A GIFT SHOULD NEVER BE FREE
By
Wayne L. Parker
Whatever its noble intentions, President Bush’s proclaimed policy of distributing taxpayer money to religious organizations is misguided and un-Constitutional. Regardless of the arguments concerning “separation of church and state” the federal government has neither the moral nor the Constitutional authority to take money from one group of people for the purpose of giving it to another.
Such a policy is worse than misguided. It is wrong and, I daresay, immoral.
Now that I have your attention, perhaps I can engage you in a consideration about what it means to help people, as well as the proper means of doing so. I assure you that I firmly believe that we should look out for our fellow citizens; our neighbors, their children, as well as the poor and disabled among us.
Note that I said WE should help others. I did not say we should get “someone else,” that is, the government, to do it for us. That has been our habit for the past few decades, and I’d like to relate to you how such misguided “compassion” is now bearing its rotten fruit.
While driving to Nashville to visit my little sister one Christmas I ran into some ice storms that were occurring across that part of the country. I hit a patch of ice on an overpass, doing 65 mph, and skidded off the road, ending up on the opposite side of the median, facing the wrong way.
My pickup was undamaged, and I was unhurt. An Alabama State Trooper called for a tow truck.
I waited, in the freezing rain, for about an hour when a man drove up in a four-wheel drive pickup and pulled me back up to the road. He moved quickly, attaching the chain, pulling me out, then disconnecting the chain and leaving. I thanked him a number of times, but never offered to pay him.
It just didn’t seem appropriate.
Each of us, at some time in our lives, has found ourselves in need of help from a total stranger. When we receive it, we usually offer some type of compensation to our benefactor. We offer it with no small degree of discomfort, however, because somewhere, deep within ourselves, we feel that no compensation is needed. We also suspect that our benefactor feels the same way. Indeed, we fear that we are insulting the person who has helped us, by offering to re-pay them.
Why do we feel this way? And why do we suspect that the person who has just helped us feels the same?
I can’t answer that for certain. I suspect, though, that we have these feelings because we know, on some level of our consciousness, that some day the roles will be reversed, and we will be helping someone else. It probably won’t be the person who helped us, but we all understand that such acts of charity have a way of evening themselves out over time. That all good people help all good people.
It’s a shame that there seems to be a discomfort about offering compensation to one who has just helped us out of a problem. In an ideal world, it would be taken as granted that charity received would be re-paid in kind, sometime in the future; that people would naturally give of themselves to assist their fellow citizens. This is what I see as but one manifestation of being a member of the “human community”.
One reason why people may feel hesitant about offering, or not offering payment to someone who has just helped them out is that there are some people in this world who don’t see themselves as part of the general scheme of humanity. They don’t understand what it means to be a member of the “human community”. They look upon their fellow humans as sources of bounty. People to be had.
These are the takers among us. And I don’t mean the con artists and thieves, either. People like that know they’re taking from others, with no intention of giving anything in return.
The people I’m talking about don’t see the bond between all human beings, the way you and I do. They don’t feel that they’re a part of the human community. Perhaps they’re not even aware that the community exists. When someone helps them out, commits a “random act of kindness” on their behalf, they’re a bit confused as to why you helped them. But they nevertheless accept the help, and don’t give a moment’s thought to ever repaying the favor.
I believe these people lack this sense of community because they don’t recognize the value of the gift to the person who is giving it.
When we help someone, we are giving a part of ourselves. Whether it is money, time, food, or the loan of a vehicle, the help we are giving represents something of value to us.
Honest people who work hard for what they have can appreciate the value of unsolicited help. People who are not honest, or do not work, cannot.
Does this mean we should not help people unless they share our values?
Yes! I think so!
However, the end result should not be to deny the person help. It should be to impart our values to them, so that they will learn to become a part of the human community. More precisely, they will learn to become a contributing part of our community. We can’t blame them for acting in what we see as a selfish manner, always taking, and not helping out. We also can’t afford to keep giving to people who don’t give anything back. Our wealth is finite.
