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I’ve been reading the debate downthread about how Christianity and a more tradcon approach (defined I think largely as a ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, ‘turn the other cheek’, and ‘focus on improving your community rather than enacting political change’) stack up in a globalised, highly urban environment. I find the conversation very interesting but short on concrete detail. For example, ‘people do not enjoy being told to sit up straight and eat their vegetables’, and ‘You need to innovate and find a way to square your religion with the updated understanding we now have of the natural world.’. I have considerable sympathy for both of these statements! But they strike me as being a bit too abstract to tease out real-life disagreement, so I thought I would post an example of what seems to me to be a concrete, modernist/globalist adjacent problem that’s been troubling me for some time and get peoples’ thoughts on it.
I grew up in central London, and my parents still live there, on a fairly busy street. There is approximately one beggar every ten metres. It is strongly suspected locally that these positions are managed by organised crime - they are almost all foreign, burly, and articulate, to the extent that it makes you very suspicious as to why they can’t get a real job if they wish to. Each of these people expects at least a pound from you as you pass by, which means that even a trip to the grocery will cost you £5-£10, about as much as the groceries.
What is the appropriate, Christian, response to this situation? Off the top of my head:
Pay them. However, if you are giving money to every beggar you see in central London, you had better have a really stupendous salary. Moreover, because the beggars are now highly mobile, both nationally and internationally, the number of beggars is fully capable of expanding to the limits of your collective generosity. (This is the modernism/globalism angle.)
Don’t pay them. This feels straightforwardly unChristian. If memory serves, Jesus pretty much said, ‘take the coat off your back and give it to the coatless man over there.’ You can square it to yourself by pointing out that they’re probably predators, which they are, but they’re still more desperate than you are.
Don’t pay them, but feel guilty about it / donate to charity / tithe. I think these are basically 2 with extra steps. I sympathise with Scott’s view that tithing is basically a down payment on the limitless stuff you actually owe, but it still seems to fall short of genuinely Christlike behaviour.
In short, how does Christian charity hold up when the modern world is capable of delivering infinite suffering to your door? (This mirrors our immigration debate to some extent.) Apologies if people don’t find this helpful but I was interested to get your opinions.
I think this can be resolved by the fact that Christians are not expected to be perfect. A perfect Christian with knowledge of who needs more than they do, should probably give away everything except what they need to live and support their families. Christ being the exemplar. But God knows that people are not perfect and the struggle with selfishness and desire and temptation and comfort is an ongoing one that all people will struggle with. So Christians are not expected to be ascetic monks and give away everything but the basics, even if that is what Christ did. God is a judge but He is not a capricious and cruel one.
Depending on the denomination they might do tithing more or less as a requirement and some count charitable giving towards that.
So you are correct that it falls short of perfectly Christlike behaviour. But we are not expected to be perfectly Christlike.
And Christians don't have to naively believe every claim so if they believe x is not really a beggar or it would support sinful acts like most crime, they are surely within their rights to not feel guilt about it (though of course they might!)
I mean, where is that in the Bible? I think it's pretty silent on the topic of what the carpenter did with his carpentry wages. Obviously, he sacrificed his life (thus relinquishing all possessions in death), but I don't think it ever says much concerning his interaction with material goods. He advises the rich man to give up all of his possessions, but that was for a specific purpose - to follow him.
I think it unlikely that Christ was sneakily sitting on a trove of material treasures. I think he gave freely of his special power to help others in terms of healings, multiplying food, etc. But I think it's pretty silent on Christ's actual possession or non-possession of any material goods. There is the example of the widow's two mites, but it is noticeable that this was not billed as a direct example of Christ giving up every last item. Plenty of parts about being generous, probably more generous than most anyone would like today, but I'm not sure Christ actually did set an example as an ascetic monk, and perhaps that's part of an argument against the extreme of becoming one.
Christ and his followers were gleaning from fields on the sabbath and eating from other peoples houses out of their charity. Their is plenty in the Bible about how Jesus and his apostles were broke ascetics who had given up their productive jobs to preach.
Jesus explicitly gives up his job as a carpenter and his disciples as fishermen to become fishers of men. A job that doesn’t pay outside of the charity of others.
Also when Mary annoints Jesus’ feet with ointment his disciples say they should have sold it to give to the poor.
There are countless explicit and implicit passages in the Bible that suggest Jesus and the apostles were medicants.
That there is a group of "priests" who do not have otherwise productive jobs does not imply that all Christians should live as such. Hell, even the Israelites had an entire tribe of Levites. Maybe Christ/disciples were broke, but where does it say they were ascetics? Where they specifically cast off all their material goods specifically for the purpose of casting off material goods rather than, "Yeah, preachin' don't pay so good, but we're called to preach, sooo..."
I mean... the passage actually says:
I mean, yeah. Reallly not quite what you say it says.
That's from John and a shorter version of the original. The synoptic gospels are very divergent from whatever the hell John is. If we go back to Mark we see an entirely different story.
"Jesus Anointed at Bethany
14 Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. 2 “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
4 Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you,[b] and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 11 They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over."
It is multiple disciples here not just Judas. It is what I said.
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