By Joel Repic
“True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands – whether of individuals or of entire peoples – need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.”
- Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed
True generosity, according to Freire, is doing much more than “charity” in the traditional sense of the word. For me, the word “charity” strikes up connotations of soup kitchens and clothing drives where goods are exchanged from the rich to the poor (or in Friere’s langauge, from the oppressed to the oppressor) without any real context of relationship. This is most likely a misconception in my own mind, for “charity” at one time probably used to be (and maybe still is) a more noble word than that. But this misconception, nonetheless, is a reality in my thinking – and perhaps in the thinking of others.
When I think of the word “charity” I am taken back to one of the first times I ever came into contact with the poor. I was a sophomore in high school, and the youth group from Crestmont Alliance Church was in Belle Glade, Florida, for a week serving the highly impovershed Hatian migrant worker community there. For a week our team had spent a considerable amount of time in the community tangibly serving others, learning about the horrors of poverty, and mostly just listening to the people who lived there. During this whole time, we were lodging at a rather large (and, might I say, rather wealthy) church just on the other side of the canal that distinctly separated the rich from the poor. The church was composed of almost entirely white, middle-class Christians who, over the course of the week, seemed strangely unaware of the tragic situation just on the other side of the canal. While the church had certainly been willing to host our team as well as the teams from other churches who had come to help the poor in Belle Glade, the church itself seemed rather distant from the harsh realities of its own community.
The last day of our time in Belle Glade, our team was invited by the church to participate in a weekly food bank sponsored by the church for the members of the community. Throughout the morning, the Hatian population trickled over the canal and into the church building. Incidentally, the church had invited me to preach to the migrant workers present before they received their food, and this was the first time I ever publicly engaged in the preaching ministry. As I recall, I chose the text of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, since to me it embodied a message of hope desperately needed in a context of despair.
After my message, the crowd of people was allowed to proceed through the piles of food made available to them by the church. As the morning progressed, our team, rather than being encouraged by this seemingly generous act, was increasingly discouraged by what we observed. The church ladies that had assembled insisted on talking to the migrant workers as if they were all children. One by one, the migrant workers would extend their needy hands to the white church ladies who would ask in a slow tone reminiscent of a preschool teacher instructing his class, “WOULD…..YOU…..LIKE…..SOME…..FOOD…..TODAY?” This was “charity” with all of its negative connotations in full and perverse view. Charity without relationship. Charity from the oppressors to the oppressed in a way that kept the oppressed “in their rightful place.” Charity that failed to see the objects of the charity as real people. (I should mention here that the church ladies, before the migrant workers came through, took all of the best food donations out for themselves and put them into their cars. After all, the migrant workers wouldn’t miss what they didn’t know was even available to them). The experience certainly left a sorrowful mark on my mind and the minds of my other team members.
The Church needs to be involved in more than just charity in this sense. Ironically, the text of the Good Samaritan that I had publicly reflected on that morning flew in the face of the activities of the Christians providing the food. Jesus’ point is that everyone is our neighbor. That is, no one is less than human. Jesus is telling us that even those viewed as broken are in fact humans worthy of all the dignity that position affords. Absolutely, we are called to offer practical help. But as the Apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13, any amount of pious action without love is really no good at all. In archaic language, the word “charity” means just that – love. It does not mean some “good work” where no true love is involved – where we fail to see people as truly people created in God’s image.
My hope is that Aliquippa Impact will be involved in more than charity. For me, the cure for the type of charity we witnessed that day in Belle Glade is relationships. If “charity” is undertaken with no relationship, then the one providing the charity is tempted to view the ones being served as less than human. But if the one providing the “charity” undertakes a real effort to listen to the suffering, bind themselves with the poor, and stand in solidarity with the broken, then they will understand the people being served as more than projects. They will see them as people. And through the eyes of faith, hope, and love, they will see even the most broken person as full of potential – as one who can someday themselves transform the world for good. And more importantly, they will listen to the suffering to understand how to best help rather than offer “solutions” that are really no solutions at all.
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