So we’re left with the choice of denying help to those who fail to appreciate our values, or teaching them to appreciate our values!
Helping someone in desperate need, or in a situation that demands immediate action, should, of course, be exempt from the “values” issue. When you stop to help someone along the highway, the brief encounter does not allow you to assess the person’s sense of humanity.
In providing charity, however, we do have an opportunity to engage in such an assessment; in determining what kind of help to offer, and to what degree.
Right now you may be thinking that it is arrogant or pompous to presume that my values are superior to others, and that I should require at the least an acknowledgement of them on the part of the person whom I am helping.
And you may be right. But I think that requiring something from the person in exchange for my charity serves several, greater purposes. Three of them, in fact:
1) I am served, because by requiring the recipient of my charity to acknowledge my values, I have a chance to add one more person to the productive side of the equation, and this makes my world better.
2) The human community is served, because hopefully the individual will eventually become a productive member of society, and thus be able to share in the common burden of charity.
3) The recipient of my charity is served, beyond the short-term situation of being able to survive another day, by being enlightened to his own worth to the human community; indeed, by finding himself welcomed into the human community.
I maintain that giving help to someone without requiring something in return may actually cause the person harm!
When I worked for a radio station some years ago, one of my jobs was to sell advertising. I frequently stopped by a store which was owned by a man named Scott*, who for many years had been a major tobacco company’s representative in China. He had had access to the highest officials in the Communist government, with the exception of the chairman.
Scott brought back many works of art from his time in China, and he displayed them for sale in his store. By all accounts, Scott was a prosperous, successful man.
Scott had an older brother named Barney. Barney minded the store for Scott. I got the impression that Barney didn’t have a whole lot of ambition.
Once a gained Scott’s confidence, he complained to me one day about Barney’s lack of gratitude. He said, “I provide Barney with a place to live, I give him an easy job for employment. All he needs to do is show up here on time, answer the phone, and wait on customers. Yet he doesn’t seem to appreciate any of it! He didn’t show up to open the store at all yesterday. Didn’t call me or anything! I can’t believe he’d be so ungrateful.”
I remember thinking to myself that if Scott had demanded more of Barney, perhaps then Barney would have been more grateful. By making things so easy for Barney, Scott was essentially saying that he didn’t expect anything better from him.
And I suspect that Barney actually resented his brother for his help.
If Scott continues on in the same manner, without ever altering his actions toward his brother, Barney will continue to be a burden. In fact, he’ll probably become more of a burden, as his resentment toward his brother grows. And, of course, his resentment will grow in direct proportion to the further decline in his self-esteem.
I believe this is how people in general react, when they are given help over extended periods, without anything being required of them in return.
I think we’re seeing this phenomenon on a large scale in the violent, self-destructive behavior of young Black men in the housing projects.
The women in the projects show it as well, albeit in a less violent manner, with their lack of respect for their environment, not to mention themselves, as evidenced by the high number of teen pregnancies. I’ve seen the housing projects in New Orleans and Chicago. They’re run down, vandalized, and cannibalized.
The message being given to these people is “Here is some help. Don’t bother to do anything to improve yourself. We all know you’re not capable of it. Just accept our help and be happy to stay alive for another month in your hopelessness and misery. Oh, and by the way, don’t come into my neighborhood. We don’t want your kind here. Stay where you are, and we promise to keep you alive.”
Their isolation from the human community is furthered by the fact that they usually receive our help not from a warm, loving, nurturing ally in the struggle for survival, that is to say, from an equal, but from a harried, sometimes cold bureaucrat who’s only doing it because it’s a job. Or worse, they receive our help from their mailbox!
These people believe that they’re looked upon as less than human. By us, the people who think we’re helping them.
I experienced this first hand a few years ago, when I was living in Baton Rouge.
