Why "Ease of Giving" Just Won't Cut It

I came across this article on Christian generosity by Christopher Cocca last week, as well as his excellent follow-up. He argues in both that the Church universal has within its giving power to the ability to eliminate extreme poverty and other related social ills, provided that such giving is consistent and directed towards well-run, competent organizations founded to alleviate these problems. For me, both articles were at the same time convicting and inspiring, and I was thankful that they received a significant amount of media attention. The following excerpt really encapsulates the essence of each, in my opinion:

The truth is that many Western Christians could give a full tithe to their churches and a full second tithe toward the eradication of extreme poverty in efficient, responsible ways without losing much of our lifestyle. Isn't it something of a scandal that so many of us can even talk about lifestyle when so many more are barely clinging to life?

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If we were honest with ourselves, I think we'd admit that a "lifestyle of philanthropy" is vastly out of most of our comfort zones, though I don't think many of us would assert, if pressed, that engaging in  philanthropy "just isn't for me." That being said, however, I believe society's general perception toward philanthropy could be broadly summarized in the following: Philanthropy is either A) a practice for the wealthy (largely because they have the financial cushion to do so) or B) the thing the rest of us practice with our spare change after all the other "necessities" have been taken care of.

Of course, there are many exceptions to the above generalizations -- and I pray that there are far more than I can comprehend. Thank God that such exceptions exist. We can all "give more" in the tangible sense, and of course we should do so. But the real need, I think, is a radical change in perspective. What if we started seeing philanthropy -- the giving to worthy organizations and individuals who will use the money for the common good -- as one of the "necessities" along with utility bills, rent/mortgage, food, entertainment, and tithing? Wouldn't this make reaching the "phantom trillion" Cocca mentions even more of a reality?

A "lifestyle of philanthropy" is one that demands some level of consistent sacrifice. A friend said it well, "Do we want to [just] give, or do we want to give easily?" There is a significant, paradigm-shifting divide between the two questions. I'd argue even that giving primarily because we are "financially able to do so" does not truly embody philanthropy, the "love of humanity", in its purest form. If "ease of giving" provides a primary motivation behind our philanthropic pursuits, aren't we really just saying, "Let me wait until I have enough dough so that I won't miss it when I give some of it away?"

For me, it comes down to this question: Am I willing to revamp my budget for philanthropic purposes because I have the financial excess to do so, or because it's the right and responsible thing to do regardless of how much I make an hour? Christ wasn't kidding when He said, "Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over..." Or, as it is said in the Proverbs, "Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered." Sacrifices will not go unnoticed.

There's probably a lot more to a lifestyle of philanthropy than just the giving of one's monetary resources. Maybe I'll write about other aspects of it in subsequent posts, but for now, it's safe to say that it is high time that we started committing ourselves to telling generosity's better story.

On Heroes

After over a year of almost boyish anticipation, I saw the new Captain America movie last weekend. Instead of writing a review, however, I’d rather mention how this movie (along with others like it) is indicative of a cultural trend that is at the same time encouraging and disheartening: our obsession with heroes.

In many ways, at least for me, this love of heroes is a bastion of hope – it doesn’t take too much imagination to realize that the society that ceases to recognize heroism will soon find itself in its death throes. Thank God the United States isn’t there…yet. The movie industry is indicative of this trend. In the midst of all the horror flicks and idiotic comedies about men who failed to launch, we still have movies consistently trumpeting some form of heroism.

Many of the biggest box office successes of the past decade or so have been driven by some strain of the heroic impulse. We’ve had superheroes (the Batman movies, the Avengers), fantasy heroes (Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings), and of course, numbers of wartime dramas. And cinema is only one area of culture in which this trend is evident. There are many more examples, none the least of which is the consistent high regard with which our society holds our military veterans.

Suffice it to say, we respond to heroism, we like the way it makes us feel, we even honor it, but the downside of this trend is that very few people actually want – and are willing to pay the price – to emulate it. Spectating from afar is much easier.

But the actual practice of heroism should not be limited to the soldier, the public defender, or, heaven forbid, the actor on the silver screen. Heroic virtue – the consistent placement of others’ lives and well being above our own, especially to the point of our own detriment – is not bound solely to the battlefield dominated by flying bullets. It can, and should be, the guiding force in “normal” life. But that’s the hard part.

It’s hard to live sacrificially when the bullets aren’t flying, when there is no clear occasion to which to rise. It’s much easier to retreat back to good intentions and the mere appreciation of heroic qualities. It’s much easier to “play out” the heroic impulse in a video game or on a movie screen than to actually give up our own pleasures and comfort zones.

After all, who really wants to spend their lives in the real world drowning in blood, sweat, and tears, especially when (unlike the movies) chances are pretty good you’ll never be thanked? Heroism inherently demands a level of discipline and sacrifice that our human natures are simply not comfortable with making.

