Being Generous

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch

• Publisher: Templeton Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781599473161
• eBook ISBN: 9781599473628
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Social Sciences

Through the ages, the world's cultures and great religions have in profound, though different, ways sought to answer the big question: how should we live? Part of the answer has to do with how we ought to treat others, particularly those who are most in need. Ample evidence suggests that giving selflessly to others lies at the heart of what it means to be a thoughtful and moral human being. In Being Generous, author Theodore Roosevelt Malloch leads an exploration of this important concept of generous giving.

He begins by examining how generosity fits into the various spiritual traditions, philosophical schools, and economic systems. Further chapters illustrate how generosity need not always be about money, showing how it might also involve the sharing of time and talent. Elsewhere, Malloch explores the science behind generosity, looking, for example, at the relationship between various chemicals in the brain and generous behavior. Beyond the theory and the science of generosity, readers will also find a wealth of inspiration in a collection of profiles of past and present icons of generosity.

Being Generous concludes with a practical action plan that lays out concrete steps to guide readers toward lives of greater giving.

1 Generosity:
A Universal Moral Urge

We ourselves feel that what we are doing
is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean
would be less because of that missing drop.

MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA

AMPLE EVIDENCE suggests that being generous—giving selflessly to others—lies at the heart of what it means to be a thoughtful and moral human being. Through the ages, the world’s cultures and great religions have in profound though different ways sought to answer the big question: how should we live? Part of the answer has to do with how we ought to treat others, particularly those who are most in need.

Almost all of the more than six billion inhabitants of our planet are connected to a spiritual or moral tradition that has in some way addressed the question of how we ought to live. Thus we all have some capacity to grow in our understanding of generosity as both an ethical virtue and a best practice.

I hope through the following overview to “connect the dots” around the globe and among traditions that have stood the test of time. Focusing on what these traditions have to say about generosity, my goal is not to arrive at some great interfaith boiling down of essentials, but rather to celebrate our human nature and the diverse paths we have taken toward living well in the eyes of God.

Judaism

The religion of the Jews is rooted in the story of a people, which is also the story of the world. The story shows us the beginning of the world, the laws for living in it successfully, and the final goal toward which all things progress, provided we humans behave as we should: the goal of the kingdom, the new Zion in which the good will be rewarded, and the sin of Adam redeemed. It is a story of creation, of loss, and of final redemption—and its outlines have been bequeathed to the two great successor religions, Christianity and Islam.

In Judaism, we encounter the story of a people chosen by God to be an example to the world through obedience to the divine law contained in the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) and through conduct according to the rule of loving-kindness. From the earliest days of the Jewish faith can be found a tendency to condense the divine law into something immediately digestible, hence the Ten Commandments of Exodus, reduced to two in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy: “Love God with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself.” We find this theme also in the famous response of Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Jesus, to a question. Said the rabbi, as recorded in the Talmud: “Whatever is hateful to you, do not do it to your neighbor; this is the whole torah, the rest is commentary.” We see here the signs of a growing current of opinion that love of God and love of neighbor are one and the same.

The term mitzvah (plural mitzvot) in Judaism has to do with a Jew’s obligations. It is a general term for something commanded, whether by law or by the less formal duty of loving-kindness, tzedakah, which corresponds to the Christian idea of charity, or disinterested love of neighbor. Mitzvot are not confined to any rigid system of law. Rather, they address a goodness of heart that puts others before self in all mutual dealings. Much of the rabbinical literature addresses mitzvot. Various maxims speak to how to live in a condition of obedience and love. As one Midrash states, “Tzedakah was slumbering, and Abraham aroused it. How did he do it? He built an inn with openings in every direction, and he would receive wayfarers.”

Mitzvot and tzedakah are thus intimately connected. The way to lead a good life, a life pleasing to God, is to give. In fact, in Judaism the duty to give is considered so important that the recipient is obligated to give something back to others, the only stipulation being that a person should not give to the point where he himself becomes needy.

