Helping the Poor, Personally

Helping the poor at a distance, in the abstract sense, is easy. Giving a dime here, a loonie there, is not hard.

Real charity is a labour of love, that requires personal sacrifice, inconvenience, and pain.

It is a misconception that in utopia there is no pain. If utopia is living life to the fullest, that it is living with pain for a purpose, not as the ancient stoics or modern ascetics who seek out pain as proof of the strength of their will. That would be self-serving. It is living with pain for a greater purpose, of serving the whole, of contributing to society at a personal cost.

On the other hand, Christ has promised that we will not be burdened with a yoke that is too hard to bear. "My yoke is easy." That is what Christ said. Instead of the thousands, tens of thousands of regulations and laws that the priests used to enslave the people, the Gospel liberates us with two simple, profound, and far reaching commandments: To love, to the point of giving up one's life. But Christ also taught us to be wise as scorpions while being harmless as doves. To know the appropriate time for love, for tears, for celebration, is to echo the wisdom of Soloman.

The poor will always be with us. We need to judge for ourselves, each according to one's own conscience, what is appropriate at that moment in one's life. Not everyone should be like St. Francis, taking up a vow of poverty. And giving has to be evaluated in terms of its effectiveness, not just as a way to sooth one's aching conscience. To give for the purpose of helping is greater than to give for the purpose of one's own salvation, or gain.

Instead of giving a dime here or there, a loonie here or there, is it not also more effective to give one's time by volunteering at a homeless shelter, or food bank? Vancouver has an innovation that is an interesting compromise. Instead of encouraging panhandlers by giving them cash, people are told to put money in a meter specifically used to accept donations for a local food bank. Anyone can go there for food. This eliminates the waste of panhandlers taking their money to buy drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes. It is responsible giving. There is also a new program being considered, to provide free alcohol at the food banks, and shelters, to encourage the homeless and needy to seek help there. When we give with a loving heart that says we do it because we are needed, instead of an arrogant one that says we do it because we are good, God provides ways that we would not find ourselves.

It is a common mistake of the kind-hearted to give too much, to become too personally involved. It is imperative that government agencies, as bureaucratic and cold as they may be at times, can provide the coordination and supervision which will prevent both "burn-out" of the giver, and the abuse of the recipients, as in the case of those infamouse residential schools and foster children.

In the case of the most neediest of all in society, the addicts, the chronically and terminally ill, those lacking the most fundamental skills to survive in today's society, indeed, any society, only the strongest political will of the people, the strongest conviction of government, and the most generous support of the richest in society, can lift them from a state of despair to utopia. Instead of charitable organizations wasting thousands in advertisement and collecting from hundreds of thousands of people, is it not more effective to have one or two generous souls to take on a single cause, donate sufficient funding to support the operating cost of that cause for an entire year, and then, with annual financial audit, ensure that the money is well spent?

Giving indiscriminately may be soothing to our conscience, but it hardly makes a dent in poverty.

Utopia is not built by the good and smart and strong, but with the loving hearts of the willing, and the strong hands of the humble and the support of the generous rich who gives not for their own salvation but the good of the whole. They have nothing to prove.