A beautiful story of one family that decided give away blessings to strangers at Walmart for Christmas. Go on. Read it and have yourself a good cry. We bought several Walmart gift cards with funds we would have used to buy our gifts for one another and our kids. Then our daughter and daughter-in-law (who … Read more
I’ve mentioned a couple of times before that I think referring to charitable activity as “giving back” is both insidious and stupid. Since I like to think I’m smart and smart people agree with me, I’m always happy to post a quote from a smart person who agrees with me. So, here’s William Yavelak in The American Thinker, totally … Read more
Here’s the thing about the World Vision hoo-ha and all the other recent collisions between the old school mores of conservative Christians and the new, free-to-be-you-and-me mores of everybody else: The reason we keep having these collisions is because a growing and vocal segment of the population — both Christian and non-Christian — is basically … Read more
I hope that one day historians get to completely catalog every email, phone call, text, tweet, and Facebook message that World Vision received in response to their decision to start hiring people in same-sex marriages. For only then will we understand the full meaning of the word “blowback.” As for the reversal, Justin Taylor collects … Read more
“World Vision capitulation” looks like it’s going to be a trending term for the next couple of days. Here are some early comments: Justin Taylor: Sooner rather than later every Christian leader will need to go on record as to whether or not he believes the painful truth of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and the glorious … Read more
Well, here’s an interesting take on all the Pope’s recent income inequality talk: By dwelling on inequality, the pope is promoting envy. The Catholic Church, I had always understood, disapproves of envy, deeming it one of the seven deadly sins. I would have expected Francis to urge people to think of themselves in relation to … Read more
From Forbes.com: Your Help is Hurting: How Church Foreign Aid Programs Make Things Worse: When you try to help, you try to give things, you start to have the consequences. There’s an author Bob Lupton, who really nails it when he says that when he gave something the first time, there was gratitude; and when he … Read more
GetReligion covers the still-invisible-to-the-mainstream-media conflict between Obamacare and religious organizations: I would argue that it would be hard to imagine a more symbolic showdown than, literally, the U.S. Justice Department vs. The Little Sisters of the Poor. That, friends and neighbors, is a headline. The fines hitting the various branches of this poverty-based religious order … Read more
From the “I can’t believe we still have to explain this” file, David French explains the difference between charity and political graft disguised as charity: Imagine development officers from two relief agencies visit your house — one is from a large Christian agency, the other from the government. The Christian development officer will tell you … Read more
At Classical Values, a post about “giving back” (with extra sarcasm on the “scare quotes”): Meaning what, exactly? Give back what? And to whom? Did someone steal something from someone? If so, they should definitely give it back. Anyone taking something that did not belong to him has an obligation to give it back. But … Read more
The Chronicle of Philanthropy (oddly enough, they make you pay for a subscription) looks at patterns of giving in America. Spoiler alert: there are absolutely no surprises in their findings: Red states are more generous than blue states. The eight states where residents gave the highest share of income to charity went for John McCain … Read more
Katheryn Jean Lopez looks at the relation between Paul Ryan’s budgetary philosophy and Christian obligations to charity: Ryan’s bishop, Robert Morlino of Madison, Wis., gave him a vote of confidence while affirming the work of religious orders in an interview with Raymond Arroyo of EWTN: “Congressman Ryan has made his prudential judgment about how best … Read more
We talk about businesses “giving back” to the community so much that even the most capital capitalist has it burned into his brain that that is just what businesses are supposed to do. The unstated premise is that successful businesses got that way by taking something away from the community, and therefore are morally obligated to … Read more
John Stossel on “a nation of freeloaders” and why you shouldn’t give to panhandlers. We often measure our own kindness and generosity by how we treat street people who come up to us begging for money. Even the hardest of the hard-asses among us (including yours truly) feels a twinge of guilt for not giving some … Read more
We’ve heard a lot of talk lately about how we all need to kick in a little more to the government in the interest of helping the less fortunate among us. Not to private charitable organizations or churches, mind you. No, only more and larger government programs can salve the wounds of mankind and raise … Read more