The Spiritual Deduction

I pay more taxes than I should.

I know this, and I do not doubt that it makes me a fool.

I was reflecting on it just last week, as I drove a day's worth of meals to my route for the Meals on Wheels program.  It's a small circuit I ride, varying between eight and eleven miles depending on who has been added to my route.  I know that every mile I drive can be tallied, and then counted as a charitable deduction.  Over the course of a year, it would add up, perhaps to a couple of hundred dollars worth of mileage, which would translate into a couple more twenties in the family bank account come tax time.

To accomplish this, I would have to keep a log.  Every time I went out, I would register my mileage in the log, and it would tell me just how much I stood to benefit from my bringing of meals and a cheery greeting to the homebound.

Cha-ching, would go Turbotax.  I think it actually does make that noise.  Cha-ching.

I can't bring myself to do it.

Oh, we do take advantage of our other deductions for giving.  The forms arrive from the synagogue and the nonprofits we support, and I put them in the year's tax file along with our 1099s and Dubya-Twos, to be entered during tax season.  I know it serves a public benefit, and I grasp the rationale for deductibility from the standpoint of the state.

But as I go from door to door, bearing food for those who need it, I do not want to be distracted.  As I act, I do not want to leaven my love of other with a little splash of self-interested book-keeping.   It changes my focus, shifting me from serving for the joy of it to serving for the profit of it.  It alters my perspective, turning me from a sense of duty towards neighbor and nation and towards my own self-interest.

Why should I care?

It's that Jesus.  That pesky, pesky Jesus.  But that he had never talked about giving at all.  What he taught matters to me, though, given that I've dedicated myself to spreading what he taught.

Before pursuing my call to ministry, I was steeped in the rarified thought-leadershippy echelons of the nonprofit world for a decade.   I came out of that experience wondering at the ferocity with which the interest groups of the insanely rich defended that deduction.    Folks with wealth that would make Croesus blush would protest that limiting the charitable deduction would force them to cut their giving.  Why would I put a small portion of my billions into a foundation that will trumpet my name if I don't get benefit from it, Lovie?

But giving out of self-interest is not, by the definition of the word, "philanthropy."  If it is not done for love of other human beings, it moves outside of the root meaning of the word, unless the anthrope you most philia is your own bad self.   Nor is it "charity," because it is not done from the foundation of love of other.

It's changed.  It feels like the involuntary "voluntarism" required of our children as they are forced by well-meaning school systems to rack up their community service hours.  Does that teach the essence of what it means to volunteer, to do a thing from the heart of your will?

And yes, it is complicated.  Good things do come from giving that's self-interested.  The hungry are fed by the grandstanding egotist, just as surely as they are fed by the saint or the bodhisattva.  Acclaim and profit can drive giving, just as surely as the coercion of the law can force civility.

Whichever way, I just can't do the log.  Fool that I am, it would...deduct...from my joy in the doing of the act itself.

Taxes and Charity

This Sunday, having returned from a week at the beach, the sermon was to be about communion.  I'd spent much of the week thinking and reflecting on it, and so rolling into the service I was all about the Lord's Supper.  My heart was on the Eucharist, on its meaning, on its transforming power, on how it had come to be a transforming experience for me.

As I moved from the sermon about the Eucharist to the Eucharist itself, I noted my music director giving me some funny looks.   But I was caught up in the spirit of the thing, and so we proceeded.  As I went up to sing the last hymn, she seemed to hesitate, but on we continued.

As I prepared to offer the benediction, one of the elders who'd served communion gave me an urgent signal.  "Offering," he murmured, with some gentle urgency.

Which, being in a communion-focused state of mind, I'd completely skimmed over.

Doh!

We took it up as we departed, but what struck me afterwards was two things.  First, that sometimes when we come back from vacation we're not entirely back from vacation.  And second, just how vital a part of community the offering is.  Beyond paying my salary, it sustains the shared space that enables us to do ministry together, and supports our mission work and our collective aspirations.

It's not something we want to get out of.  It's charity, meaning it's a gift that we want to give.  It's a good thing, essential to the life of community and a positive part of our individual identity.

