Explanations

When people ask me why I quit a BA in Creative Ministry, moved to the country and started working in Aged Care, this is what I wish I could say:

Not hero worship in the slightest (although I do admire Bono greatly for his honesty as an artist, person and activist), just putting my money where my mouth is

Priorities?

I don’t even know if this train of thought has anything to do with spirituality, or rather, I am too frazzled to research a clever tie-in with a relevant Bible verse. I was watching a news report late the other night about the Taliban’s activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, watching communities and families torn apart by violence and destruction.

This is in no way meant to cause offence to those affected by the economic downturn, but here are people who live in constant fear for their lives, who don’t know whether they will survive the next day and we are seemingly more concerned with fluctuations on Wall Street. 

Belated Christmas Reflections

Heaven on earth, we need it now...This season of peace, joy and good will is starting to grate on me, slowly decaying my sense of sugar-coated inevitability. As I was cutting up fruit for Christmas lunch on the morning of the 25th, I was watching SKY News which was screening a lengthy report on the continuing work Medecine Sans Frontiers is doing in Southern Sudan, a region wracked by starvation and insidious religious violence. As infant children cried out in hunger, my sharp stainless steel knife sliced through mangoes and rockmelons, while a little girl was being treated for serious injuries sustained after being knocked down by a car, while the sick and starving walk for hours and days in suffocating heat I wash my sticky fingers and wipe the bench down, scraping watermelon seeds into my hand and throwing them into the bin.

Sitting in Church next to my mother later that morning, I asked myself where He is in all of this, is there really any balance in such horrifying contradictions? Is it fair that while I cut up fruit others starve? There is this seed of hope inside me, this instinctive knowledge that he is food for the hungry, that the currents of his love run strong and pure around the weak but I find it so hard to overcome my anger, my thinly veiled bitterness at the self-centred tilt of churchianity, the inability to comprehend that he has asked us to be his hands and his heart.

We sit in our pews or plush chairs saying the Old Testament points to Jesus, the New Testament points to Jesus then proceed to ignore him completely, preferring to listen to that which does not challenge us directly, sculpting his words into a more acceptable form. Where is our covenant with the poor? Why do we let them wallow in such squalid conditions, feebly explaining away our inaction, forgetting what John Donne said about none of us being an island. We only diminish our own souls when we let another needlessly slip from life.

Charity > see Love

Please read this article first:
Harvey: charity not so sweet

This article makes me mad enough to want to gather together my disjointed thoughts on the subject of charity (so I apologise if this little rant is a bit on the inarticulate side). Thankfully this is not an attitude shared by all in Australia’s corporate community, but it is more than a little disheartening, and perhaps more than a little ire-raising that such negative attitudes towards the poor are still present within society. I suppose this shouldn’t be so surprising, considering the undeniable lean towards a meritocratic society that has taken place within Australia during the last 10-15 years.

At its roots, a Meritocracy is full of lofty and socially beneficial ideas, however, in his book Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton examines how this seemingly egalitarian system becomes distorted into attitudes that are more akin to Social Darwinism. The distortion begins when one assumes everyone has started on a level playing field: that no-one has been abused in childhood or born into poverty, that students from poorer socio-economic backgrounds have the same access to quality education as those in wealthy areas, that a parent’s illness or death will not place extra stress and responsibility on an individual – the list has endless possibilities. Therefore, in a meritocracy, it is assumed that the talented rise to the top and the ‘losers’ remain on the bottom, seemingly where they belong. In the end it is just another way to marginalise the poor, but now because of the idea of a level playing field, they can be acceptably regarded as morally corrupt, they are no longer human beings worth helping, but a useless drain on society. Sadly, this attitude has also pervaded some areas of the institutionalised church.

Mr. Harvey said he believes in “developing people to their potential,” what I want to know is how is feeding and clothing a human being reduced to their lowest not developing their potential? I find it impossible to fathom how helping someone who cannot help themselves is not edifying to them, and does not fill them with hope and a sense of their potential and innate value as a human being who in turn feels they have something of worth to contribute to society. Are we not all valuable to society purely by being alive? Just because theirs may be the lowest rung of the ladder does not make it any less important. Are they to be deprived of the chance to climb it simply because they have fallen off?

Why must we always expect something in return? The idea of charity is that it’s not a transaction where goods or behaviours or lifestyles can be purchased in exchange for a hefty sum. In fact, I was curious to learn that the word charity derives its meaning from the Latin word caritas, which meant, among other thing, ‘Dearness, fondness, affection; love founded upon esteem’. How can we truly offer charity - as we now know it – if we cannot hold in esteem the lives of those whom we wish to help? Charity is more than money, it’s not even really about money, charity is an attitude, a way of life, and if it is not grounded in love we are wasting our time.

I like the way one of my search results at Bible Gateway seems to sum it up: Charity>see Love.