WHAT IS CHARITY?
Christine Patton
Founder of Power Within | Elite Performance & Resilience Trainer | I help professionals perform optimally with sustained and lasting results
“Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity’s golden ladder.” MAIMONIDES
This quote goes along with the well-known wisdom, which has often been attributed to Confucius, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”
What is charity, after all? We equate it with the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need. I think the word “need” should be examined. People need different things at different times. Abraham Maslow addressed the human hierarchy of needs, in, “A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review (1943). Modern interpretation states that, although one must predominantly satisfy one set of needs before ascending to the next, many will experience needs simultaneously on the hierarchy.
I have been examining the way that I contribute to my community and beyond. It is money but usually sweat equity. And I am happy to do so. However, I must say that I am slightly dissatisfied when I see only small shifts in people’s lives where need has been identified-especially here at home. It raises the real question: what do people really need here?
While physiological needs abound-is that all we need to address? After all, taking and receiving do become automatic behaviours after a while, and then nothing changes.
I have a thought-what if we offered, in the right time, food for the spirit, as well as for the body? What if wisdom was the icing on the cake? What if we could help more by teaching those in need that they had the power to change their life? And then we showed them how to do that? What if we could satisfy basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, as well as safety) as well as principles of power?
To my mind, that would satisfy the definition of charity. Just a thought. What do you think? [email protected]