Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Selfish Giving?

Reminder: May meeting on Sunday, May 6 @ 4:00 PM in the Omega room.
Bring your TP and Paper Towels and your May payment.

Here is a quote from Occasio Blog that is worth our taking a look. I have felt very much the same way as I've been a part of many different mission trips and have witnessed others. This is one of the reasons I put more emphasis on building relationships with the Lakota people than on the chairty work. We want to do appropriate chairty work but that is never our main goal. As I've said so many times, it's really all about love.

Narcissistic Humanitarianism. Another frustration comes from a kind of
selfish benevolence that permeates our culture. Can making charitable
contributions be self-centered? Yes. We tend to feel good when we help others –
and that’s the new problem in a spirited age of voluntarism and philanthropy. We
are motivated by our own good feelings, not by a sense of responsibility to a
larger cause. Narcissism is defined as a preoccupation with the self and one’s
own self-importance, along with the desire for admiration. There certainly was a
lot of that happening on “Idol.” Is it possible that what we do in the name of
humanitarianism is simply a cover to congratulate ourselves and a chance to slap
one another on the back, thus alleviating our guilty conscience?


The church plays this game as well. I have seen and been a part of many mission trips that
have a stated purpose of helping the people they are going to minister to.
Churches raise $50,000 to visit an exotic country or flock across the border
into Mexico. Team members feel good when they return home because they have
served, but missionaries often report that the groups they host are loud,
arrogant, culturally insensitive and often more trouble (to the missionary or
national pastor) than they are worth. I wonder if the best thing that happens in
Mexico over spring break is that American churches stimulate the Mexicali valley
economy by buying tacos and Pepsis. Our spirit of outreach is a veil for
self-absorbed religious tourism. But we feel good about ourselves when we come
home.