Stephen Roney's Blog, page 166

Coventry Carol

 

Perhaps the most movig of Christmas carols, from Newfoundland's The Once.

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Diadem

 

A lesser-kown but worthy Christmas carol.

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Caritas and Typhoon Odette

 

Some of the devastation from Typhoon Odette, near our home.

More on the primary virtue, charity.

Many people suppose they have done their bit by paying their taxes and chipping in, in return perhaps for a tax deduction, to some major charity.

This is not what Christian charity is about. To begin with, it is impersonal—you are feeling nothing for the people you help. You do not and need not see them. You are more or less paying to make them go away.  As with Dives ad Lazarus, the point is not to end poverty. That can never happen. The point is the beggar at your door. The point is to hug a leper.

In my experience, the big charities are also a scam. They do not exist to help the poor. They are there to help the rich—to salve their conscience, in the first place. To give them good employment, in the second.

More signs of damage o the main highway nearby.

Their business model relies on advertising. Advertising and PR is everything. Some significant portion of the money you put in just goes to drumming up more money. The better-known the charity, as a rule, the more they have been spending on advertising and PR. The honest charity that conserves the money for the poor simply cannot compete, and probably goes out of business.

Much of the rest of your donation will go to salaries for executives, who will be living quite well. The charities must compete for talent, after all, against other businesses and government. 

Expensive drinking water.

Then there are the usual expenses of running any organization: office space, equipment, legal and accounting services and supplies. Lots of good employment for professionals.

The rest goes to “programs.” But this still does not mean it goes to those in need. It pays the salaries of the local officials, their overhead, the well=-paid professionals they may hire. How much really benefits those in need?

Getting to the coast for washing water.

There is little accountability in charities. There are no market forces—beggars can’t be choosers, and the destitute have no social leverage. People tend not to ask tough questions—after all, charities are good guys, right? How dare you try to do them harm? So even for the money that gets down to the local level, and is not needed for salaries and overhead… the typical official on the spot has little incentive but his own conscience to actually go out and do anything. If he did, too aggressively, he would probably be hounded out by his colleagues for not going along with the game and shaming them. They will do enough for the next photo op, then motor home. That’s about it. Worse, the front-line positions are certain to attract some people who like to bully.

My own family is trapped in Cebu, Philippines. Cebu was hit dead on December 16 by Typhoon Odette / Rai, at category four. Many people there are without shelter, most seem to have lost their roofs. There is no electricity, no water, no signal, no communications. For some days the food markets were closed. Now food or drinking water is just extremely expensive, markups of 1000%, in a very poor country, and gasoline is hard to find in order to make it to the markets. Not that many own a private car—but the tricycles and jeepneys are often not running. 

Sister-in-law Judy, struck by a motorcycle while walking to work. (There were no jeepneys.) She's back home now.

Cebu is not remote or hard to get to—it is the second or third largest city in the Philippines. And it is right on the water, with a good port, even if infrastructure is damaged. Nevertheless, my wife reports that no charities or NGOs have shown up yet, as of January 2. Neither has the federal government, the military or national guard. The destitute are left to fend for themselves. She is in a position to know, too. Her sister-in-law, now sheltering with her, works in the local baranguay office—the local government. They have heard nothing.

Filipinos are familiar with the experience. Nobody is there. They have to help one another.

This is probably almost as true in Canada. I have some experience, having worked with the mentally ill in Toronto. If you phone the office of one of the big charities, they are never in. If you leave a message, they do not call back. If you get an appointment, they often do not show up. If they show up, they will fill in some paperwork in your presence, and suggest you go elsewhere. Rarely, they will offer your some random service that you do not need and is actually cheaper on the open market. It seems structured to benefit some professional in need of business, rather than anyone in need.

Damage in Danao, just op the coast from Cebu.

The secret, if you really want to help people, is to have some personal contact on the ground—the equivalent of Lazarus at your door. Failing that, it is to go through a church. 