Which is why when Mitt Romney recently declared that he considered his charitable giving similar to paying taxes, I found myself nodding in agreement.

Of course it is!  You go, Mitt!

Taxes pay the salaries and training of firefighters and teachers, and equipping them to do their work.   They insure that our police are professional, competent, and honest.  Having been in places in the world where that was not true, I really and truly appreciate that about America.

Taxes build the roads upon which we drive, and the bridges that get us to the beach, and the satellites that monitor weather and give us fair warning when a storm's a-comin'.   Taxes pay our best scientists and engineers to pull off the seriously awe-inspiring landing of a laser-wielding atomic robot on Mars.   Which was, in the event I have not already said so, awe-inspiring.  Epic, as the kids might say.

Not to mention insuring that orphans, widows, and the elderly aren't starving in the streets.

And so, shortly after Paul Ryan got the Veep nod, we now have the Republican nominee for the President of the United States implying...on purpose, I am sure...that taxes are a good thing, as necessary to the bonds of our American community as giving is to the health of a congregation.

Fighting That Nasty Little Inner Pharisee

Following the successful launch of a great new service program by a member of the church, I trundled off to our local clothing closet this Saturday to grudgingly put in my monthly court-mandated community service hours. Though the lawyers for the Apple store did push for hard time. Hey, it's not my fault I thought that "open source" meant "feel free to take what you want."

Well, actually, no. I really enjoy charitable work and volunteering. It is work that clearly serves a purpose, that directly benefits those who are struggling and in need. In this case, putting clothes on their bodies. It is work utterly free of mammon's coercion, done for no other purpose than the love of it and of others. It is work that fulfills a really rather specific faith mandate to provide material care, and to be a part of the Gospel process of liberation from suffering. I'm not quite a Salvationist, like the folks over at the Salvation Army whose theology mandates volitional care for others. But I'm close. Church needs to proclaim the Gospel and transform people's lives through that gracious message. I'm down with that. But also and at the same time, it must express itself in practical care for others, in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting the prisoner. If it doesn't do both, it isn't really church. If it does, it is rich and Spirit-filled.

My struggle yesterday was that I didn't bring that gracious Spirit with me when I went. For the first four years of my ministry, my congregation was so wrapped up in Korean psychodrama that it just couldn't seem to muster any service work at all. My outlaw fraternity did more community outreach than my congregation, which ain't sayin' much. Outside of giving cash from the endowment, we did jack-diddly-nothing. Finally, this last year, I started pressing for us to regularly run a food drive, which we've sort of done. I also started encouraging the church to volunteer at the local faith-based clothing closet.

There was some initial involvement. But for the past four months, a grand total of two folks have joined me in doing it. Once it was a kid doing it because he had to. The other time it was my Jewish son, who likes volunteering, and is eager to join me whenever he can.

I'm aware I'm not reaching out enough. Talking about it with lay congregational leaders, talking about it during bible studies, preaching sermons on the necessity of service, announcing it during services, highlighting it in email newsletters, and pitching it through Facebook event invites and notifications...these aren't enough. Only going from person to person, and asking each individual directly if they're going to volunteer every single time we're going to do it seems to work. After a wise soul told me early on that this was the only way people were going to come, I followed his advice. I did that for a while. I did that for a few months.

But there are limits to how far I'm willing to take pastoral suasion. If after over a year people have experienced it, and still aren't coming without arm-twisting, then the voluntary element of volunteering isn't real. If you don't serve with a free will, then it cannot possibly be what it needs to be. Yeah, I could keep noodging and hassling and guilting people into it. But I've never been interested in people faking it out of sense of obligation.

This leaves me with two troubling conundrums.

The first is having to admit to myself that I am the only person in the congregation who cares about this particular service opportunity. It's a bit vexing, because I really like it, I really enjoy it, and it's just a transparently good thing to do. It connects us with our community. It clothes the naked, which would seem like something we'd realize matters to Jesus. But I am self-evidently the only one who cares. Ah well. Egos are such irritating things, and try as I might, I can't always shut mine off. The church is, after all, finally doing other service work on site, through the calling of someone who has joined us in the last few months. So even if my efforts have proved fruitless, the Spirit is at work elsewhere in the church. I take some solace in that.

