What about Altruism/Charity/Philanthropy?

Why do people give money to needy people or public causes? Why should people make charitable or philanthropic contributions? What is altruism and how can it best be implemented? These are questions worth careful consideration.  

Give because of Greed?

Some of us grew up in churches that stressed tithing—and I have been a tither my whole life and encouraged tithing when I was a pastor. But I never told people that tithing was a means for receiving God’s blessings and to receive more from God than they ever gave to God and God’s work.

There are preachers, though, who have appealed to people’s “greed” to encourage them to tithe. “If you tithe, God will reward you by increasing your income” was the appalling “pitch” some preachers used, seeking to bolster the church’s financial income.

More generally, there are those who give because of the “greedy” desire for the good feelings they get from contributing to the emotional appeals by charitable organizations and/or needy people.

Perhaps greed is too strong a word to use here, but I simply mean the strong desire to get more of something, such as more blessings and (maybe) money or more feelings of self-satisfaction.

Give because of Guilt?

Historically, two of the most generous philanthropists in the U.S. were Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Carnegie (1835~1919) made his fortune in the steel industry, and the wealth of Rockefeller (1839~1937) came largely from profits he made from the Standard Oil Company, which he established in 1870.

The philanthropy of those two industrialists is clearly visible in the worldwide Carnegie libraries and the work of the Rockefeller Foundation. And without doubt, multitudes of people have been helped by the philanthropic gifts of those two men .**

However, recently June and I have watched (on DVD) The Men Who Built America, the six-hour miniseries docudrama originally broadcast on the History Channel in 2012, and we have seen an apparently accurate portrayal of the ruthlessness of those two tycoons and the harm they did to so many.

Particularly horrifying were the catastrophic Johnstown Flood of 1889 and the Homestead Steel Mill Strike/Massacre of 1892. The docudrama clearly depicts Carnegie’s culpability in both of those tragedies.

That excellent miniseries, though, fails to note that those catastrophes occurred during the very time Walter Rauschenbusch was pastor in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City and beginning to emphasize what came to be known as the Social Gospel (see my 9/30 blog post).

Even though Carnegie had built a few libraries before those events that significantly tarnished his good name, most of his philanthropic work was after them and most likely at least partly rooted in his sense of guilt and his desire to restore his reputation.

Give because of Gratitude?

In the New Testament, Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, “Freely you have received; freely give” (10:8, NIV). Accordingly, it is obvious that the best reason for altruistic giving is not because of “greed” or guilt but because of gratitude.

A strong sense of gratitude goads us to give graciously to help others. But how is the best way to give? Just acting upon our subjective feelings may not be best.

In recent years, an “effective altruism” movement has been popular in some circles. It recommends rationally considering ways to give that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people rather than giving on the basis of emotional appeals and feel-good causes.

(You may want to check out this website: Using reason and evidence to do the most good - Effective Altruism.)

Interestingly, two major proponents of effective altruism are non-religious thinkers/writers: Peter Singer (b. 1946) and Steven Pinker (b. 1954). To learn more about them, see Singer’s 2013 TED talk and this 2021 interview with Pinker.

There is also an Effective Altruism for Christians website (see here). I also encourage you to (re)read Guidelines for Charitable Giving, my blog post for Nov. 30, 2010.

Yes, there is much to consider with regard to altruism/charity/philanthropy.

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** I wrote about those two outstanding philanthropists in my Sept. 15, 2017, blog post titled “Problems with Philanthropy,” and it is worth reading again.

The Best of Times, or the Worst of Times?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....” So began Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859), the historical novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. That was then, but what about now?

Pinker’s Rosy Picture

Steven Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard University. His latest book was released last month under the title “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.”

Pinker, born in Canada in 1954, is also the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011). In that book as well as in his new one, Pinker writes how despite all the “doom and gloom” talk that surrounds us, the world is getting better in almost every way.

“A perfect future,” a review of Pinker’s new book, was published in the Feb. 24 issue of The Economist. It concluded, “Mr Pinker’s broad point is surely right. Things are not falling apart. And barring a cataclysmic asteroid strike or nuclear war, it is likely that they will continue to get better.”

