Charity did
not have its origin in the world of antiquity:
- Plato (427-327 BC) said that a
poor man (usually a slave) was who was no longer able to work because of
sickness should be left to die. He even praised Aesculapius, the famous
Greek physician, for not prescribing medicine to those he knew were
preoccupied with their illness (Republic 3.406d – 410a). The Roman
philosopher Plautus (254 – 184 BC) argued, “You do a beggar bad service by
giving him food and drink; you lose what you give and prolong his life for
more misery” (Trinummus 2.338-39) Thucydides (ca. 460-44 BC), the honored
historian of ancient Greece, cites an example of the plague that struck
Athens during the Peloponnesian War in 430 BC. Many of the sick and dying
of the Athenians were deserted. (Alvin Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, 128-29)
The Romans
did the same until they were shamed into changing their ways by Christians who
took in the Roman sick. This inspired their enemy, Emperor Julian the Apostate
to say:
- The impious Galileans relieve
both their own poor and ours…It is shameful that ours should be so
destitute of assistance. (Epistles of Julian 49)
The Christian
faith was characterized by the other-centered-ness of Christ-followers.
According to B.B. Warfield, Christians built:
- Hospitals and asylums and refuges
for the sick, the miserable and the afflicted grow like heaven-bedewed blossoms in its path. Woman, whose
equality with man Plato considered a sure mark of social disorganization,
has been elevated; slavery has been driven from civilized ground; literacy
has been given by Christian missionaries, under the influence of the
Bible. (“The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield”)
Forgetfulness, regarding the difference that Christ has made, has
dulled our confidence and worldview. Schmidt reveals that:
- In the
United States
the spirit of charity in voluntary associations is greater among church
members than among those who are not. According to a nationwide study
conducted in 1987. Those belonging to Christian churches also give more
financially to nonchurch charities, and they give a higher proportion of
their income to such charities. (137)
Schmidt claims that this is the heritage of several hundred years of
vigorous church preaching on charity:
- With
these early American precedents, it is not surprising that astute foreign
observers noted that the United States has, virtually from its inception,
been a shining example of a charity-minded country…When Alexis de
Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831, he astutely observed: “If
an accident happens on the highway, everybody hastens to help the
sufferer; if some great and sudden calamity befalls a family, the purses
of a thousand strangers are at once willingly opened and small but
numerous donations pour in to relieve their distress.” (138)
In the
1890’s, Amos Warner identified the churches as “the most powerful agent in
inducing people to give.” Even as late as the 1940’s, Gunnar Myrdal remarked:
- “No country has so many cheerful
givers as America.”
He attributed this cheerful giving, or “Christian neighborliness,” as he
called it, to the “influence of the churches.” (138)
Historically,
charity and Jesus are inseparable. In The
Charity Organization Movement in the United States, Frank Dekker Watson
concluded that:
- It is difficult to understand the
great influence that charity exerted on the acts of man unless one
realizes how religion, especially Christianity, has reinforced by its
teachings the instinct of sympathy and altruism. (12)
Schmidt
claims that this “cheerful giving” is still among us to some degree:
- The amount that they gave to the
poor and needy in 1991 amounted to $650 per American household. And in
1998 American church members contributed more than $24 billion to their
churches, amounting to $408 per member.
What has
given the West its incredible vision and vitality? Carlton Hayes states,
- From the wellsprings of Christian
compassion our Western civilization has drawn its inspiration, and its
sense of duty, for feeding the poor, giving drink to the thirsty, looking
after the homeless… (Christianity
and Western Civilization, 56)
Schmidt
writes that before the advent of Christianity there were “no established
medical institutions for nursing and ministering to the general populace”:
- As the growth of hospitals spread
across the nation, it was predominantly local churches and Christian
denominations that built them…[However], the Christian identity and
background of many American hospitals is now being erased.
- The physician and medical
historian Fielding Garrison once remarked, “The chief glory of medieval
medicine was undoubtedly in the organization of hospitals and sick
nursing, which had its organization in the teachings of Christ.” Thus,
whether it was establish hospitals, creating mental institutions,
professionalizing medical nursing, or founding the Red Cross, the
teachings of Christ lie behind all of these humanitarian achievements. It
is an astonishing mystery that the Greeks, who built large temples…never
built any hospitals. (166-67)
The same was
true for Rome, prompting historian Philip Schaff to assert that , “The old
Roman world was a world without charity.” Schmidt therefore concludes:
- Every time that charity and
compassion are seen in operation, the credit goes to Jesus Christ. It is
he who inspired his early followers to give and to help the unfortunate,
regardless of their race, religion, class or nationality. (148)
Historian and
physician Fielding Garrison recognized that “the credit of ministering to human
suffering on an extended scale belongs to Christianity.” (An Introduction of the History of Medicine, 118).
Today, we credit
secularists with compassion, even though they have replaced joyful and
empowering giving with enforced “giving” in the form of impersonal entitlement
programs. However, Sociologist Alvin Schmidt reminds us that they “had grown up
under the two-thousand-year-old umbrella of Christianity’s compassionate
influence” (131). Had they instead been Romans, their sentiments would have
been very different. Likewise, Josiah Stamp claims:
- Christian ideals have permeated
society until non-Christians, who claim to live a “decent life” without
religion, have forgotten the origin of the very content and context of
their “decency.” (Christianity and
Economics, 69)
Secularists
are quick to claim credit for these advancements. However, historian Rodney
Stark contradicts their claim:
- Rather, the West is said to have
surged ahead precisely as it overcame religious barriers…Nonsense, The success
of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious
foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.”