The second is not to allow my irritation to impede my own efforts. I personally need service ministry to be fed spiritually, but there is no point in doing it while ensconced in a dark cloud of pissiness or judgmentalism or smugness. And though I hate to admit it, it was getting to me this weekend. On the way to the clothing center, certain in the knowledge that it was, once again, just going to be me, I could feel that narsty little inner Pharisee embittering me. Judging others. Telling me that I, in my noble me-ness, should be Proud that I'm The Only One Who Gets It. But there is no Christ in such thinking. There are plenty of folks who live out their faith that way, governed by the demons of self and self-interest. It's a dark cloud of smug delusion.

So I resisted that pesky little demon. I challenged and centered myself. I reminded myself of the point of it all. I focused on the sorting and hanging of clothes the way you'd focus on a repeated prayer, losing myself completely in it. And the anger and bitterness and selfishness faded. And the clothes were sorted and set out for those in need.

It really is most effective.

Haiti and Human Suffering

On the day after Christmas five years and a few weeks ago, Indonesia was struck by a massive tsunami. Hundreds of thousands of human beings lost their lives, killed by the onslaught of an unstoppable tidal surge. It was a time of immense tragedy and human suffering. In coming to terms with this event, many folks of a religious persuasion offered up reasons that God might inflict such suffering on humankind. Among some sections of Christianity, stories were told of churches remaining unharmed. That the vast majority of those who lost their lives were Muslim...so...well...perhaps God was annoyed at their lack of Christian faith. In the conservative Islamic world, the spin was both different and exactly the same. Indonesia was being punished for being insufficiently Muslim, allowing the infidels to drink and wear bikinis and spend lots of money in beachside resorts to sustain the local economy.

Today, the news comes from Haiti that a sizable earthquake has devastated that poverty-stricken nation. Back when I was a kid, the little evangelical free church my family attended in London used to regularly provide supplies to Haitian communities. We wrote letters to Haitian kids. Things were hard there thirty years ago, and they haven't improved. It is the Bangladesh of the Northern Hemisphere. The reports coming in this morning are spotty, but the likelihood is that there are many, many thousands dead. Slipshod construction and the crowding that comes from endemic poverty makes a temblor unusually devastating. Wretchedly undeveloped infrastructure and incompetent, corrupt government make it even worse. It is going to be bad.

Over the next week or so, the eyes of our nation will be turned to that broken state. Until some juicy celebrity scandal reclaims our undivided attention, that is. During this week, I do not doubt that somewhere, someone who claims to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth will decide that God is somehow responsible for this event. Perhaps Haitians were not praying hard enough. Or they weren't the "right sort of Christian." Or they were immoral. Maybe someone will decide that the practice of vodun is to blame. There has to be a reason!

We can't help ourselves. We want to believe that faith somehow gets us excused from suffering, even though our faith teaches no such thing. We want to believe that just praying hard enough will protect us from disaster and keep us fat and happy and rolling in material blessings, even though our faith shows us nothing of the sort. Our desire to come up with a theological reason for the bad things that happen has nothing to do with our Maker, and everything to do with our own egocentrism.

But the reality of existence is that we are small and easily broken, and that death comes eventually to us all. Faith does not change that reality. What it does, though, is help us respond to that reality. What a faithful response needs to be has nothing to do with explanations or justifications. That sort of speculation is actively counterproductive.

Instead, Christians need to respond with caring. We need to be providing evidence of the love that lies at the heart of our faith. That will come in the form of material aid, in doctors and medicine and food and blankets and rebuilding supplies. It will come through the presence of aid workers who give comfort.

It is that caring that matters, that work that matters, that effort to bring about good in the face of the reality of our smallness and mortality that matters.