The emphasis on giving in the Jewish tradition is strongly implied by the fact that, in the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides ranked acts of charity, as follows, from the least to the most meritorious:

• giving and enabling the recipient to become self-reliant;
• giving when neither party knows the other’s identity;
• giving when you know the recipient’s identity, but he doesn’t know yours;
• giving when you don’t know the recipient’s identity, but he knows yours;
• giving before being asked;
• giving after being asked;
• giving less than you should, but giving it happily;
• giving begrudgingly.
  
  

In Jewish tradition, the giving of the tithe (10 percent) to the Temple was expected, but the call to charity went further than the tithe. The ideal is to move beyond performing acts of kindness in order to become a person whose essence is kindness, someone for whom the mitzvah of loving-kindness has become a way of life.

Christianity

Christianity arose out of Judaism, and is in part a reaction to the formalized idea of gift contained in the idea of a tithe. Like Rabbi Hillel, Jesus rebelled against the ossified customs of the Temple. He wanted people to wake up to the reality of tzedakah—in other words, to replace safe routines with risk-taking love. He challenged the priorities of Jews who placed a heavier emphasis on tithing than on charity, mercy, and doing good.

Though early Christians did not tithe, they were fully committed to supporting their leaders and to giving to charitable causes. The Apostle Paul taught that apostles had the right to request financial support, though Paul himself did not exercise this right because he did not want to burden the congregation (1 Cor. 9:14–15). Early churches routinely supported widows, orphans, and other poor people (1 Tim. 5:9, Acts 2:45, Acts 6:1). Paul placed a special emphasis on supporting famished Christians in Jerusalem, asking the Corinthian Christians to take a regular collection to aid them. Prior to asking this, he reminded the Corinthians that the collection was not a command, but voluntary (2 Cor. 9:7).

The Pew Family

JOSEPH N. PEW founded Sun Oil Company and raised five children in a religious Presbyterian home on Philadelphia’s Main Line. After his death in 1912, his children inherited and expanded the company. Their wealth was estimated at over $25 million by 1925. In charity the family supported Christian ideals and conservative ideas, especially private enterprise. In 1948 they created a trust foundation as a tribute to their parents. The Pew Charitable Trusts gave to local charities, small religious colleges, and Christian outreach. They had a rule never to donate to endowments. Originally keen on donor intent, The Pew Charitable Trusts remain today one of the largest charitable foundations in America.

Photo: Joseph N. Pew Jr.

While the New Testament does not instruct Christians to set aside a fixed percentage of income to support church leaders or church buildings, it does encourage Christians to give freely and generously to worthy causes such as aging parents, the poor, and missionaries.

The New Testament encourages giving out of abundance or prosperity. It sees giving as a blessing. It does not expect or demand sacrificial giving, though it often commends it (Luke 21:2–4, 2 Cor. 8:14, 1 Cor. 16:2, and 2 Cor. 8:8). Nevertheless, the Jewish mitzvah of charity and loving-kindness receives a new impetus from Christ’s teaching and from the gloss upon it contained in the letters of Saint Paul. The idea that there is a specific form of love—agape, or “gift love,” as C. S. Lewis described it in The Four Loves—and that this form of love is our primary religious duty becomes, in Christian thinking, the foundation of both theology and morality.

In the fourth century, the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Prior to Constantine’s conversion, Christianity was illegal and churches met secretly in homes with part-time leaders who had other sources of income. After his conversion, Constantine made Christianity both legal and a status symbol, causing the church to expand rapidly. The church moved out of homes and into buildings and employed full-time ministers, thus creating a much greater need for income and upkeep. The tithing of the Old Law provided an obvious model and it began to be taught—more commonly in the West, however, than in the East—that the faithful should give tithes of their income. When the view began to obtain sufficient support, it found legislative expression. The Council of Macon in 585 CE ordered payment of tithes and threatened excommunication to those who refused to comply.

Catholic Christians believe in the authority of the pope, the councils, and the Bible. As such, they subscribe to the tithe as defined by the Council of Macon and later pronouncements (Encyclicals and Letters) on tithing. For Protestant Christians, relying solely on the Bible to inform their faith and practice, understanding early church practice as reflected in the New Testament resulted in some different conclusions regarding giving. For Protestants, each time the New Testament talks about tithing, it is referring to the Old Testament law requiring Jews to give 10 percent of their income to support the operation of the Temple and the Jewish priests. The Letter to the Hebrews teaches that Christ’s sacrifice rendered the Temple and the priests obsolete. This is why the New Testament never applies the practice of tithing to Christians or followers of Christ.

