CHARITY AND COMPASSION: THE LEGACY OF CHRIST

 Illustration by Chihui Yong

Charity did not have its origin in the world of antiquity: 

·       Plato (427-327 BC) said that a poor man (usually a slave) 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. (Schmidt, Alvin. How Christianity Changed the World. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001, 128-29) 

The Romans did the same until they were shamed into changing their ways by Christians who, during a plague, 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-centeredness of Christ-followers. According to B.B. Warfield: 

·       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. (Warfield, B.B. The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield. 2003) 

Regarding the difference that Christ has made in the world, forgetfulness has dulled our confidence and worldview, but these are the facts: 

·       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. (Schmidt, 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.” (Ibid., 138) 

In the 1890’s, Amos Warner identified 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.” (Ibid., 138) 

Historically, charity and Jesus are inseparable. Frank Dekker Watson has 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. (Watson, Frank Dekker. The Charity Organization Movement in the United States, 12) 

Schmidt claims that this “cheerful giving” is still among us, to some degree: 

·       The amount that they [Christian families] 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. (Schmidt, 138)

What has given the West its incredible vision and vitality? Carlton Hayes offers this: 

·       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…(Hayes, Carlton. Christianity and Western Civilization. The Raymond Fred West Memorial Lectures at Stanford University, 1954, 56) 

Here is another quotation from Schmidt regarding the profound influence of Christianity on the advances of medicine in our world:

·       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 establishing 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. (Schmidt, 166-167) 

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. (Schmidt, 148) 

Historian and physician Fielding Garrison recognized that…

·       …the credit of ministering to human suffering on an extended scale belongs to Christianity. (Garrison, Fielding. Introduction to the History of Medicine, 1921, 118). 

Writing about the status and origins of medicine a bit closer to home, Schmidt writes that in the United States, 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. (Schmidt, 166-167)

Today, secularists should be credited for having some compassion. However, we should remember that they are trying to replace the joyful and empowering giving of the Christian church with the enforced “giving” in the form of impersonal entitlement programs. Schmidt reminds us that the secularists that enacted the social programs that were designed to help the poor “…had grown up under the two-thousand-year-old umbrella of Christianity’s compassionate influence” (Ibid., 131). 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.” (Stamp, Josiah. Christianity and Economics. Facsimile Publisher, 1939, 69) 

Secularists are quick to claim credit for these advances that have affected every area of Western culture and society. Historian Rodney Stark contradicts this claim: 

·       …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. (Stark, Rodney. The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. New York: Random House, 2005, xi) 

Indeed, there is 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. (Colossians 3:12-13) 

v   v   v

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 the “structures” we build are characterized by caring, or by chaos and destruction, is based upon what we believe. This very apparent truth can be demonstrated in any area of human endeavor. To illustrate the causal power of our philosophies, let’s consider the area of medicine. 

Mangalwadi has reported that India had pioneered a number of medical advances, including cataract surgery and plastic surgery. However, the fruitful study and practice of medicine enjoyed only a relatively brief span of time in India. Mangalwadi explains that medicine and even compassion lacked an adequate rationale in his homeland. Why was this so? The answer is, at least in part, because India’s doctors were also regarded as “gurus” who could not 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. (Mangalwadi, Vishal. The Book that Made Your World. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2011, 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 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. (Ibid., 312) 

Although Buddhism says a lot about compassion, according to Mangalwadi, 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. (Ibid., 312) 

It is easy to see how the Buddhist understanding of “detachment” also led its adherents to detach from the sufferings of others. 

Our ideas have wings, and the Biblical ideas flew the highest, according to Mangalwadi:

·       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. (Ibid., 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 fully survive once its other-centered Christian underpinnings are 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. As a consequence, there are some among us who are becoming increasingly expendable in the West. Who else will then join the ranks of those who are deemed to be expendable? Inevitably, materialism breeds elitism. 

Besides, if we are regarded as no more than cosmically-purposeless animals, then there remains no reason to treat us as if we were anything more. Consequently, in some secular societies, especially in the twentieth century, dissidents and other “malignant elements” were exterminated with the same zeal as one might swat and kill an annoying 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 prevailing 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. For example, in blatant contradiction with its own purported values, some nations in the secular West have even gone so far as to allow the establishment of Sharia courts. These courts render judgments that are in stark opposition to the very rights the West has committed itself to uphold. 

Such moral confusion cannot continue to provide an adequate foundation for the rights that we enjoy—the unalienable rights that have caused the West to prosper and thrive. 

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, come across a hospital or orphanage run by the Fabian [communist] society, or a humanist leper colony. (Ibid., 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 we will see tomorrow.