Priorities

About five years ago, the group of ultraconservatives who've committed themselves to torment and disrupt my denomination took it on themselves to help destroy a long standing partnership between my Presbytery and Presbyterians in East Africa. For the better part of a decade, we'd partnered to help build clinics and hospitals and safe-houses for young Christian working women. My own congregation was only part of the partnership for two years, but in that time we put a roof on one new church, dug a well for a clinic, and laid the foundation for another church.

But my Presbytery includes progressives, meaning, there are folks here open to gays and lesbians. So our ultraconservatives sought out the then-moderator of the PCEA, a witch-hunting, demon-seeing, self-aggrandizing Big Man of the most pernicious kind. Their priorities were the same. First and foremost: No Gays. Those hospitals were being built with gay-friendly money! That new tin roof is clearly a bit swishy! Don't drink the water from that new well...it's homosexual water! I had one tiny sip the other day, and I'm already worrying more about whether these pants really match my shirt!

And so the partnership was declared a "partnership with evil." Further interactions were forbidden...and that meant clinics had less medicine for the sick, there was less clean water for the thirsty, and fewer churches were being built for the faithful. At the time, the ultraconservatives in the US declared they would fill the gap. But they didn't. They have their priorities, and having done the damage, they wandered off to find more things to break.

Today, we hear that the Catholic Church is threatening to pull Catholic Charities out of DC, eliminating services for adoptees, the poor, and the homeless. Why? Because of a new law permitting same-sex marriage in DC.

The church has asserted that it's freedom of religious expression would be impinged by this law. If it views gay and lesbian relationships as sinful, it should be under no obligation to provide benefits to same sex couples, or to be open to adoptions by same-sex couples. While I disagree with their perspective, I also think that churches and religious nonprofits should never, ever, be forced to adhere to particular ethical standards in our society...unless they are causing actual harm in a community. So the church does have a point. No church should ever be forced to marry or solemnify the relationships of individuals who do not meet the standards of their particular fellowship. That's what Unitarians are for.

But if you actually bother reading the legislation, that's not what it does. Want to do that? Follow this link, and enter "B18-482." Read it for yourself. If you look through the law, it bends over backwards to explicitly and repeatedly state that religious entities that oppose same sex marriage on the grounds of their faith are under no compunction to have anything to do with them. In fact, the text of the bill spends a great deal of time affirming the First Amendment rights of those who disagree.

What is at play here, when you dig down into the actuality of what is proposed, would impinge not a whit on the religious practices of any community. It seems a bit of a stretch to assert that those rights are being infringed. It's a greater spiritual stretch to refuse to provide charitable care for a community...even a community you view as sinful...because it fails to meet a particular expectation of your faith. That, for all the protestations otherwise, seems to be the threat that's being leveled here.

The measure of Christian faith is not how well we care for our "own." It's how well we care for others, particularly in times of disagreement. Denying charity to those in need for the sake of theological purity seems...well...to indicate a prioritization that just doesn't mesh with our central values. Heck, it doesn't mesh with the values held by most Catholics. Or, for that matter, with the values held by the folks I've known who worked for Catholic Charities.

Some things are clearly and self evidently more important to the faith than others. I think that's being lost here.

Resentment

Every once in a while, that petty little beast wakes up in me, colors my eye with bitter jaundice and looks around with gritted-teeth irritation at those who are..inadequate.

This Saturday, I took a small group from my church to our local clothing closet for a few hours of sorting and setting out clothing for folks in our community who are struggling financially. I'll bring by clothes for donation often as well. It's an important thing for Jesus people to do. That's not because we're obeying an edict that says "Be Charitable Or Else." It's because real Christian compassion moves people to action...because we love as He loved, and are willing to give to others as freely as He gave himself for us.

As I moved clothes from the giant donation bins to the racks out on the display floor, I found myself growing increasingly irritated. It had been a bustling morning, and my balanced breakfast had been two equally sized cups of coffee...followed by no lunch at all. A caffeine-only diet never works well for my mood, and I could feel my snarkishness rising.

Many of the folks who come to the center in need of clothing move quietly among the racks, selecting work clothes or school clothes for their children. They politely ask the staff for help finding car seats for their children.