Church reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther, both of whom saw the tithe as something to expand upon, reinforced this early understanding. They maintained that giving ought not be restricted, since all God’s creation is already his and to him it must return. The ideal of being faithful and responsible stewards of all that we have is part and parcel of Reformation thought. We are trustees of what we have received, not free possessors.

The New Testament does not give exact guidance on Christian priorities when deciding whether, or how much precisely, to give to the church, missionaries, or to the poor and needy. It is worth mentioning that 1 Timothy 5:8, 1 Timothy 5:2, and Mark 7:10–13 suggest that caring for one’s family and parents is the top priority of believers. The Vulgate translates agape as caritas, and the concept of charity, developed down the centuries through law and moral teaching, has a claim to be Christianity’s distinctive contribution to modern ways of thinking. Exploring this concept will be one part of the story of this book.

Islam

Islam has preserved the Jewish tradition of obligatory giving, establishing as one of the five “pillars” of Islam the zakat, a percentage of income to be set aside for the use of the poor and to satisfy communal needs. The other four “pillars” are:

1. The declaration of faith, or shahadah (witness): “There is no God but the God and Muhammad is his messenger.” This is a profession of faith in the oneness or unity (tawhid) of God.

2. Prayer. Five times a day the muezzin calls from the minaret, crying allahu akbar, God is most great, and Muslims must then leave off what they are doing and prostrate themselves in prayer (salat), which is preceded by various ritual ablutions or acts of purification. Salat is not a petition, but an act of worship, and a repetition of the “witness” idea, remembering God’s greatness and his word. On Friday prayer is communal, in a mosque (masjid—place of prostration, or jami’, place of congregation). There is then a sermon during the midday prayers. There is no priesthood in Islam and anyone can lead the prayers—though in large mosques there tends to be a paid imam, chosen for his Qur’anic knowledge.

3. The fast of Ramadan—the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. No food, drink, or sex between dawn and dusk. The fast ends with the great feast of ‘Eid al-Fitr—the feast of the breaking of the fast—which goes on Christmas-like for three days.

4. Pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, which follows Ramadan, and which each Muslim should perform at least once in his lifetime. On arriving there the pilgrim performs various rituals centered on the Ka’bah and the Plain of Arafat (place of the Prophet’s last sermon), and then participates in a ritual sacrifice of animals (‘Eid al-Adha, feast of sacrifice), commemorating the substitution of a ram for his son in Abraham’s original sacrifice (though in the Muslim view the son in question was Ismael, not Isaac).

Jihad is sometimes identified as the sixth pillar of Islam, though this has no authority in the traditions. The word means “struggle” (on behalf of the faith), and includes holy war—though no war is holy if conducted as an act of aggression rather than defense, and the duty of jihad is satisfied by struggling to fulfill the previous five obligations. Needless to say, this is an area of huge controversy. It has greatly affected the interpretation of zakat in recent years, some believing that it is legitimate to spend the money raised in this way on warlike preparations in defense of the faith—even on terrorism.

Zakat is not a ritual, but an obligation, originally to give one tenth, now 2.5 percent, of one’s accumulated wealth annually, provided that wealth reaches a certain minimal level (nisab). In order to deal with the zakat, Islamic societies have established a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1: Generosity: A Universal Moral Urge
• 2: Charity and Gift
• 3: Stewardship Spirituality
• 4: Time, Treasure, and Talent
• 5: Generosity and Economics
• 6: Generosity and Science
• 7: Responsible Generosity
• 8: A Generous Society
• 9: Generosity and: Purpose in Life
• 10: Final Thoughts
• APPENDIX A: Twenty-one Books to Read on Generosity
• APPENDIX B: Real Life Stories of Giving to GlobalGiving
• APPENDIX C: About GlobalGiving
• Notes
• Photograph Credits
• About the Author