Rich, Greedy and Blessed: God Wants to Save Us, Too

Last week, I published a piece in this space called "Ending Poverty With Global Christianity's Phantom Trillion," in which I noted that the global annual income of Christians and Christian institutions worldwide exceeds $10 trillion and that a mere 10 percent of that, if given to the right kinds of direct action organizations (Christian or otherwise), could eradicate the most dangerous and preventable forms of poverty on the planet.

I've been very grateful for the responses I've received here, on Twitter and elsewhere. By and large, people in my age group (I was born in 1980) and younger are saying "amen" to idea that the time to fundamentally change the way Christians think about giving is long overdue. Folks from some of the amazing organizations I mentioned last week have tweeted or emailed their encouragement and the shared belief that we, the Church, could actually eradicate extreme global poverty if we simply had the will.

And the agreement doesn't end with young Gen-Xers and our Gen-Y friends. Across generations, traditions, doctrinal and political differences, and other bogus barriers we so often use to keep ourselves from having to do the hard work of justice and reconciliation, many Christians understand that the time has simply come to get serious about curing the curable disease of gross inequity.

The time has simply come to say that clean water for everyone matters to us because everyone matters to God, that no child should die from mosquito bites that could have been prevented for the kind of money we don't even bother pulling from our couches. The time has come to say that no matter what you tithe to your church or denomination, $60 to plant 10 fruit trees in a community that gravely needs them is a bargain, or that charity: water's $12 economic impact for every dollar given is the stuff of loaves and fishes here and now.

"But Jesus said the poor will always be with us." I've heard this more than once this week. It's one of the archetypical responses from people very much concerned with the "more spiritual" ends of the church and one of our classically tragic adventures in missing the point. I don't believe for a second that Jesus wants anything less from us than a real commitment of our time, talent and treasure toward ending the immense human suffering and accompanying evil that gross inequality and extreme poverty breed. Do you? Is this not the same Jesus who told the rich young ruler to sell everything and give his proceeds to the poor? When will comfortable Christians realize that we're all rich young rulers? Visit Compassion International's Who Are The Joneses project if you don't believe me when I say that if you can afford the device and the data plan you're using to read this, you're probably wealthier than at least 90 percent of the world.

"But I give through my church." I gave at the office, too. But how good is your church or your denomination at getting money to where it's needed most? How much of your church tithe goes to administrative expenses? How much of your special offerings for specific anti-poverty projects goes to administrative expenses? How efficient are the organs of your denomination? How much do they spend to raise every dollar? Find this information. Charity Navigator provides it for groups like World Vision (it costs them 7 cents to raise a dollar), Save The Children, Compassion International, charity: water, Children International and so on. Are your churches and your denominations more transparent and efficient than these organizations? Maybe they are, but my hunch is that they aren't. Find out.

And look, I'm not saying stop giving money to your church. That's important. I work in a church. I get all of that. But if you're choosing between buying a dairy goat that might mean the difference between hunger and sustainable nourishment for a family in the Horn of Africa or the Parking Lot Fund at All Saints Mainline Evangelical Tabernacle House of God, well, the choice is clear, isn't it? Is it? (Yes.)

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? (Yes.) If your tithe or double tithe knock you down a peg or two in the social strata, thank your Father in heaven for the opportunity to clothe and feed and save the lives of people you will never meet in places you will never visit with names you can't pronounce. If bringing the Kingdom of God to earth in tangible ways isn't a priority for wealthy Christians, what the hell is?

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in." That's Jesus, not Karl Marx or Nancy Pelosi. In the larger context of this quote from from the Gospel of Matthew, these things aren't options or good ideas or lofty works. They are the brick and mortar pieces of God's Kingdom, here and now. They are what God requires, and it's only when I begin to think about how little we do in response that the concept of hell makes any sense to me. And it's then I also realize the real profundity of grace, that God, in God's stubborn Godness, wants to save us, too.

And so we have an opportunity to change the world, and an obligation. Not just we the wealthy Church, but we the mingled body of marginalized and marginalizer, we the sinners and saints, we the poor and we the poor in spirit. In the sharing of our global wealth in a global context, we find a chance for our own healing, a test of our own faithfulness, and the promise of abounding grace in the lives we touch and the lives that touch us back.

It's almost too much, isn't it, this concept that we will be blessed by our giving? We should do the work we're called to because we're called to do it, yes, but on a more basic level, we should do it because it's right. I'm almost ashamed to say that we the wealthy can find our own strains of redemption in the sharing of our wealth when our relative greed has rendered us so basically undeserving.

But powerful as we may be, we're thankfully not the masters of God's economy. In God's stubborn system, God calls us from the brink with faithful service to the people God is most concerned with serving. It's almost absurd, isn't it, that this grace is there for we the wealthy, too? Absurd and foolish? Yes, the Gospel in a nutshell: radical grace, radical service, radical absurdity from the vantage of political, social and economic systems that keep failing. And a radical dependence on the terms of God's radical provision.

Lord, help us.