(“The Victory of Reason: How
Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success,” xi)
Indeed, we
find a direct connection between the moral and material rise of the West and
the teachings of the Bible:
- Therefore, as God's chosen
people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and
forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as
the Lord forgave you. (Col.
3:12-13)
What we
believe matters. Vishal Mangalwadi’s observations about his native India
demonstrate the truth of the adage – “the way we think is the way we live.” Our
philosophies and worldviews are the foundations upon which we build our houses,
whether of caring, chaos, or confusion. This very apparent truth can be
demonstrated in any area of human endeavor. To illustrate the causal power of
our philosophies, let’s just take the area of medicine.
Mangalwadi
states that India had pioneered a number of ancient medical advances including
cataract surgery and plastic surgery. However, the study and practice of
medicine enjoyed only a brief duration in India. Mangalwadi explains that
medicine and even compassion lacked an adequate rationale in his India. This is
partially because India’s
doctors were also regarded as “gurus” who couldn’t be questioned:
- This attitude toward knowledge
could not create and sustain an academic culture where peers and students
could challenge, reject, and improve the medical techniques they had
received. Thus, India
had intellectual giants but our religious tradition failed to build
academic communities. Individual genius, knowledge, and excellence in
technology are insufficient to build a medical center. (The Book that Made Your World, 311)
Mangalwadi
also claims that Indian religions couldn’t provide an adequate rationale for
compassion – a necessary pre-condition for the practice of medicine:
- A person’s suffering was believed
to be a result of her or his karma (deeds) in a previous life. In other
words, suffering was cosmic justice. To interfere with cosmic justice is
like breaking into a jail and setting a prisoner free. If you cut short
someone’s suffering, you would actually add to his suffering because he
would need to come back to complete his due quota of suffering. (312)
Although
Buddhism says a lot about compassion, according to Magalwadi, its message is
conflicted:
- The Buddha had to renounce his
own wife and son to find enlightenment. He saw attachment as a cause of
suffering. Detachment, therefore, became an important religious
virtue…Those whose commitment was to their own spiritual enlightenment did
not have the motivation to develop a scientific medical tradition. (312)
The Buddhist understanding
of “detachment” also led them to detach from the sufferings of others. Our
ideas have wings, and the Biblical ideas flew the highest, according to
Magalwadi:
- The idea that the state should
pay surgeons to serve the poor came to India with the Bible.
Secularism hijacked the biblical idea, but it provides only the form, not
the spirit. It is possible to bring a mango plant from India and grow it in Minnesota. One might even get a few
crops. But under normal circumstances, the tree will not survive and
certainly not reproduce. (314)
Secularism
might be able to grow a mango tree in its own soil, but will it survive for
long? Will compassion survive without its Christian roots? Indian medicine
wasn’t able to survive in its cognitive climate. Secularism claims to promote
compassion, but will it survive once its other-centered Christian underpinning is
removed?
It doesn’t
seem that secularism has a firm enough basis for compassion. For one thing, it
doesn’t have a high view of humanity. Materialism and naturalism – components
of today’s secularism – regard humanity as just another animal, albeit more
intelligent. However, some of us – babies, the mentally handicapped, and the
delusional - aren’t as intelligent as some animals. Consequently, these are
becoming increasingly expendable in the West. Who else will then become
expendable! Inevitably, materialism will breed elitism.
Besides, if
we are regarded as no more than cosmically-purposeless animals, then there
remains no reason to treat us as more than animals. Consequently, in secular
societies, there was little hesitation to exterminate dissidents and “malignant
elements” as we would a mosquito.
Moral
relativism, the child of materialism, eliminates the possible existence of any
human or unalienable rights. Morals simply become human inventions which are
granted and rescinded at will, according to the agenda of the secular State.
Secular
multi-culturalism is born out of moral relativism. It maintains that we have no
rock-solid basis upon which to judge other cultures or even to defend our own.
Therefore, in contradiction to its purported values, the secular West has
allowed the establishment of Sharia courts, which render judgments against the
very rights the West has committed itself to uphold.
Such moral
confusion can provide no adequate foundation for the rights that we enjoy – the
rights that have promoted the West.
Malcolm
Muggeridge, the late British journalist and former secular humanist, observed:
- “I’ve spent a number of years in
India and Africa where I found much righteous endeavor undertaken by
Christians of all denominations; but I’ve never, as it happens, came across
a hospital or orphanage run by the Fabian [communist] society, or a
humanist leper colony.” (314)
Why not? Their
undergirding philosophy/religion fails to support such structures, unless they
are politically expedient. Why is it that Christianity embodies the very values
that promote human welfare? Perhaps they came from Above.
As we watch
Christian values continue to erode, we should also expect to see the erosion of
everything that is based upon these values – relationships, trust, cooperation,
diligence, business, and even science. The crimes and financial scandals of today will come to look like
nursery games compared to those of tomorrow.
