Giving

Being charitable has managed to develop a bit of controversy in it's practice. For my purposes I completely exclude tithing from 'giving' and talking about more straight forward 'giving to the needy.

We all know the "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime." But what do we do with those who just won't fish?

I think the key aspect of giving that a lot of us don't understand is the concept of mercy. We tend to think that we need to 'help' people and yes it would be great to help people some people just don't want to be helped no matter how miserable they are. The ability to show mercy is a blessing to the giver and it reminds us that we can be much worse off.

The worry most of us have with giving directly to the poor is that they are going to waste the money on drugs or alcohol and that they will become dependent on that money and never become productive. Thats a valid worry, so fortunatly there are a number of charities we can give the money to.

But! We walk down the street in a not so great area and some one asks if we got a couple bucks for the bus, or would like to 'give to a charity.' Typically we lie and say "No I don't have any cash." other times we pull out out wallet only to have it knocked out of our hands and run off with... other times they say "Thank you" and maybe offer a really good joke in return.

We need to examine ways to make giving more successful, by growing our level of mercy, and by getting more of that mercy to be 'helpful.'

I will start on this topic with one tip. In this age of electronic money there isn't much of a reason to carry any cash except an amount that you are willing to give away. So don't tightly pack that cash in your wallet, make it easially accessable so if someone asks for money, you can just grab the cash and the wallet stays in the pocket. It has the added benifit of, if you really are robbed they can take your wallet and you still have a bit of cash to cover imeadiate needs, like the bus or dinner.