 

Follow Christopher Cocca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ccocca

Comments

[Mimi Rothschild]

05:50 PM on 08/03/2011

"Yes, the Gospel in a nutshell: radical grace, radical service, radical absurdity from the vantage of political, social and economic systems that keep failing. And a radical dependence on the terms of God's radical provision.

Lord, help us."

WOW! AMEN! Keep writing!

Mimi Rothschild
www.LearningByGrace.org

[Bobrobert]

08:48 AM on 08/03/2011

Interesting...

:-)

[powercosmic]

02:45 PM on 08/01/2011

Calling all Chr#istianz !!!

Tithing does not help the poor, so don't do it. Instead give your money directly to secular organizations that feed the hungry, or BETTER YET go on down to the grocery store buy some groceries and anonymously deliver to a struggling family right in your own town.

Churches don't help the poor, that is why there are so many poor people, Churches instead push a right-wing agenda they serve the interests of Big Oil and Wall Street, that is why there are so many poor people. It is also why Americans have voted in the Corporatist Candidates who ran on the LOWER TAXES = JOBS (Not)

Lower Taxes equals more political influence for billionaires and big oil.

[mdanenburg]

05:11 PM on 08/02/2011

Whaaat??!

[Bobrobert]

08:48 AM on 08/03/2011

Silly wabbit...

Find the truth ... read your bible.

Find the truth ... associate with Christians that follow the bible - be it Catholic or Protestant or Uncle Jim...

God love you.. rejoice..

:-)

[powercosmic]

11:05 AM on 08/03/2011

Hey I'm glad that the delusion works for you, it does not work for me, and clearly it does not work for Chr#istians. Since they chafe at the idea of Children learning anything that isn't in the Bible, like Science, Critical Thinking, Evolution, Astronomy, etc.

The only thing that the Bible does teach is hate and how NOT to think and engage in REALITY.

My aim is exactly the opposite of what you suggest, my aim to get as many Chr#istians to stop believing the nonsense that is in the bible. Its a tough fight, an uphill fight, but we're making progress.

In 1988 90% of Americans self-identified as Chr#istians of one sort or another.

In 2011 only 72%...now that is something to rejoice about!

[taoistpunk]

02:33 PM on 08/01/2011

amen.

you know you can't really believe in Jesus without being a fan of Robinhood...

for all of those who want an american theocracy, i'm willing to meet half-way. keep your doctrines, but bring the good works.

[Cindbird]

01:27 PM on 08/01/2011

I don't think people realize just how small an amount charitable organizations will accept. Most will accept as little as 5$ or 10$. Charitable giving transcends religious belief. It's realizing that we are all brothers and sisters. A child dying of starvation in the Horn of Africa today, could easily have been MY child. And in some ways IS my child. That's why we give.

[Grada3784]

11:28 AM on 08/01/2011

Any recommendations on charities that get the most oomph for the buck. I get very discouraged by charities that seem to only fund raise for the sake of fundraising and the ones that indulge in poverty porn.

I'm also not crazy about churches that seem more political front organizations than interested in being churches.

[Cindbird]

01:32 PM on 08/01/2011

Doctors without Borders www.doctorswithoutborders.org . They supply emergency medical attention in natural disasters and refugee camps all over the world. They assist in world-wide immunizations as well. You can go to their web site to learn more. They are currently the only medical help available in the Dadaab Refugee camp.

[Grada3784]

04:14 PM on 08/01/2011

Thanks for the lead.

[Timothy Glenn]

02:07 PM on 08/01/2011

Compassion International, which is mentioned in this article, is a great ministry that learned a long time ago that the way to change a nation's future is to start with its children. They help over 1.2 million children in 26 countries...feeding them, educating them, protecting them. Without their help, how many of these kids would die from unclean water, diarrhea, malaria, etc? And they are in the top 1% of all charities, as rated by Charity Navigator--recieving their top rating 10 years in a row! (Basically saying they spend their money wisely, efficiently...and truthfully.) Check 'em out at compassion.com You can sponsor a child in a developing country, rescue babies in mothers or help send a young student living in poverty to university.

[Grada3784]

04:15 PM on 08/01/2011

Thanks for the lead.

[mrkurtzhedead]

11:27 AM on 08/01/2011

Gimme, gimme, and gimme. The holy trinity of religion for millennia. Strange thing: God is all knowing, all powerful, always present, in all time and all places but, dang, somehow he's just not good with money! So he needs you and he just can't be bothered with taxes.

[ProofRequired]

10:40 AM on 08/01/2011

Why don't we just charge churches and other religious institutions property tax and end all debt for all time?

[mdanenburg]

05:17 PM on 08/02/2011

Because it would put more money in the hands of government, with all the evils that would generate.

[ProofRequired]

11:11 PM on 08/02/2011

Instead of giving up on government and the absolute necessities it provides like infrastructure, police, fire, schools, medicare, social security, defense and anything else that we need, why don't we elect the type of people that should be running things and helping Americans? You don't give up on everything you do personally, I hope, you work to fix it if it isn't working out the way you want. We should do the same with our government. It is there to take care of the the things that we cannot take care of privately; i.e., anything that shouldn't turn a profit.

[Bobrobert]

08:56 AM on 08/03/2011

:-)

God will provide...

:-)