But this is why I loved Captain America. Steve Rogers didn’t try every enlistment trick in the book so he could be personally recognized. He didn’t join the Army to experience the “glories” of war or because it was what everyone else was doing. He said himself, “I don't want to kill anybody. [But] I don't like bullies; I don't care where they're from.” He knew that the world was dying, and he resolved to make the sacrifices needed to protect others from the “bullies” simply because it was the right thing to do…

I’m afraid that we don’t allow our lives to be daily altered by the simple fact that the world is still dying, both physically and spiritually. I know I certainly don’t – staying in my own comfort zone and looking after #1 is all too easy. But my life is not my own. I wasn't sent here to serve myself. I wasn't meant to take the easy road. I pray God for the grace to start living like it.

Ambushed

I took a long drive this morning to Starbucks and spent most of the trip in reflection mode. I wasn’t ready for the spiritual bomb that was about to be dropped on my heart.

And it wasn’t a “new” truth – I’ve known it for the better part of two decades. But it seemed new this morning, especially since it hit me in a moment of severe and arrogant ingratitude. Bear with me while I explain.

The post-college life, at least for me, seems to be characterized by uncertainty on most every front. I’m currently job searching and finding myself caught between the pragmatic tyranny of pursuing any job in order to put food on the table or holding out for a job that’s at least somewhat closely-aligned with the vocational direction to which (I think) the Lord is calling. I want to take hold of the full responsibilities of manhood, but I don’t want to be solely governed by the pragmatic (a perspective, which, if truthfully expressed, is a lack of faith). Therefore, my life right = waiting.

(And I know we all hate waiting, but I wonder if I hate it more than most. I seem to instantly languish without a motion to some purpose or objective. Really bad at chilling out.)

Waiting on this organization to call me back about an application. Waiting on that person’s assistant to write back about scheduling a definite date and time for a meeting. Waiting to see if preferred housing options will still be available once the job is secured. Waiting on a lot of fairly important situations over which I have very little control, but that could be resolved by a simple word from someone else.

This morning found me blasting this process by naming off the people I wish would “go to bat for me.” Give me a leg up. Show a little interest. Help my cause.

I knew I was complaining, knew I was whining, knew I was being arrogant. So I stopped – and probably gave the heavens my rueful “I’m being a jerk right now, aren't I?” face.

Of course I was. After a few grumbling deep breaths, I begrudgingly began to list off those who HAD gone to bat for me – and I was shocked at the length of the list. It far outstripped the number of those on the previous roster. So I kept thinking and calming down before the rousing, tear-inducing conclusion burst upon my mind like a violent thunderstorm of sweet rain…

Someone has already gone to bat for me, has already taken my place, has already said, “He’s mine.” Christ, King of Heaven and Earth, has advocated my cause on the universe’s grandest stage and secured for all eternity the answer to my greatest of questions and deepest of needs. Why now should I doubt his provision for temporal things when He’s already won the important of all victories? It was humbling, to say the least, but joyous at the same time. My worries didn’t stand a chance against the promises etched by the Holy One into the eternal cosmos.

I can only pray that the refresher course that ambushed me this morning will with each day become less of an assumed spiritual truth and more of a life-altering reality. Jehovah Jireh.

“It is atheism to pray and not wait in hope.”

~Richard Sibbes~

On People-Centered Leadership

I always have to suppress a rant when I see “leaders” refuse to build relationships with their people in the name of maintaining distinctions of authority. It’s one of the worst, most selfish cop-outs in the business. It also happens to be ultimately counterproductive, because it’s simple human nature for followers/team members to respond best to leaders who show a genuine interest in their well-being and in their existence/identity outside of the team itself.

This requires consistent intentionality (I know, it’s my favorite word) on the part of the leader – intentionality that makes interactions count by communicating a general willingness to place the follower’s concerns and needs front and center in his own life. Old military veterans will call it “taking care of your people.” I like to call it service – a little concept that is often lost in our dog-eat-dog, self-seeking modern culture. Easy to talk about, hard to live, and requiring daily, hourly, people-centered choices on the part of the leader.

Leadership that is solely task-oriented isn’t leadership at all – it’s merely management. True leadership acquires its influence through service and focuses on the whole person, not just the role he/she plays in the mission. If you really want to build your team’s productivity, start by building up their persons first.

And get ready for the long haul – trust and loyalty are not earned in a day, but once they are given, they become catalysts for dynamic, cohesive, and unified teams.

Baseball and the Fatherless Generation

I’ve had the chance to catch a lot of baseball in the last week – from the always-exhilarating trip to Busch Stadium in St. Louis to see my Cardinals play, to watching both the Home Run Derby and the MLB All Star Game in their entireties for the first time in probably five or six years. It was refreshing, to say the least.