To begin with, the churches already have an organization in place, right down to the neighbourhood level. None of your donation need go for administration or advertising or flying people in from afar who do not know the local situation. Next, the churches and their personnel can at least be reasonably hoped to be acting out of conscience, and therefore motivated to do as charity suggests. They can often deploy volunteer labour. And they even have some market incentive to actually give the money to the poor. For a secular charity, giving anything to the poor beyond a photo op is a dead loss. Churches, however, are in competition for adherents in each locality. Help those in need, and they may start attending services. They may also start contributing to the collection plate, or volunteering at the church.

Damage in Consolacion, Cebu suburb.

When I was working with the mentally ill, the charities that were actually on the ground and helping, as I recall, were the local parishes of the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army, the Franciscans, a local consortium of Quaker, Baptist, Anglican, and Catholic churches, evangelical groups like the Scott Mission, and the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Non-Christian groups seem to do similar work, but only within their own faith communities.  The famous secular charities were invisible. Government seemed to be good only for cutting welfare cheques, or what used to be called “family benefits.” Not that this was trivial—but it was the one thing not lost in the bureaucratic fog. Making me think a flat guaranteed minimum income might be the best approach there. Otherwise, it is revelatory how absent government and the big charities were, with all their financial resources, in comparison to these religious groups, working with so little.

Unfortunately, eve some of the religious groups have since gone “woke.” This means they stop spending on the poor, and start spending it on “advocacy”: on salaries for rich bureaucrats. Being “woke” is always an alibi for not helping the poor. “It’s up to the rich to do it.” And the speaker is never themselves rich enough to qualify.

Meanwhile, charity give to the Catholic Church now risks being hijacked to pay lawyers’ salaries, or to pay compensation claims to victims of homosexual predatory priests, or the supposed victims of the residential schools. You may consider some of these expenditures worthy, but your contribution is liable not to be going to hurricane victims or refugees or the homeless or mentally ill.

Conclusion: you probably have to do it yourself. Get personally involved in a local religious charity and get to know the people who need help. For cases abroad, get to know people who have emigrated from that country, and still have contacts there. They can advise on how to help; and can put a human face on it. Which you need to make it meaningful.

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Babylon Bee

 

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The Playing of the Merry Organ

 I love the quirkiness of this melody, and the quirkiness of the lyrical metre. Sung here by Natalie Cole.

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Echoing Their Brave Delight

 

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Tis the Season

 

You may find it odd to still be listening to Christmas music after New Years. But we have it backwards these days. Properly, you should not have Christmas songs and decor before Christmas--this is Advent, and a penitential season. Then Christmas begins, and extends for twelve days, until Epiphany. We are only halfway through, so suck it up and raise that wassail!

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The Pardoned Ox

 

Ebenezer Scrooge: "Are there not workhouses/"

I fear my last post may have been too harsh o friend Xerxes, and may leave the impression that we are obliged to give all we have to the poor. Indeed, doesn’t Jesus even say that in the Bible?

Not so. We are not so obliged. There is a difference between what we have earned honestly or by devious means. What we have earned honestly, by providing a useful good or service, we have a right to. The Bible does say “the workman deserves his wages.” 

One would hope that we would give what we can to help others, our neighbours, in dire need. As in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The church teaches that, if a man needs a loaf of bread to save his life, he has the right to that loaf of bread, whoever legally owns it. Michael Knowles gives the example of a beggar who shows up to your door, on the point of death. Don’t you have a duty to give whatever you reasonably can to save his life? 

But then extend the principle to all the people starving in the world today. Don’t we then have the obligation to give what we have, until we ourselves are barely above starvation, if necessary, to help them?

There is a Confucian story of a king who heard the sacrificial ox loudly lament when it was on the way to being slaughtered. Moved by pity, the king ordered that ox returned, and another taken.

When I read this, I thought the distinction was purely sentimental, self-indulgent. An ox would be killed. How did it matter morally which one?

Perhaps I was wrong. It is ever wise to scoff at Confucian wisdom.