I had just spent a Saturday in New Orleans. As I was leaving the city I stopped at a convenience store to get some cold drinks for the ride home. Apparently the store was near some housing projects.
As I approached the entrance to the store I failed to notice a young Black boy, about ten years old, standing just to the side of the door, inside. He was twirling a set of keys around on a long key chain, and as I entered the store the keys swung close to my face. I recoiled and said, “Hey, be careful with that, kid!” A Black woman standing in the checkout line briefly scolded the boy to put the keys away.
I went to the cooler, got my drinks, and got in line. The woman who had scolded the boy let me in front of her, since she was waiting for some food to be prepared.
As I took my place in line ahead of her, I asked her, “Is that your boy?” “Yes”, she replied, staring at the floor. I said, “I thought so. He looks just like you.”
The woman looked up, with a wonderful smile on her face! She began to tell me how proud she was of her son. How well he was doing in school and sports. Then she expressed a fervent wish that she could get him out of the projects. She said one of her neighbor’s boys was killed the day before, in a gunfight.
We talked a little longer, and then the conversation tapered off. I paid for my drinks and headed for the door. Before I left, the woman called out to me.
Do you know what she said? “Thank you!” Imagine that. This woman was thanking me for the simple act of treating her like a fellow human being. For treating her as an equal, instead of like a dog in a kennel.
And that’s basically how we help the poor in this country. Like dogs in kennels.
And this goes for many private charities! Many churches provide dinners for the homeless during the holidays. Not only do they not expect the people to do anything to earn the food, but they shut them off in a separate room from where the general congregation, in their fine clothes and fancy shoes, has its meal!
Giving help in this way only worsens the situation of the needy.
If the human community gives help freely to such people, without demanding a change in the behavior of the recipients, it will be encouraging the growth in our society of a group of resentful, bitter takers, who will be a continuous and growing burden on the rest of us.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this growing burden would eventually endanger the survival of the community in general. No one’s survival is assured. And as I said earlier, our wealth is finite.
Each of us must move in a positive direction in order to survive. When our positive efforts are held back or drawn down by too much loss or too much sacrifice, our own ability to survive is jeopardized.
It is for this reason that I maintain that the giving of charity, freely, without a demand for improvement on the part of the recipient, is irresponsible.
The Great Depression spawned many Federal programs intended to help the poor. What I think we’ve seen, however, is a displacement of the poor, an alienation of the needy.
While it’s true the recipients of government welfare have been given the material means to survive, taking the responsibility for their welfare out of the community has robbed them of the spiritual means of survival.
And as an afterthought, those of us who are providing the welfare are deprived of the spiritual rewards associated with giving.
In the past there have been calls for “Ending Welfare As We Know It”.
Rather than call for an end of welfare, we should be working for a complete replacement of welfare.
I’d like to quote the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, from his book, “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching”:
“Look deeply into your hand, and see if the Buddha eye is in it. In Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese temples, there is a bodhisattva with one thousand arms - it takes that many arms to help others - and in the palm of each hand there is an eye. The hand represents action, and the eye represents insight and understanding. Without understanding, our actions might cause others to suffer. We may be motivated by the desire to make others happy, but if we do not have understanding, the more we do, the more trouble we may create.”
Whatever we do to help the needy in our communities, however government welfare evolves or is ended, we must maintain the human connection. We must remember that we are all a part of the human community, and although we acknowledge that fact with our minds, and speak it with our mouths, we must also demonstrate it with our actions.
Just as you and I wouldn’t like to accept help from a neighbor, without an understanding that we will be able to return the favor someday, we should not give help to the needy, without providing them with the opportunity to return the favor.
There is NO substitute for human contact.
When we forget that, we cause more harm than help.
For this reason, a gift should never be free. We don’t receive help without the understanding that we’ll give help sometime in the future. We should hold the recipients of our charity to the same standard to which we hold ourselves.
For our sake, as well as theirs.
* Names changed.