Fasting or Monetary Incentives: The Extremes of Charity and Justice

This year, as a lenten practice, I am reading a daily reflection about a different saint each day.  This morning, it was about Sharbel Makhluf, a 19th century Lebanese monk who spent the last half of his life as a hermit. He is known for both his fasting and his care for others. He would leave his hermitage routinely to go care for villagers. The prayer suggested for today is "God of our fasting, show us how our hunger unites with those in need of bread, how letting go of life's comforts can aid those lacking necessities for life."  

Then I turned to Dan Pallotta's daily hit from his book "Uncharitable."  Dan is the founder of Pallotta Teamworks, was a pioneer in fundraising via AIDSRides/Cancer Walks, and was an inspiring visionary. I still remember clearly the first time I heard him, in July 1996 on the first day of the Twin Cities-Chicago AIDSRide, challenging everyone that we could end the AIDS pandemic within a decade. I think he was right in the vision, but unfortunately and ironically, there was too much money invested in and to be made from AIDS to allow for the creative innovations to make it happen. 

Today's "hit": "An ambitious reporter puts a sentimental photo of a child with leukemia in the newspaper and asks, 'How can you be so cruel as to want to earn a profit from his situation?' I put up the photos of a million others like him and ask, How can you be so shortsighted as to deny me and a thousand others the monetary incentive it would take to devote our life’s work to helping these children? You have just robbed them of our talents. What if your moral compass is wrong?"  

These two represent the polar ends of the spectrum of the cultural and institutional realities of the social justice/charity/advocacy world. At William Penn House (where we work for beans), we get groups that want us to set up service programs for them but sometimes they have trouble seeing why they should pay us a fee as they are doing charity. I would love to double the Workcamp fee so that WPH could have a cushion, a bit of security and I would be able to perhaps save a bit for the future. And I see many colleagues in the field in much the same boat.  It sometimes feels like because we work in this field, we are expected to live like St. Makhluf.  

On the other hand, I see why people are concerned about the money made in charity work. I see and know people making well over 6 figures (some more around half a million).  They are happy; the donors - often the deep pockets of the Clinton/Gates/Bono realm - are happy. The workers fly in high circles. They are very good at raising money, creating good images, marketing, etc, but are the donors really getting the best bang for the buck? Do people enter these jobs fueled by their passions for the cause, or by the lure of the paycheck? How many dollars are spent in meetings to no end? Even being a part of the DC HIV Prevention Planning Group, a non-paid position, I suspect that we meet to meet, but actually do very little. I'm working on that one. 

It really boils down to the tension between ego and grace. For me, personally, I don't think I could ever live the life of Makhluf, Francis, or countless others. Even in my daily life, I stand in awe at the life of grace of some of the people I know. In one case, this life of having and needing little (and this is with someone who gave up much to do his ministry) is essential.  And yet, I firmly believe that the more one has attachments to things that can be bought with wealth, the more the ego gets fed, and this inevitably is a problem.  Just look at how Dan's quote ends.  He basically is saying that if I don't get paid what I want, it's your fault for robbing people of my gifts. The immorality is yours.  

It's fair enough to do what we can so that people can make a living, and I think it's fair enough to negotiate what an equitable wage is, and what is too much, and through this tension we can get the biggest bang for the buck. To me it boils down to this: fair and decent wages are good - perhaps essential, but getting rich off the backs of the poor and the sick is not. 

