Charity: Grace Outsourced?

The Gospel reading yesterday was the parable of the wheat and the weeds.

A farmer sows good seed in his field, but weeds appear among the wheat.
When the servants discover them, they want to pull the weeds out.

The farmer tells them to wait. Let them grow together.

I found myself thinking about that image long after the reading ended.

The wheat and the weeds.

Good and harm, growing alongside one another.

Perhaps that is closer to the truth of human life than we would like to admit.

We are capable of extraordinary generosity and extraordinary harm—sometimes at the same time.

Our institutions can create tremendous value while diminishing the people within them.
Our economies can produce abundance while depending upon extraction.
Our churches can send resources across the world while failing to see the person struggling in their own pews.

The wheat is real. So are the weeds.

Perhaps one of our temptations is to point toward the wheat as evidence that we do not need to examine the weeds.

The Giving I Carry

That brought me back to something written on my own body.

One of my tattoos is about giving.
It carries an idea I have held for years:

To give with what you have is human.
To give what you have is divine.

And then, because apparently even my tattoos need footnotes:

Unless you’re Robin Hood.

I have always understood the distinction as one of sacrifice.

It is one thing to use what I possess to help another. It is something deeper to give of what I possess—
to allow another person’s need to make a genuine claim upon me.

But lately, the Robin Hood exception has been making me wonder about something else.

Perhaps the morality of giving cannot be separated from the story of how we came to have what we are giving.

That thought led me to a simple tension:

Do no harm.

And then another possibility occurred to me:

Do harm here and offer grace elsewhere.

The two can look surprisingly similar from a distance.

When Good and Harm Grow Together

A person can be extraordinarily generous and still cause harm. An organization can give millions to communities while building systems that diminish the people within it. A society can celebrate philanthropy while depending upon forms of extraction that make philanthropy necessary. A church can send resources across the world while failing to see the person struggling in its own pew.

None of this makes the generosity unreal.

The hungry person who is fed is still fed.
The student who receives a scholarship still receives an education.
The family that finds shelter is still sheltered.
The community that receives resources may genuinely flourish because someone chose to give.

The wheat is still wheat. Charity does good.

But I wonder if charity sometimes does something else too.

I wonder if it allows us to move grace away from the place where harm occurs.

Perhaps charity can become grace outsourced.

Not because grace should not travel.

Grace should travel everywhere.

But because there is a difference between grace that overflows and grace that bypasses.

Grace overflowing begins here and keeps going.
Grace outsourced leaves here untouched and goes somewhere else.

What Goodness Allows Us Not to See

Scripture seems deeply interested in that distinction.

The prophets repeatedly confront people who are doing recognizably good and religious things while leaving injustice undisturbed.

They bring offerings.
They gather for worship.
They observe the rituals.
They make sacrifices.

Yet Isaiah calls them toward justice and the defense of the oppressed. Amos refuses to separate worship from justice. Micah asks what God actually requires and answers not with increasingly extravagant offerings, but with justice, mercy, and humility.

Jesus continues this thread.

He speaks of religious leaders meticulously attending to one expression of faithfulness while neglecting what he calls the weightier matters: justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

The problem was not necessarily that the smaller acts were wrong.
The problem was what those acts allowed them not to see.

Perhaps this is one of the oldest temptations of goodness:

To do good somewhere so we do not have to confront the harm we participate in somewhere else.

We might call it generosity.
Scripture might ask about reconciliation.

We might call it philanthropy.
Scripture might ask about justice.

We might call it giving back.
Scripture might quietly ask: Giving back what?

Before We Give Back

That question becomes uncomfortable because much of modern charity begins after accumulation.

First we accumulate.

Then we decide what portion we can afford to give away.

But we rarely ask what happened during the accumulation itself.

Who carried the cost?
Who received less?
Whose labor became someone else’s margin?
Whose land, attention, time, health, or dignity became an input into the value that was eventually accumulated?

Perhaps this is where the small joke written into my skin becomes less funny.

Unless you’re Robin Hood.

Because before we celebrate what is being given,
perhaps we should sometimes ask where it came from.

Not because every accumulation is theft. Not because every act of charity conceals harm.
But because generosity does not erase provenance.

And after value has traveled upward, some of it often travels outward again as generosity.

That generosity may be real.
It may change lives. It may even be grace.

But if it never travels back toward the places where harm occurred, something remains unresolved.

Grace Travels Back Toward the Wound

The story of Zacchaeus offers me an interesting counterpoint.

His encounter with Jesus produces generosity.

He promises to give to the poor.
But he does not stop there.

He also turns toward those he may have harmed.
If he has defrauded anyone, he will make restitution.

The movement is different.

Grace travels outward toward those in need.
But grace also travels backward toward the wound.

Charity and repair become companions.

The Good Samaritan offers another picture.

He encounters a wounded person on the road he is already traveling.

The wound interrupts him.

Grace happens at the site of harm.

He stops.
He sees.
He moves closer.
He spends his own resources.
He alters his journey.

Perhaps that is one of the deepest distinctions worth holding.

Charity can sometimes be scheduled.
Grace interrupts.

Charity can be allocated.
Grace makes a claim upon us.

Charity can happen at a distance.
Grace moves toward the wound.

What If Goodness Began Earlier?

This makes me wonder about the systems we have built.

What if the aspiration of a good enterprise were not simply to generate enough wealth to become generous?

What if goodness began earlier?

In how value is created.
In how people are treated.
In how power is held.
In how profits are distributed.
In how communities are affected.
In how decisions are made when nobody is watching.

What if we measured generosity not only by how much leaves the system as charity, but by how little unnecessary harm the system creates along the way?

Perhaps the highest expression of grace is not repairing every wound we create.
Perhaps it is learning to create fewer wounds.

And perhaps, when wounds do occur, grace asks us first to turn toward them rather than away.

That does not eliminate charity. It gives charity a different starting point.

Instead of:

Do harm here and offer grace elsewhere.

Perhaps:

Do no harm where you can.
Repair harm where you have.
Offer grace where you are.
And let grace overflow everywhere else.

Because charity can change lives.

But charity should never become the place where we send our goodness so that our everyday lives, institutions, and systems do not have to change.

To give with what we have may indeed be human.
To give what we have may approach something divine.

But perhaps grace asks one more question before either:

How did what we have become ours?

Back to the Field

I return to the field.

The wheat and the weeds are still growing together.

Perhaps the invitation is not to stand at the edge of the field, certain that we can always tell one from the other. Perhaps it is to look more carefully at what is growing through us.

At the good we do.
At the harm we participate in.
At the grace we offer elsewhere.

And at the wounds beside us that may still be waiting for our attention.

Grace does not need to be outsourced.

It can begin here.

Perhaps it must.