Christians should only support charities in their own country

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Jasbir Golan 10.5

‘Charity begins at home’

Christians should only support charities in their own country

Charity can be defined as giving voluntarily to those in need or distress, so love of others. It can also be an organisation for helping those in need. ‘Need’ can be life’s basic requirements, whether they are spiritual, like care, love, family and faith, or material, like food and drink, shelter, employment, education etc. These definitions help to make clear what exactly is meant by charity and it beginning at home.

The Christian teaching on charity comes from the Bible and what Jesus has taught us. The Bible is strongly in favour of the poor and so helping them should be a priority.

In 2 Corinthians 9:7 it says ‘Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver’ and in 1 John 3:17 ‘If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?’ we are told we need to be filled with God’s love and compassion when we give money to charity or to help others, and not do it for our own praise and our motives should not be self centred.

In Acts Chapter 4 Barnabus helps all the believers he knew, so he helped those around him, and they all shared what they owned and no one claimed anything as their own, so there were no needy people. This could mean helping those around us is a better thing. There are plenty of poor people at home so it could be argued that we should be responsible for them first because the rich man in got judged for not helping Lazarus who was at his home on his doorstep, not for those he didn’t know.

We can ...

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We can see from The final Judgement story in Matthew 25 that we need to help the poor, because in doing so we are helping Jesus and as we are going to be judged in our lifetimes, we shouldn’t be selfish and should care about others and love our neighbours. In Luke 10, Jesus tells us to love our neighbours in the Good Samaritan story, and our neighbour is anyone who needs help, not just the person next door.

We should look for the greatest need when helping others and giving to charity, so we need to see that there may be hundreds of people who are homeless on the streets in London, but there are millions of people who are homeless on the streets in India. The people in London are able to get help for their needs, and are not overcome with awful diseases that spread easily due to the overcrowding and the poor facilities a country has got, which may be the case overseas.

There are some passages such as 1 Corinthians 13: 1–8 which in the King James version of the Bible speak of charity, while in the New International version have a very different meaning, and speak of love. This love is agape, and so is self-sacrificial, and so if agape was translated as charity in the King James Version, charity should be self-sacrificial.

There are many arguments that agree and disagree with the statement ‘Christians should only support charities in their own country’. I disagree with this statement and think that Christians are entitled to their own choice and should support charities anywhere and everywhere. We are all equal in God’s eyes and so we should all be treated equally and help everyone no matter where they live. Although charities in their own country may be helping those around the world, we need to look for the greater need as well as looking on our own doorstep. People in the UK are not starving to death like in other countries and the poor are relatively rich compared to those in need in Africa, for example. This does not mean we should ignore those around us, but help everyone. We cannot ignore the problems there are abroad, especially due to the communications available and the money we have. If Charity means love then charity should begin at home in the sense that we should seek to love and help our families, but if charity only means the giving of money to worthy causes I think it should be given abroad because of the greater need.