The rich man and Lazarus

Given that, as Jesus says, “the poor will be always with you,” you cannot extend the principle of benevolence to all oxen, all beggars. Then it becomes an insoluble problem, and Xerxes is left obliged to spend all his time, money, and energy on some poor person somewhere. Some choose to do something like this—the Franciscans. But if we all did, society and civilization would end, as no one any longer would have children, or write novels, or compose songs, or teach, or build bridges.

It has to be that one beggar at your door; that one ox. It has to be the need you see around you. In the case of the Good Samaritan, the stranger he encounters in a ditch. For it is not that God is calling you to solve the problem of suffering in the world. That would even be presumptuous. That is God’s job, and God has his reasons for permitting poverty to endure. But if a beggar comes to your door in obvious need, that is Christ putting you to the test. Do you see him as a neighbour, or just another statistic? “I gave at the office.” “I pay taxes.” “Are there not workhouses?”

Perhaps this is why, in the Biblical tale of the rich man and Lazarus, Lazarus has a name. It otherwise looks like a parable--but in a parable, formulaically, no one has a name. They are, after all, only hypothetical people in a thought experiment. It may be important, for the story, that the rich man knows Lazarus as another human individual, not just a hypothetical, yet does not help. And so goes straight to hell.

Which rather justifies Xerxes with his hummingbird. He does not personally see the homeless in East Van. They did not quite appear to him. They may still be hypothetical.

The problem is with implicitly claiming virtue because of his tinkering with a hummingbird feeder. As though that justified him in the face of human poverty nearby. This is the context in which Jesus says, in the gospels, “give all you have to the poor.” It was in answer to a rich young man who wanted to be able to consider himself virtuous. Not that you must do this, but that you must do this if you want to claim virtue. Otherwise, be humble, and do what God presents to you--the people he seems to entrust to your care.

The Good Samaritan

This is also no doubt the origin of that saying, “charity begins at home.” Perhaps, after all, even with a hummingbird, so long as there is not someone starving at your door.

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Lost Causes

 

Friend Xerxes writes of his efforts to feed a hummingbird stranded in the BC interior during the recent severe temperatures. He tried keeping his hummingbird feeder operational with various heating options. But eventually the hummingbird stopped coming. No doubt it froze to death.

Nevertheless, Xerxes concludes that such “lost causes” are worth pursuing.

I disagree. Realistically, unless he could trap it and bring it inside, that hummingbird was going to freeze to death. In the course of nature, most hummingbirds die in their first year. So what did he hope to accomplish? It seems to me Xerxes was not being noble, but only indulging his whimsy. More cruelly, I might accuse him of trying to play God.

You might accuse me of just not caring about animals. I do—I am a committed vegetarian, have been for going on thirty years.

But unreasonable, purely sentimental concern for animals can be a cheap way to feel virtuous. Xerxes’s actions did little or nothing to benefit the hummingbird; only his image of himself. Jung once observed (paraphrasing from memory) that “sentimentality is a superstructure concealing brutality. “ Hitler himself was a dog lover and a vegetarian.

Because God made all creatures great and small, all is good. Evil exists simply as an inversion of values: a lesser good treated as a greater good. 

Such efforts invested in the hummingbird look like an example of this. It is putting hummingbirds before humans. There is something wrong when you expend so much effort on a doomed bird at the same time the same weather is causing homeless to freeze on the streets in East Vancouver. Close enough to Xerxes that he can hardly be unaware. 

One might object that we pay taxes to take care of that. But the fact that there are homeless demonstrates that the government is not, in fact, taking care of that.

One might object that these people are addicts. They are responsible for their own predicament, and they will just use any money to buy drugs or alcohol.

Some are addicts; many are mentally ill, abandoned by the system, who cannot take care of themselves. Many are adolescents fleeing abusive families. With the current cost of housing, their numbers are growing.

It is not a time to be playing with hummingbirds and lost causes.

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Happy New Year

 

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