Skin in the Game

"'Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven' (Matt. 5:10)... With this beatitude Jesus thoroughly rejects the false timidity of those Christians who evade any kind of suffering for a just, good, and true cause because they supposedly could have a clear conscience only if they were to suffer for the explicit confession of faith in Christ.  Jesus cares for those who suffer for a just cause even if it is not exactly for the confession of his name."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

Yesterday, I wrote about how change at the micro-level (meaning, starting with me/us) is a vital component to bringing about macro-level change.  Then I read the above reading from my daily Bonhoeffer.  For modern day purposes, I am not sure I agree with the notion of being persecuted.  Persecution connotes harassment and oppression.  Certainly these can be a part of the consequence of standing up for a just cause, such as with the lunch counter sit-ins of the 1960's where people risked their lives in the name of equality, and suffered great harm, while responding with remarkable non-violence.  To me, this is a far-cry from what we often see today with protests so highly orchestrated that there is no risk or sacrifice, or calls for boycott that ask for nothing of the consumer. An exception might be preachers in Indiana who perform same-gender marriage if the state constitutionally bans gay marriage, as these preachers would face possible imprisonment.  

For me, however, the call is not to seek to be persecuted, but to put skin in the game - to make sacrifices, take risks, to be the change.  This means more than championing an issue, but to build relationships across divides. This means being willing to be vulnerable, to be uncertain, to act with doubt.  This means making the sacrifice while practicing kindness.  

I fail at doing this miserably and daily.  It is the humility of this that keeps me from feeling that I have the right to tell others what to do.  Instead, I hope to walk the journey with people.  I certainly don't want to seek out persecution as a validation of my sacrifice, but I am willing to be made uncomfortable, and to try and do things differently.  If we want the world to be a kinder, more compassionate and caring society where people are not so ego-driven, we have to start with ourselves.  For me, this starts with the willingness to make sacrifices, to be uncomfortable, to practice kindness, to do with less, and every day to try a little bit more.  It certainly doesn't end there, and just doing this is not enough, but the change won't happen without it.  

Bonhoeffer, Community and Quakerism

"Community" is one of the oft-cited Quaker testimonies.  This morning, in my daily Bonhoeffer ritual,  the writing was about community.  While I often try to adapt some of the language of Bonhoeffer to a less Trinitarian Christian message, this one is a stretch, so I'm going to leave it as is, relying that "Christ" for me means an unabiding love for and deep faith in the goodness of all, and the call to live in grace.  So, here goes:

"Because Christ stands between me and another, I must not long for unmediated community with that person.  As only Christ was able to speak to me in such a way that I was helped, so others too can only be helped by Christ alone.  However, this means that I must release others from my attempts to control, coerce, and dominate them with my love.  In their freedom from me, other persons want to be loved for who they are, as those for whom Christ became a human being, died, and rose again as those for whom Christ won the forgiveness of sins and prepared eternal live.  Because Christ has long since acted decisively for other Christians, before I could begin to act, I must allow them the freedom to be Christ's.  They should encounter me only as the persons they already are in Christ.  This is the meaning of the claim that we can encounter others only through the mediation of Christ.  Self-centered love constructs its own image of other persons, about what they are and what they should become.  It takes the life of the other person into its own hands.  Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person as seen from the perspective of Jesus Christ.  It is the image Jesus Christ has formed and wants to form in all people."  - from Life Together, pg. 43-44

So much of this resonates for what has long attracted me to Quakerism - the belief that there is that of God/innate goodness in all people.  It also reminds me of the Benedictine "radical hospitality" and the Franciscan spirit to sow love where there is anger and to seek to understand rather than be understood, both of which are vital aspects to my own faith and practice - or at least to my faith, and hopefully a part of my practice.

To live with this faith, we must challenge ourselves to resist our impulses to coerce others to see the folly of their ways - political, religious, social - but to instead believe that when we invite others into our lives as they are, and vice-versa allow ourselves to be as we are, we are living our faith.  I have certainly been on the receiving end of this, especially when I have been welcomed in places I did not expect - such as when I lived in the more conservative Wheaton, IL, or when I go to places like the Southeast White House where I am frequently in the minority with regards to my faith (more universalist than Trinitarian), stance on social issues, and sexual orientation.  It is times like this that I really get what Bonhoeffer is talking about here.  I only hope that I can be that I can always be better at doing this for others.