Derek: 00:06

Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We are continuing our discussion on consequentialism with a look today at how god has uncovered the ethic of consequentialism in my generosity. When I was on my church's diaconate, we read a book called When Helping Hurts. Now, overall, I thought this was a a very good book. It was very insightful and and helpful in kind of doing mercy ministry practically.

Derek: 00:38

It did a good job of recognize, recognizing the varieties of poverty. So a lot of times, we think that poverty is strictly financial. But most of the time, poverty is is a result financial poverty, poverty can be the result of, other things. And this is especially true of communal poverty, or poverty of community. And I saw this all the time when people would come in, they don't have, they don't have family.

Derek: 01:09

Or if they do have family, their family is all messed up and they can't really turn to anybody. Their their marriages are sabotaged. Their friends are nuts. It just there's nobody that they can turn to, and nobody in their community who's who's a good example. It's just their life is is not good.

Derek: 01:32

So when Helping Hearts does a good job of of painting, a picture of all these types of poverties and spiritual poverty being at the core of of, all of it, And that was that was helpful for me. And, you know, it also showed that there are people who are financially poor who actually live, lead very satisfying, happy, awesome lives. So the book really overturned a lot of these ideas of of poverty for me and helped me to look at things a bit differently. It also did a, an important, thing, which is to help me to recognize the importance of connecting somebody's needs to their community. So for me to give somebody a $100, it might be helpful to them in the short term.

Derek: 02:21

It might be okay. It might be useful. But me connecting somebody, somebody with another person in their own community who can give them a $100 either directly, if that's needed, or through a job, or through connections, connecting them with somebody who can provide them with work, that's gonna create lasting relationships and help that person's need long term. And that's what we really seek when we are trying to be generous and to help other people. Those are my first impressions.

Derek: 02:58

But, you know, I I had this pendulum swing where I really started to question the idea of enablement and just all this all these things that I felt like Christians were using as excuses to not be generous or excuses to mask their materialism. And I after thinking it through, after the pendulum has kind of swung back, I don't think one helping hurts really masks materialism, or or anything like that. But I think the way that it's written and the the way that I've seen people use it, I think that book, when read by people who want to mask their materialism and want to mask their lack of generosity, I think that book can too easily be turned to, becoming a tool to enable those sorts of people because it enabled me in the way that I took it and read it. It essentially became an endorsement of my community, my community's lack of generosity and my personal lack of generosity. You know, it it perpetuated ideas in me that, well, if giving is gonna enable somebody, then we need to be very careful how we give.

Derek: 04:16

You know, in fact, it's probably better not to give because we don't want to enable somebody. And if you listen to, to the podcast on grace, you got my, my soapbox on that topic. I just, yeah. I think we take that way too far. Also, if we only gave to those who were worthy and and had a chance of success, if we did that, that's the that's the good thing.

Derek: 04:46

We only give to people who are worthy. Now we wouldn't use the that sort of language because that's not very grace filled and we knew that. But that's what our questionnaires and processes were meant to do, to figure out if somebody was worthy and if there's a chance that giving something to them could fix them, could change them, or convert them. And if those two things failed, and we we knew that we needed to give, but, we just we knew that we couldn't, fulfill those first two categories because it was too cumbersome to really figure out if somebody's perfectly worthy, then we'd give one time and have an expectation that that person wouldn't come back. You know, this is your lifeline.

Derek: 05:30

Here you go. If you come back for more money, we're probably not gonna give it to you because you used your one lifeline. So for me personally, I I failed to use that book introspectively. What I took from the book was figuring out what might be wrong with other people and reasons why I might not want to give to them because it might enable them. A few years later, I was listening to a New Testament survey from, this Orthodox guy out in Colorado because I was in Romania and just trying to understand the way that the Orthodox viewed different things.

Derek: 06:09

And he was going through the beatitudes and began, to talk about, you know, some of the hardest teachings of Jesus. While I was listening to him talk about those, I I really started to reflect a lot more on generosity. And this is also after I've I've started to believe that nonviolence is the Christian position. And when you start to take that seriously, it starts to open the door for you taking everything else Jesus says seriously and without metaphor. So I was really, really honed in on on the beatitudes and trying to think about what Christian generosity was like.

Derek: 06:53

And I was as I was reading through Matthew 5 through 7 again, a few things stood out to me. And I wanna talk with you a bit about what I what I was able to to draw from those reflections and from the New Testament class that I was listening to. First, when we think about generosity, at least in the West, at least in America, we believe that generosity, that giving, is about changing others. But interestingly, Matthew doesn't seem to think that when he talks about giving. Matthew says not to be concerned with others' reactions.

