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Charity begins at home Published: December 15, 2006 by Elizabeth Nickson Exquisitely timed for the season, the just published Who Really Cares, by 42-year-old Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks, states that liberals volunteer and give far less than conservatives, particularly religious conservatives. This is a welcome gift for the conservative community. The seeming ineptitude of President (God and exercise) George W. Bush has everyone feeling quite tragic. Fascinating, no? The left are held by us all, and particularly by themselves, to be morally superior creatures, who believe in “helping”, in living wages for all, in the redistribution of societal goods to the less privileged, and a safety net for every little sparrow. But when it comes to the hands-on giving till it hurts, to standing in soup kitchens, and manning suicide hot lines, they're pretty much absent. Worse, Brooks proves that if only liberals gave to blood drives there would be 45% less blood available. Why so stingy? According to the flood of commentary that's greeted this book, liberals expect government to do it for them, with other people's money if possible. As if the feeling of helping could replace the actual helping. The key to this mystery, I suspect, is that old saw, “charity begins at home.” My suspicion is that if charity does begin at home, it is because there, at home, you can see a clear need, help where you can, see the results of your helping, and adjust your giving to fit. Tracked out, in the ideal model of community, you are sensitive to the needs of the family down the street which suddenly falls on hard times, the drug addicted teenager of your garbage man or dentist, or the sudden plague of crack whores on your street. To fight these modern catastrophes grows you up, stitches you in to the human family, makes you a bigger person, a person who, in your own estimation, helps when called upon. But few of us have homes anymore. We have cities, which are fascinating and terrible, or corporate families from which you can be turfed at any moment, and some people still have close ethnic communities, in which the old ways of helping and sharing still work, sometimes. But mostly our lives are terribly anonymous. Christian conservatives do have homes. They have their churches, and those churches are communities from which you cannot be eliminated by a job or life change. If you are relocated, you join a new sister church and are instantly at home. This is the undeniable magnetism of the new church movement. Plus, they give. With shovels and pitchforks and palettes of goods in the parking lots of the new big churches in the new, most anonymous of suburbs all over North America. We all don't want a church family, but in this at least, we can imitate the best of this new movement. Helping is transformative. Choose someone or some cause; give till it hurts. Trust me on this. Your life will soar.

© 2006 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.