Living Water of Washington DC. A Christian Outreach Ministry.

The Home Front: Rallying the Armies of Compassion

Part 2: Are Christians Doing Their Part?

The last edition of The Living Water Letter carried Part 1 of this article, a summary of President Bush’s Faith-based Initiative and its implications for Christian charities.1 The conclusion of that article suggested leaders of Christian charities should carefully consider God’s leading before applying for Federal funds to expand their programs. Just as God sometimes limited Paul’s ministry,2 so He may use seemingly insufficient private donations to limit a charity in order to accomplish His own purposes.

But there is another side of this issue that needs to be considered: Many Christians have hardened their hearts to God’s direction to give.

Historically, churches have set aside a portion of their offerings in order to provide social services in their local communities. These have included such activities as employment services, hospital visitation, rehabilitation programs for those in prison and assistance for their families, educational services, and various programs to aid the poor. During the Great Depression, however, under President Roosevelt’s New Deal the government began increasingly to provide social services that paralleled those of churches. Since then, as government welfare spending has increased, church spending on such programs has declined.

From 1929 to 1933, the amount of money churches allocated for benevolent spending (spending for purposes other than church operations) remained generally unchanged. This period represented the worst of the Great Depression. Church benevolent spending declined sharply in 1933, however—the same year President Roosevelt’s New Deal went into effect. This decline continued through 1936 before leveling off at approximately two-thirds its previous level.3

By the 1950s, church giving had recovered to its 1933 levels: 3.2% of church members’ income. This percent remained roughly constant through 1962, after which time it began to decline. The figure (below) illustrates how Christian giving and membership have changed from 1968 through 2003. Data came from annual statistical publications of 29 Christian denominations.4

As can be seen, total Christian giving as a percent of income (left scale) declined into the 1990s and then recovered somewhat to its 1970s levels. However, church spending on benevolences as a percent of member income declined steadily over this entire period. (Spending is measured as a percent of members’ income because this factors out things such as inflation and wage growth over time.) By 2003, church spending on benevolence as a percent of member income was roughly equivalent to its low point during the New Deal years of the Great Depression!5 Only an estimated 9% of evangelical Christians tithed in 2002, the highest among Christian groups, which helps to explain why average giving for that year was only an estimated 2.6% of income.6

Can this be called sacrificial giving?

America’s Christians seem to be like the expert in the law described in Luke’s gospel.7 The expert correctly identifies that loving God with all one’s heart, soul, strength and mind and loving one’s neighbor as oneself are the two great commandments. However, he tries to test Jesus by inquiring, "And who is my neighbor?" As society becomes increasingly mobile and community ties diminish, America’s Christians appear also to be asking, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus responds to the expert by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of one man providing assistance to another despite centuries of animosity between their peoples. Concluding the parable, Jesus says to the expert—and to Christians today—"Go and do likewise."

But what does this mean? Should Christians today still give 10% of their income as commanded in the Old Testament, or should they interpret 2 Corinthians 9:7 as saying that 2.6% is acceptable? Moreover, what to make of the example of the Christians of the early church, who gave 100%? In Acts 4, Luke records that the earliest Christians voluntarily entered into a communal living arrangement where "no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had," such that, "there were no needy persons among them."8 Isn’t this rather idealistic, though? After all, hasn’t history shown communes to be unworkable?

To be sure, verses like this one and those where Jesus challenges people to sell everything they have and give it to the poor9 seem fantastic to modern Christians. They read these passages and wonder how anyone could possibly meet such expectations. Worse, they often dismiss such hard sayings rather than wrestle with how they apply today. But those who do so are missing a critical piece of both the heart of God and of Christianity. Once Christians understand what Jesus is saying in these passages, the questions of how much to give and to whom become clear.

Jesus instructs his followers to concern themselves with accumulating wealth in Heaven, not on Earth, because they cannot serve both God and money.10 In so saying, he reveals the key to understanding his demands for such incredible sacrifices: Jesus knew that only by maintaining an eternal perspective—keeping one’s “eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”11—can one truly live out God’s will for his life. So long as one is worried about his possessions, he is focused on the temporary and he cannot serve God.12

John makes the connection between loving God and loving our neighbor abundantly clear: “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”13

Why “must?” Because “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”14 John understood what the expert in the law could not: If a man accepts that he—a sinner and Samaritan outcast—has been healed by a God who had every right to “pass by on the other side of the road,” then he must also accept that there can be no one, however vile in the world’s eyes, who is undeserving of his own love and care.

For the man who has grasped this truth, the commandment to love his brother is not a burden, but a joy!15 Moreover, God has promised he will live in his followers through his Holy Spirit and will provide all they need to fulfill his command to love one another.16

Accepting God’s love enables the Christian in turn to love others, which prompts him to give. For him to then ask, “How much should I give?” is to miss the point, for as Paul writes, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”17 As Jesus so often emphasized in his ministry, it is not how much one gives, but why he gives that matters.18 This is why Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”19

God has provided each Christian with talents and spiritual gifts to be used in the service of others so that “men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.”20 God provides these talents and resources as a trust and will hold his followers accountable for how they use them.21 Those who recognize both their sinfulness and how wide, how long, how high, and how deep is Christ’s love for them will find themselves giving abundantly and with joy! They will be conduits of God’s blessing, receiving and passing along his goodness, love, and grace.22

But those who, like the expert in the law, are self-righteous and believe themselves deserving of God’s love will horde his gifts. To those Jesus will say on that last day, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”23

Only each Christian, along with God, knows how much and why he gives from the resources God has given him. The statistics above, however, are not encouraging in their implications. The writer of Hebrews reminds all Christians, “Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”24

Jesus is coming; may America’s Christians not be caught unprepared.

Scott Fine

(Go to Part 1 of this article.)

ENDNOTES

1. LWWDC co-director Ryan George published in the same issue an article detailing Living Water’s reasons for not participating in the Initiative.
2. Acts 16:6-10.
3. Gruber, Jonathan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Bureau of Economic Research), and Daniel M. Hungerman (Duke University). “Faith-Based Charity and Crowd Out During the Great Depression.” 2005. Full-text available at www.nd.edu/~dhungerm/Great_Depression.pdf.
4. Ronsvalle, John and Sylvia. Highlights from The State of Church Giving through 2003, 15th ed., Champaign, Ill.: Empty Tomb, 2005. Highlights available at emptytomb.org/research.php.
5. Ibid.
6. The Barna Group, Stewardship Archives, available at barna.org.
7. Luke 10:25-37.
8. Acts 4:32, 34 (NIV).
9. See, for example, Matthew 5:38-42, 8:18-22, 19:16-24; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 9:57-62, 14: 25-34, 18:18-30.
10. Matthew 6:19-24; Luke 12:15-21.
11. 2 Corinthians 4:18.
12. See, for example, Ecclesiastes 5:10, 13-14; 1 Timothy 6:9-10, 17-18.
13. 1 John 4:19-21 (NIV, italics added).
14. Romans 5:8 (NIV)
15. Matthew 11:29-30, John 15:10-12
16. John 14:15-16, 23; 15:7-8; 2 Corinthians 9: 8-11.
17. 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NIV, italics added).
18. See, for example, Matthew 6:1-18, 26:6-13; Mark 12:41-44, 14:1-9; Luke 7:36-50, 14:12-14, 18:9-14, 21:1-4; John 12:1-8.
19. 1 Corinthians 13:3 (NIV).
20. 2 Corinthians 9:13 (NIV, italics added).
21. Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-27.
22. Luke 6:38.
23. Matthew 25:41-43 (NIV).
24. Hebrews 13:1-2 (NIV).