Derek: 07:35

You know? In in this whole section, Matthew says, be perfect like your father in heaven is perfect. And then he gives you all these things to do, like pray, fast, don't worry, all these kinds of things. And in a lot of them, he says, like, if you fast or if you give, then don't do it to be noticed by other people. Like, do it with it without anybody knowing what's going on.

Derek: 08:01

Even, with the giving, do it without even you yourself knowing what's going on. And the the issue here is that Matthew is telling us how to be perfect like our father in heaven is perfect. And he tells us when we give, we do it without even knowing what we're doing and without a focus on, other people knowing either. And it it's crazy because Matthew is giving us spiritual disciplines. He's not giving us social, social programs to fix other people.

Derek: 08:36

He's telling us how we fix ourselves. Obviously, not how we fix ourselves. The Holy Spirit and God works in us to conform us, but he's saying, look, you wanna be perfect like your father in heaven is perfect? Then be generous. What does it really mean to be generous?

Derek: 08:51

If you're truly like God, what does that mean? Here, do this. And this is about our conformity with God. This is not about how the poor get fixed. The poor are always gonna be with us.

Derek: 09:07

But then again, if you look at that that passage on the poor always being with us and and where it originates from, Jesus doesn't mean that, hey. Don't worry about the poor. They'll always be with us because they shouldn't be, if you take a look at at where that came from. Anyway, sidetrack. So Matthew is is really giving us spiritual disciplines for our hearts, not something to fix others.

Derek: 09:37

And when we pray, we are trusting in God and bowing our knee to him. When we fast, we are depending on God. We are reminded of our dependence on him for our sustenance. When we're generous, we are reminded of God's goodness to us, His blessings on us, and that God will provide for us. Even though we're we're giving money to other people, we're not without anything because God gives to us.

Derek: 10:03

Yet in the west, we view giving as something that we need to focus on fixing other people. And I I just don't think that. I think, while we don't wanna enable and while we do wanna to be wise with our money, we should be more concerned, with not giving money than we are with, giving money in, to people who are perfectly worthy or to causes that are gonna give us 100% return. That's not the focus. We need to be willing to give up our money.

Derek: 10:36

That's the point. Now, anecdotally, when I realized this, we changed some things with with how we were, treating the Roma in in Romania. When we would go to the grocery store, there would always be Roma outside begging, asking for food, and we didn't want to enable them. So, what we would do is we would, you know, head down, get to our car, ignore, get the food in the car, maybe say a phrase or 2 like, hi, and acknowledge them, and then drive off. Because we didn't want to enable.

Derek: 11:14

That was it was very painful for me when one day, my daughter, we were coming out of the grocery store and she said, hurry. Let's get to the car before the Roma. We don't want them to take anything. We don't wanna give them anything. Man, my my refusal to give was teaching my daughter to not be generous, that we needed to hoard our things and not be generous to people.

Derek: 11:45

Now, maybe, maybe doing something different wasn't good. Because what we started to do was when we go into the store, each of our kids picks out a loaf of bread or or something for the Roma kids to give them if they're out in the parking lot when we go out. They each hand a Roma kid something that they got specifically for them. And that helped our hearts too, because if you go to the store and you have this grocery list and you need to get exactly these things, and then you end up going out to the parking lot and want to give the Roma something, now you're missing something like a gallon of milk or bread that you were gonna eat. And that angers you and hardens your heart and and that's just stupid.

Derek: 12:29

So, we just started getting extra stuff that if the Roma were out there, we'd give it to them. And if not, we'd take it home and we'd have some excess, and maybe some Roma will come by the house and we'll we'll, invite them in and give that to them. So, anyway, we started doing that, and our kids started to learn the joy of giving. Now, I I asked myself the question, is it more dangerous to teach my kids to be misers who who are not generous, or is it better for my kids to give freely and maybe, through a loaf of bread once a week, enable a kid? I mean, that's ridiculous.

Derek: 13:18

And so for for us, it just was so clear. The burden of our hearts lifted. We had joy when we were able to give. We conversed. We made eye contact.

Derek: 13:30

It it was just so much better for us and for our kids, to not have to worry about these things, but to be able to love and to give people in in need. And maybe those kids, were in need because their parents do stupid things or, because their their culture just has these inherent problems with this generational poverty and and, their generationally learned behavior. But the kids are certainly in need and we can give them some food. The second thing I I was starting to learn is that giving is not just about material things. I spoke about this in in our episode on grace, but talking about, if I spend money to buy food for Roma, it's not really just about the act of finances, but it's about an act of of grace.

Derek: 14:30

I told you the story of Sarah in the episode on grace and how we spent a lot of money on her and how, we did a lot of things, meeting her fiance in prison, picking him up, helping them find a place, teaching her how to shop. We did a lot of things for her. And that all went south and blew up and and nothing happened with her in terms of conversion. But, you know, a lot of people would say that you didn't steward finances well. But, yeah, we stewarded grace well.

