The Limits of our Generosity

Every day, we witness so many people in great need. Africa has justly earned its billing as the Earth's poor continent. We struggle with what the appropriate response might be: how can we help? How should we help?

Not a day goes by without several people asking for money. Sometimes it's people knocking on our car window at a traffic light. Often it's people trying to be productive by asking if they can guard our car, or wash it.

Yesterday, a man who noticed that I was a regular at the language school called out to me in English, "Boss, tomorrow you wash my car?" (I'm pretty sure he meant the other way around, but maybe I should bring my rag and bucket today just to be sure.) I replied, "Of course."

One man who recently washed our car did so with the same rag and bucket that he'd been using for days. When he was done, the car looked like he had smeared around the existing dirt and added a little of his own for good measure.

We get our car washed often.

There are so many people looking for help. Many people aren't lazy; there aren't many jobs to be found, and the country is struggling to catch up on educating a population frozen in time by civil war.

At home, we often found ourselves screening people before giving them money. If you're asking for my money, you had better look like you're going to spend it on food, not alcohol.

As Westerners, we often prefer to give anonymously through large charitable organizations that will make sure that our contributions are being put to good use. Doing so also gets us an accounting of our year's generosity and a tax receipt so that we can get some of it back.

The Bible challenges us to give without judgment. It challenges us to give to anyone who asks, without evaluating whether or not their need surpasses an arbitrary threshold that we have established in our minds. It challenges us to give, even if the asker may not use our gift in a way that we would consider to be appropriate:

"Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." (Matthew 5:42)

That sounds a little bit off-culture, doesn't it? Our culture teaches us that, being the possessors of our wealth, we have the right to make the final determination about who needs our benevolence and who doesn't.

African culture flips this on its head. The person requesting something plays a major role in determining whether his or her need is greater than that of the potential donor. If someone is asking me for money in Africa, it's not only because they have a great need for it, but also because they've concluded that my money would do greater good to them than it would to me.

And almost without exception, they're right. Here, the poverty is so gripping. When we walk our trash out to the dumpster, there are always a couple of men who quietly take our bags from us. They've sorted through the dumpster and taken anything of value: any rotten fruit or moldy bread that may have been discarded. They'll look through our bags, too, before they place them in the dumpster.

Imagine having to live off of the refuse of the world's poorest.

Nobody deserves to live that kind of life. We've decided to bring along some extra fruit or bread whenever we take out our garbage. These men have yet to thank us for it, but we don't do it for our own reward.

If I have one less dollar, or one less loaf of bread, or one less banana, it has very little impact on my life. If the average Mozambican had one more of any of these, it would mean that she could feed her children today. Economists call this marginal benefit.

We're still struggling with how we can help, but for now we've decided that African culture and Christianity are in agreement on this point: if someone asks us for something, let's give it.

And Christianity would suggest that we should do so back home in Canada, too.