Monday, October 25, 2004
(6:44 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Blogging Charity, pt. 2
I have finally settled on a course of action in The Weblog's experimental charity drive for Heifer International. I have put a duplicate PayPal link and a link to The Weblog's online store under the box entitled "The Charity." All funds raised through those links will be added to a contribution of mine, determined by my own discretion, in order to purchase livestock to help people in poor countries to become self-sustaining. The cut-off date for this particular funding drive will be November 30, unless some special reason to do otherwise presents itself. I will chime in with periodic updates on the amount of money raised; I'm not sure if PayPal and CafePress have e-mail notification at all times, so if you donate by either method, please e-mail me as well to let me know.I know that Frieda wanted to use World Vision's similar program, but I agree with Anthony's objection: I don't want a single cent of my money going toward people being converted to American-style Evangelical Christianity. In fact, I don't want the charitable act I finance to come out of the same bank account as the evangelism fund. If World Vision were the only organization running such a program, then those objections would no longer be decisive; but since it isn't, they are. If Frieda refuses to participate solely because we are using a secular charity, I have some words of St. Paul that may be appropriate in this setting:
For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.Institutional and cultural affiliation are very important things that should be cherished, but they should never get in the way of justice. Remember, your exemplary neighbor, according to the parable, is a person whose institutional and cultural affiliations make him your worst enemy, namely, a Samaritan. Heifer International seems to be our neighbors. Let's help them out and let God worry about where they're going to go when they die.
