Francesca Day

Christianity and Giving

I joined Giving What We Can because I am a Christian.

 The Christian call to charity can sound almost clichéd at times, but the fundamental message is radical. Jesus tells us “love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:31). This sounds obvious and easy – but Jesus makes it clear in the Parable of the Good Samaritan that our neighbour is not just people who live near us or people who we like, but every human being in the world. We are called to value each and every human being in the world as much as we value ourselves.

Applying this principle to charitable giving, we see that putting the odd pound in a collection bucket just isn’t going to cut it. If we really love those living with poverty, illness or oppression as we love ourselves, we will do everything we can to help them. We will make real sacrifices to help them.

Charitable giving is a focus of Jesus’ teachings. He tells us “Sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys”. It is clear that Jesus had some fairly serious charitable giving in mind.

By sacrificing worldly goods to help those whose need is so much greater than our own, we build treasure in heaven, and we make the Earth a better place. Jesus is talking about big sacrifices here – He’s saying we should go as far as to sell our things to raise money to give to the poor! When we consider that we’re called to value them as much as we value ourselves, this idea doesn’t seem so silly.

Do I live up to these ideals? Absolutely not. I strive to model my life on Jesus’ teachings, and taking the Giving What We Can pledge is a step towards that goal. I have pledged to give 10% of my income to whichever charity I think most effectively helps those living in extreme poverty. 10% feels like a lot, but it shouldn’t. It feels like a lot because I haven’t succeeded in truly loving my neighbour as myself. Taking a public pledge to give helps ensure that my actions will live up to my ideals.

Why the focus on effectiveness? Now I’ve pledged to give this money, I have to choose where to give it. How should I choose? I should choose in a way that 

values every single human being as my neighbour

. Not just people who live near me, not just people who speak my language, and not just people suffering in ways that I might one day suffer. I should value the child in Ethopia dying of a disease I haven’t heard of as much as the lady down the road battling cancer.

With this in mind, I’ve decided I want to 

give to a charity that can help as many people as possible with my donation

. How can I work out which charity that is? It’s hard – there are several organisations researching this questions, but no definitive answers. Jesus does not give us lists of rules to follow – He tells us to love our God and love our neighbour and we have to figure the rest out ourselves. We have to figure out how and where we should give to best love our neighbour.

Jesus tells us “be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves” (Mark 10:16). We are called to give wisely and to give generously. We are called to love our neighbours by giving freely of all the gifts God has given us – our worldly possessions, our intelligence and our humility. For me, being a member of Giving What We Can is part of this commitment.

How I Started Taking Charity Seriously

I've always liked to think of myself as I nice person. I helped my friends with their homework. I volunteered at a homeless shelter. I gave money to charity. Surely I was as ethical as it was possible to be? I have always believed that all of us are fundamentally equal - surely we all believe that! We all have the same right to freedom, health and education. Because of this conviction, I gave money to charities that helped those living in extreme poverty. All was right and proper, and I enjoyed my privileged life relatively untroubled by guilt. I was part of the solution, after all.

A few months ago, I started thinking about things differently. Did I really believe that a child in Ethiopia dying of malaria was equal to me and my friends? Of course I did - any other position would be awful. Was I acting like it? Absolutely not. If I really believed that child was my equal, I would be doing everything I could to help them and others living in such suffering. Not donating a small amount of money to a randomly chosen charity then forgetting about them.

This realisation took a while to sink in. I didn't want to change my lifestyle or admit that I had been so wrong. I made a lot of excuses to myself. I'm only a poor student, what can I do? There are richer people who don't give anything to charity at all! I'm already doing my bit. In the end, none of these excuses convinced me. I had the power to help so many more people in such desperate need at very little cost to myself. How could I justify not using it for a second longer? I came to the conclusion that if I was as "nice" as I claimed to be I needed to give more to charity. Much more. And I needed to think hard about which charities would help the most people with my donations, not just choose one based on an advert I saw in the Big Issue.

There is a community of people who have reached the same conclusion - Giving What We Can. 

 to give at least 10% of our income to the organizations we think will use it most effectively to help people living in the developing world. By today's standards, giving this much as a "normal" person (i.e. not a millionaire) is almost unheard of. But there is no escaping our duty to those born into extreme poverty. I hope that, through the work of Giving What We Can and similar organisations, more and more people will start to give more and give more effectively. I hope that we could be the generation to end global poverty.

Pledging to give 10% might be the most important decision I will make in my life. Whatever else happens, I will save and elevate countless lives - the lives of those who most need my help. That's worth giving up a few lattes.

This article originally appeared on Huffington Post UK on 10 February 2014.

Fran holds a PhD in Physics from Oxford University and a Natural Sciences degree from Cambridge.

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Francesca Day

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Articles

Christianity and Giving

How I Started Taking Charity Seriously