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Charity Doesn't Start at Home!
Sydney Harris, USA
It is a fact of life that many of the Biblical phrases in common usage are used incorrectly. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," for example is invariably misunderstood by people who use it as an excuse for retaliation, when it originated as a plea for justice.
There is another common phrase that is damaged even more in its popular usage, and that is "charity begins at home." Whenever this saying is trotted out, it is to justify taking care of one's own before concerning one's self with the needs of others.
Yet this is not at all what the phrase originally meant. As first published in 1642, in Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, it meant "charity" in the Pauline sense of "loving -kindness," not almsgiving or philanthropy.
And it did not mean that we should first take care of our own, but that if we do not display loving kindness to our family and friends, then whatever alms or philanthropy we engage in is done out of pride, or vanity, or ostentation, not out of deep human compassion.
I have known more than a few celebrated philanthropists who gave away huge sums to worthy causes of all sorts, but whose personal relationships were devoid of loving-kindness, and who used public magnanimity as a cloak for private skull-duggary.
This common subterfuge, of course, is the reason for another widely misunderstood saying--Jesus' injunction that your left hand should not know what your right hand is doing.
If anyone troubled to read the whole verse, he would learn that Jesus is addressing himself to the philanthropists of his time who would stand up in public and make known their large donations to charity. He is telling them to give so quietly and anonymously with one hand that not even the other hand is aware, much less the community.
Charity, of course, does not begin at home, it must begin where it is most needed, whether this be at home, or in some remote Indian village.
What must begin at home are love and respect and tender treatment of those closest to us--for unless we radiate such feelings in our daily, intimate relationships, the money we give away to others, or even the good works and nice things we do for others, are simply a bribe, allowing us to maintain our self-esteem while we continue to injure, hurt, or ignore those who should be closest to us.
The poor know it, and resent it, when they are the objects of help without the commensurate feelings of respect; when they are aided to make the giver feel better, not because of their real need.
In a psychological sense, the philanthropist needs the poor more than they need him--charity brings him honors but leaves them only scraps.
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