Derek: 15:03

And stewardship isn't just about material things. It's also about the spiritual gifts that God gives to us. And I think it's important to to remember that in generosity, that being generous isn't just about material things, though that is certainly one aspect of it. But it's also about your willingness to to bow the knee spiritually and and give of yourself. Most people forget the spiritual component and think just about the material, and they only have, the material in their equation.

Derek: 15:41

But the equation is a whole lot more complex when you start adding in things like grace and mercy, etcetera. The third thing that I I started to realize is that generosity isn't measured by functionality. A lot of times Christians think that the we give so that we have this certain outcome. And we give only if somebody can be fixed. We give if something's safe, if it's a safe bet and if the giving process is safe.

Derek: 16:23

So, as part of our generosity to the, the Roma community, part of that looks like, looks like going into, to meet with them and talk with them and allowing somebody like Alexa into our house, who then ends up stealing our our credit card. Now that's stupid that that we let her into our house because, I mean, we knew that she was hopeless. And on top of that, we knew that she was likely to take something from us. But we let her and she could probably give our kids diseases. But that that's not the way that we determine whether or not we're supposed to be generous.

Derek: 17:09

Christians are called to difficulty and trials, and generosity isn't about safe bets or being able to give things safely. In fact, at the heart of the Bible is this idea of love for enemies and people on the fringes of society, the most hopeless. Those should be individuals that we are we are most desirous to help, like the lay mis priest who helped Valjean. We should seek to help the hopeless because that's that's what Christ did. I mean, he left the throne of heaven to be born in a manger.

Derek: 17:47

Philippians 2, once again. He just, he sacrificed and served. 4th, generosity requires, at it at its core, the the best generosity requires that we become incarnational. The one of the main points of 1 helping hurts was that we want communities to help their people. And I think that's that's a very, very good point.

Derek: 18:20

But for most Americans, what what that means then is, well, I can't really give money to anything because I'm not really part of anybody's community who's in need. However, the point of that should be so that you can be generous the way that the Bible tells us to be generous, become part of somebody's community. That's what Jesus Christ did for us. The incarnation was Jesus Christ condescending, stepping into our community so he could relate with us, so that he could bear our burdens, so that he could touch us, so that we could relate to him. And then he died for us and he he healed and he gave.

Derek: 19:11

And what the great example for for my life is that with the Roma, when we got to Romania, basically, we were we were living in one place and the Roma lived in another, and we contacted them whenever we went to the supermarket. And I said, well, I don't wanna enable them. So, I'm not a part of their community, and if I gave them anything, I'd just enable them. And, you know, this this great revelation came to me one day when I said, you know what? We should probably go to their community.

Derek: 19:48

And how dumb of me that I didn't realize this day 1 that I need to go to where they live and where they are. We need to take our children and we need to go play with them. We need to meet them where they're at. We need to build relationships with them. No.

Derek: 20:06

I mean, they were just projects. Before that, they were just people that we'd see every once in a while, and and they would, engage us in conversation. And we'd give them some platitudes and, and say, well, you know, I'll, I'll help you get a job. And then, nope. Okay.

Derek: 20:21

Bye. But we never went into their community. And until a bit later, we never had any Roma into our house. We were scared to let them into our house, but that changed. We started to go to their community.

Derek: 20:35

We allowed Alexa into our house. Last Easter, it was beautiful, but, we, we had a bunch of people over for Easter dinner and just these, these Romanian kids showed up. And we said, hey, we have dinner. Why don't we invite them in? And they came into our house and they ate Easter dinner with us, and then they played with our kids out in our courtyard.

Derek: 21:04

And it was beautiful that we could enter their world and they could enter ours. And, that was awesome. But, in most of my relationships, in most of my life, the way that generosity through the eyes of When Helping Hurts works, and again, I don't, I don't think this is the book's fault, I think it's my fault in the way I use it, but the way that it usually works is that I excuse my lack of generosity by saying I'm not a part of their community rather than saying, if I can't be generous to them because I'm not a part of their community and they need generosity, then I better figure out how to become a part of their community. Now, obviously, that's not impossible. There are so many people in need and you can't become a part of everybody's community.

Derek: 21:53

But if you can't think of anybody who's genuinely in need, and and you don't know somebody who's a part of their community that you can give to, or you yourself can't become a part of somebody's community who's in need, that's a problem. We need to live incarnationally, and we need to seek to be connected to people who are incarnational in communities which are in need. So I think there's a another angle to to all of this as well. When I was on our church's diaconate, there was this white male congregant who was part of our church who came in and needed assistance with something like, you know, a $1,000 or $1200 a month mortgage. And I think our diaconate, like, chose to help for for 2 months.