Baseball has always held a mystical quality for me, as it has for innumerable others. There’s a magic in the game that many have tried to capture in words, yet I wonder if any of us have ever really succeeded. Jason Morgan comes close in this article over at First Things, posted a few months ago on Opening Day. Here are some excerpts:

[B]aseball will, by the unchangeable truth of its geometry and the eternal vectors of its freedoms, speak to you, call you by name, and—not teach—but allow you to remember who you have always been. That’s what draws boys to the game, makes knights of them and tutors them, inducts them in the ways of men that no one can enumerate, or even guess at. It’s the very wordlessness of it all. 

There is a reason that the Vikings imagined their heroes locked in eternal combat in Valhalla. It wasn’t because they were belligerent or bloodthirsty or deranged—no, far from it. It was because they knew that there is goodness in the striving. And it is on the baseball field that we remember this, and understand.

But for me, at least, the game’s magic goes much deeper than just the “goodness in striving.” Perhaps more than any other sport, I cannot think of baseball without simultaneously thinking of my dad. The two are, in my mind, inseparable.

Dad was the one who threw countless hours of batting practice to the three-year-old hacking away with the big red plastic bat that was nearly twice his size. He was the one with the patience to watch hundreds of grounders bounce through my legs in the street beside our house, the one who chased down the tennis balls I cranked across several neighbors’ yards. He was the one who took me to my first major league game at Camden Yards and the one yelling and waving me around first base when I broke up a late-inning no-hitter against the best pitcher and team in the county. Dad was also the one with the audacity to ask me later, “You closed your eyes when you swung, didn’t you?” (Of course I did.)

My dad is my hero – always has been – and I look back now with unspeakable gratitude at the ways he used sports, and particularly baseball, as a medium to teach me perseverance, discipline, teamwork, and a love for the “goodness in striving.” More than that, those countless hours of practice with him serve for me as a sterling example of the need for consistent and unconditional intentionality in fatherhood. I only hope and pray that I can be half the dad he has been and continues to be.  

Moreover, I wish with everything in me that every boy on the planet could have a father like Andy Williams, a dad who would willingly spend every last summer night coaching his son’s games or throwing him batting practice in the back yard, merely for love of his child. Sadly, there are 25 million American young people growing up without a father at all – a tragedy that adversely and indelibly affects many of them for the rest of their lives.

Thank God there are those who have taken up the cause of the “Fatherless Generation” with zeal and courage. In this week’s nonprofit spotlight, I’d encourage you to visit my friends over at The Mentoring Project, a tremendous organization founded six years ago by Donald Miller that seeks to “rewrite the story of the fatherless generation” by “by inspiring and equipping faith communities to mentor fatherless youth.” You can find out more about their work to champion the cause of the fatherless here.

I wish I had time and space to write at length about these subjects – I’m sure the same themes will crop up again soon. For now, at least, let us all pray for those without fathers and then ask what we might do to reverse this tragedy and begin writing stories filled of love, hope, and joy.

A Charge to Keep

A dear friend wrote to me the other day, “Remember, you have something the world longs to understand.” I haven’t been able to get that phrase out of my mind since.

Of course, she was talking about the saving love of Jesus Christ and the good news of His gospel. I’ve long fought the temptation to blog – partly from practical concerns, mostly out of fear of rejection and criticism. I see now that such thoughts were rife with the same insidious pride the Evil One uses to extinguish our courage, squelch our faith, and keep us from ever attempting any kingdom business at all. A humbling lesson, to be sure.

That said, I probably don’t have much real wisdom or experience to share – I am but a naïve recent college grad struggling to transition through a radical calling shift into the responsibilities of independent manhood. But, regardless of my lack of experience, I can share the transcendent gospel of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul exhorted his young protégé in II Tim. 1, "Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord… By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you."

Thank God that the “good deposit” knows not the limits of age, wisdom, or experience.

The starting of this blog comes at a strange confluence in time – it was only two weeks ago that I urged a group of eager young students through a series of lectures at my alma mater to be sober-minded and proactive in keeping the charge of Christ; I wonder now if this blog might be a small way in which I myself can do the same – I certainly pray that it will be so.

A word about this site's focus. Much soul-searching over the last several months has begun to crystalize the specifics of my life’s telos. I'll probably write more later on the details of the above-mentioned calling transition, but for now, here are a few quick, bullet-summaries.

        

1)   Promote faithful generosity (II Cor. 9:6-8)

2)   Foster a spirit of collaboration/unity within the Church (I Cor. 1:10)

3)   Train and encourage godly men (II Tim. 2:2)

4)   Defend the poor and the innocent (Prov. 31:8-9)

Aside from these, you'll probably find an occasional post regarding music, sports, and maybe a funny story or two. In all, I pray you'll see Jesus...

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I am a wanderer, as are all who do not call this world home. But as Tolkien said, not all who wander are lost, and we that are in Christ indeed carry the fire – the hope for which this world is so desperately crying out. I look forward to bearing it with you…

I know time is ticking strong

The load is heavy, the days are long

The stride is steady, it is straight

We will carry the weight

~Andy Zipf, “We Will Carry”~