St. Maximos' Hut

The Orthodox churches in Cleveland sponsored a series of 3 Advent lectures. Fr. Stephen Ziton of St. George's Antiochian gave the first one, and he included a very moving account of a picnic he and some other Marines attempted to give for local people in Zaire some years ago, when he was there on a training mission. The Marines set up a table with condiments, grills, and so forth and prepared to have a regular picnic. Instead the locals rushed the tables, grabbing frozen hamburger patties to gnaw, scooping out condiments from jars to eat directly, and behaving like the impoverished, near starving people they were. Fr. Stephen spoke quite movingly about the impact touching such poverty has - which led to his discussion of the importance of doing relief work under such conditions for the people doing the relief work.

This has led me to ponder the difference between the modern liberal view of charity and the Christian view. In the modern liberal view, charity is a poor substitute for government programs, which have the advantage of being able to force people who need the charity to participate and to coerce resources from others to expand the scope of the program to meet the larger need. In short, it's about providing the most relief to the largest number.

In the Christian view, as I am coming to understand it, it seems that charity is as much about the moral choices made by the giver. It is important that the giver be touched and transformed by the experience. It therefore cannot be forced.