Benevolence Reconsidered
I was talking with a good friend and faithful church member
about our church’s benevolence gifts the other day. I was lamenting the fact that the church seems to spend most
of its benevolence money on foreign missions while meeting needs in our own
community and especially in our own church with some reluctance. My friend seemed somewhat
surprised that there were “marginal” folks in our midst. I think that my friend assumed that
those are people who live or go to church elsewhere.
What’s going on here?
Are those “worthy” of our church’s benevolence being painted with the
same ideological brushes as our national media paints recipients of government
entitlements and need-based assistance?
Perhaps a part of the problem is our criteria of
“need”. As individuals, we can
think of the words needy, marginal, deprived, disadvantaged, or poor with some
degree of clarity in our own mind.
We may “know” who those people are and what they look like – disheveled
perhaps, or without transportation, or strange, or sick, or old. Everybody else, we may think, can get
by just fine on their own, like we do.
But “need” is a subjective phenomenon. “Marginal” has very different
descriptive criteria for different people. So to focus our 10% benevolence money on foreign
mission work, for instance, can miss the needs closer to home that would make
both church and community stronger and more vital.
Perhaps a part of the problem is our divergent
understandings of issues such as the meaning of benevolence, the instructions
from the Gospel and the components of our well-being.
Benevolence is defined in the dictionary as good will or
disposition to do good for others;
an act of kindness; a generous gift. There is nothing here to suggest that the recipient of
benevolence must be the poorest of the poor in a foreign country. Even the Synonyms listed in the
dictionary (favor,
boon,
courtesy,
grace,
indulgence,
kindness,
mercy,
service)
only note one possibility, “mercy” that suggests that benevolence is related to
a form of pity for others.
The Bible discusses many ways that help us better understand
benevolence:
In Acts: ‘It is more blessed to
give than to receive.”
In Galatians: , “…let us do good to
everyone...”
In Romans: “Let each of us please
his neighbor for his good, to build him up.”
And especially in Mark: “You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.”
Nothing here suggests we share our benevolence only with the
most downtrodden in the world.
And then there is the whole confusion around issues of
giving vs. receiving. Certainly
most of us know from our personal experience that we feel good about ourselves
when we contribute to life in meaningful ways, and that we actually
begin to feel down and somewhat helpless when we are just recipients of
other people’s benevolence’s over time. So to love our neighbor and build her or him up, we
need to be open to receiving his or her offers of help to us so that he or she
gains in their sense of well-being and health.
But perhaps the problem is that we don’t really know how to
empower people in order to enable them to build a better life. We know how to give money, and cans of
food, and old clothes, and used furniture. But do we know how to make our
church a place where if people come, they feel they are built up, that they
find a sense of well-being, and that people pay attention to them and ask for
ways that they are able to contribute to life in our midst?
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