Derek: 22:49

But the guy was going through a divorce. Things just weren't good, and and it it was a struggle for him. And we we approved it. We had another individual who came in around the same time, and she was a minority. She was a woman.

Derek: 23:08

She was unchurched. She was divorced. She, there are just there were lots of other, attributes that just in, or no. She wasn't divorced. She was she was unmarried, and she had kids.

Derek: 23:25

So, with her though, instead of just deciding to help, we kinda put her through the ringer. You know, with the the white male congregant. I called up. We had a chat for 10 minutes, and we're like, oh, I'm so sorry. And we decided to help him.

Derek: 23:42

With a minority woman, we put her through the ringer, and and we, you know, we were obviously skeptical about her. Like, why are you coming to us? And we did end up giving her a much smaller amount of money than than the guy to help her with, like, a month of rent. You know, we'll help her that one time. But nevertheless, the the experience of the 2 individuals who got help from us was extremely different.

Derek: 24:09

And when when I reflect on that, it just, you know, I think, should I have been harder on the white guy or should I have been more loving to the minority woman or both? And I don't know exactly what the answer is. Certainly, I could have been more loving and, and generous to the minority woman. But, you know, I I don't know exactly what the answer is with that. But it did show me that whether I know it or not, I help people like myself.

Derek: 24:46

And I think it's true that we tend to help people who are like us. I could understand being that white guy with a big mortgage and trying to, all of a sudden coming into, you know, having lost a job and, all of, suddenly and and not knowing what to do. And that could be me. He was he was part of our church. Like, he's a good guy.

Derek: 25:10

And so that could happen to me, And I helped him. I chose to help him. The minority woman, yep. I mean, her her situation, it had to be a result of all of the poor choices that she made. She lived in apartments and I I knew those apartments and the types of kids that I taught in public school who came from those apartments.

Derek: 25:33

I, you know, a single mom, the choices that she made in her sexual life and, I mean, all these things. I just I knew that her poverty was her fault. I couldn't relate to it. And while I was able to see myself in the white male, I absolutely refused to see myself like this minority woman. And and again, it's ironic because we have this this phrase, especially in, I think, most of Christianity, but especially reformed circles, where it's, but by the grace of God.

Derek: 26:08

Right? If it weren't for God's grace, that would be me. I don't believe that. I don't believe it's, but by the grace of God, I'd be that minority woman in in that situation. No.

Derek: 26:20

That's but by my merits, my good works, my avoidance of sin, that I'm not where she is. And that's a problem. It showed me that generosity for me and for my community, whether we acknowledge it or not, has typically been about the worthiness of the object to whom we're giving. Or I shouldn't say the worthiness of the object, but the perceived worthiness, what we think the object is worth. And that worthiness could be, are they like us or not?

Derek: 26:53

It could be kind of a patting of ourselves on the back. That worthiness could be, are they able to be changed? Are they a worthy project? Can they be fixed? It might be, is it worth it because Will helping them look good for us, for me, for the church?

Derek: 27:12

However we define worthiness, that's generally what my generosity and my community's generosity is about. Rarely is our generosity, like Matthew shows us it should be, about our need to relinquish our grip on wealth so that we're perfect like God is, and dependent, on him like Jesus was dependent. Giving up our control, not knowing what our right hand, is doing, what one hand is doing from the other. Just falling into relationship with God and trusting him, not only with our money and resources, but also with the outcomes and the results. And I think treating generosity like I have throughout most of my life, like a consequentialist, I think that has a number of big problems.

Derek: 28:10

But but 2 in particular that I'll I'll point out before we end. That is first, when I treat generosity consequentially, it produces a failure in me to see generosity as a need for myself. I refuse to see my heart in need of work through the relinquishing of wealth, but rather I see a lot of objects in need who maybe I can dote my my wealth upon if they deserve it. But generosity isn't a need for me. The second big problem is that treating generosity consequentially, making sure objects are worthy to receive, it it objectifies others as projects that are more or less worthy than others.

Derek: 29:02

And now I understand in a world with limited resources, we can't give everybody everything. I understand that. So I'm not saying that decisions don't have to be made. But making a decision prayerfully and making a decision where we care as much about stewarding grace as we do about stewarding material goods, that looks a whole lot different than choosing to give based on some super formal process, a bunch of statistics and math that we we do, and, looking at somebody and seeing if they're worthy like us. Are they like us?

Derek: 29:41

Then they must be worthy. Hopefully, you can see how, I still struggle with consequentialism in terms of my generosity, how I want results. I wanna give to people like me. I wanna give to people who deserve it. I wanna give to people who will change.

Derek: 29:59

And I don't wanna acknowledge that I myself need to relinquish my wealth so that God can change me. Hopefully, that will be a good reflection for you as you think through your giving. And I think that's all for now. So peace because I'm a pacifist, and I say it and I mean it.