Others...well...others don't seem to quite *cough* grasp the system. They gather huge bags of clothes. They holler at their kids every forty seconds or so. They camp out in the back where the volunteers are sorting, hoping to snag choice items before they're set out. They ignore the staff when they're told they have taken too much, and continue to stuff bags full when the facility is closed and they're asked to leave.

Look at them! They are...undeserving! Unworthy! Or so snarled my inner Pharisee, who boiled over with indignation and outrage at these fools who were so clearly the source of their own suffering. If they were the sorts of people who knew How To Follow the Rules, they wouldn't be in this mess. Just look at them! Ignorant! Pushy! Selfish! I could feel myself growing more and more intolerant, along with a strange compulsion to watch FoxNews.

I let that mood run for a few moments, marveling at how easy it must be to live a life thinking this way. I then reminded myself of why my heart compels me to care...even for folks who don't "deserve" it...and with the Apostle Paul's help, stomped that little demon into oblivion.

Don't Give to that Charity...They'll Only Use It To Buy Booze

As the economy has tanked, more and more calls have come to my church for emergency assistance.

We're a small church that exists only because we have a small endowment. We give a fairly solid amount of our budget to support local charities and service organizations. We volunteer our time to help out. But what we don't do a tremendous amount of is direct giving to individuals.

In fact, we pretty much don't do any direct giving at all. I struggle with this a bit.

On the one hand, I tend to think that communities can better serve those in need if they pool their resources. The scattershot, church-by-church approach to giving tends to result in disjointed care. For families who are genuinely struggling, that means an arbitrary hit-or-miss approach to getting help. With the economy hitting parishioners hard, it also means that faith communities are rallying around their own, and may not have the resources or the energy to help those outside of their fold.

It also provides a rich environment for folks whose entire livelihood is a carefully manufactured sob story, like the young woman who comes by our church every year having been "just laid off this week and forced to live in her car." It's a late model Accord, the EX-L, with sunroof and navigation and leather seating. Or the man whose car "runs out of gas" in the church parking lot, and who needs cash...preferably twenty bucks...to get to work.

It's for that reason that a local charity that our church supports recently set up "charity meters" outside of local businesses as a way of reducing giving to professional panhandlers. Why give loose change to someone who's just going to buy a forty with it, when you can drop those quarters with a group that you know will provide housing, food, and sustained support to people in need? It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it'll either work or last.

That's because just giving cash or loose change to local charities is not enough. What that does not do is engage you personally with human beings who are struggling. It doesn't develop relationships. It doesn't engage you as anything other than a Sugah Daddy or a Lady Beneficent. If you don't really get to know the humanity of children of God who've fallen on hard times, then it's hard to say you're showing charity. By that, I don't mean charity as a process of financially supporting the disenfranchised. I mean charity as a spiritual gift, as charis, the essential manifestation of God's reconciling love.

Relationships governed by grace are a vital part of the way we are called to help transform the world, and that path includes but goes far beyond the financial.

Yeah, Yeah, I Should Help the Downtrodden, But What's In It For Me?

One of the biggest concerns that has hit the nonprofit community recently is the potential impact of the new tax plan on charitable giving by the very wealthy. As part of the new tax plan, charitable deductions would be limited for those making more than $250,000 a year.

That means, of course, that the extremely well off would not receive the same sort of tax benefits for their giving. This could result in a commensurate reduction in the level of giving to charities and churches at a time when they are experiencing a huge uptick in demand.

As always, I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I can really appreciate the concerns of nonprofit organizations. They're looking at this in terms of their "bottom line," which is providing services to those in need. They don't want to lose the capacity to provide care, and research shows that this approach could potentially reduce the total support for charities in the U.S. to the tune of $3.9 Billion annually. That's a huge impact.

On the other hand, there's that Jesusy part of me that finds the whole conversation a bit ethically challenged. Doesn't charity by definition go beyond self interest? If you're making more than $250,000 a year, you're rich. You're doing great. You've got cash to burn. Is the primary motivator to give to that shelter or that hospital or that community arts center that you're going to get your deduction?

Can real charity be selfish?