in need possible. But what is our relationship with our wealth? Are we determined to protect every last dollar, every last dime? When we make donations, are we merely giving out of our abundance, like the rich in St Mark’s Gospel who are so well off they don’t even notice how much they have contributed?

Or can we be moved by the example of the poor widow who put just two copper coins into the treasury? ‘She’, Jesus observed, ‘out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living’ (Mark 12: 41-4). She was materially poor, but she was also poor in spirit, not clinging desperately to the little she had.

True Generosity

We need not be quite so extreme as to give up everything, but, as Mother Teresa used to say, ‘Give till it hurts.’ Have we at least that generosity of spirit? We should not be enslaved by what we possess, but, while grateful for it, we should also be able to regard it with a degree of detachment. That is the generosity of spirit, however poor or wealthy we might be, that, forgetful of self, motivates us to strive to overcome the tragedy of extreme poverty. The blessed ones who are poor in spirit, generous, giving till it hurts, will find themselves blessed indeed.