The chances of an asteroid strike are completely unknown, but nuclear warfare is seemingly a distinct possibility in the near future—and that certainly would obliterate Pinker’s rosy picture of the present state of the world.

Picturing a Nuclear Arms Race

“Making America Nuclear Again” was the title of the cover story of the Feb. 12 issue of Time magazine. The lead article, posted online on Feb. 1, is “Donald Trump Is Playing a Dangerous Game of Nuclear Poker.”  

Author W.J. Hennigan contends that the Trump Administration “is convinced that the best way to limit the spreading nuclear danger is to expand and advertise its ability to annihilate its enemies.” In addition, DJT “has signed off on a $1.2 trillion plan to overhaul the entire nuclear-weapons complex.”

Citing the Trump Administration’s “Nuclear Posture Review” as one of its reasons, in January the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced the movement of the Doomsday Clock hands 30 seconds closer to midnight—the closest to ”doomsday” it has been since 1953. (See this article.)

Since then, just last Thursday President Putin of Russia claimed that Russia was developing new nuclear weapons that could overcome any U.S. missile defenses. This Washington Post article pictures what clearly seems to be a new nuclear arms race.

Picturing a Nuclear-Free World

Do you remember ICAN? It seems not to be widely known, but it is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—and it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2017.

Perhaps it can be said that ICAN is seeking to use “reason, science, humanism, and progress,” which Pinker emphasizes in his new book, to picture a world much different than the one now developing because of the belligerence—and fear—of the political leaders of North Korea, Russia, and the United States.

Partly as a result of ICAN’s advocacy, in July 2016 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was approved by the United Nations with affirmative votes by 122 (out of 193) member nations (with 71 not voting). (Here is a link to the treaty’s full text.)

When, or if, the TPNW is ratified by fifty UN members, it will become international law—with nuclear weapons being outlawed just as chemical and biological weapons have been in the past.

To date, only five nations (Cuba, Guyana, the Holy See, Mexico, and Thailand) have ratified the TPNW, but 56 have signed it.

So which is it? Is this the best of times or the worst of times? With ratification of the TPNW perhaps it could be the former.

2013—The Best Year in Human History!?

So, what do you think? Could it be that this year, which ends tomorrow, has been the best year in human history? That is what some are saying. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Earlier this month, Zack Beauchamp, a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org, posted an engaging article on its website. The title of his thought-provoking piece is “5 Reasons Why 2013 Was the Best Year in Human History.”

Some of you may have seen Beauchamp’s article, for it has been shared on Facebook more than 20,000 times and referred to in numerous other places.

(A similar article was posted on the website of “The Spectator,” the British weekly conservative magazine that was first published in 1828—in print, not online! It is titled, “Why 2013 has been the best year in human history: The world’s still getting better – here’s the proof.”)

As I write about in my book “The Limits of Liberalism,” many liberals tend to be overly optimistic, and this may be true for Beauchamp. But he also makes some good points.

Briefly, these are the five reasons he gives for contending that this year has been the best in human history:

1)   Fewer people are dying young, and more are living longer.

2)   Fewer people suffer from extreme poverty, and the world is getting happier.

3)   War is becoming rarer and less deadly.

4)   Rates of murder and other violent crimes are in free-fall.

5)   There’s less racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination in the world.

While some of Beauchamp’s assertions may seem questionable at first blush, he gives considerable supporting evidence. Some of that support is subjective, but longevity rates and murder/violent crime statistics and the like are quite objective—and quite impressive.

Dr. Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard University, is one of the scholars Beauchamp cites in his article. Canadian Pinker (b. 1954), whom I was first introduced to by an atheist friend, is the author of the captivating book “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined” (2011).

In May of this year, Pinker delivered a speech as one of the prestigious Gifford lectures at Edinburgh University. That talk had the same title as his book, but with a different subtitle: “A History of Violence and Humanity.”

Although Pinker’s lecture is over an hour long, it is well worth listening to—in spite of some questionable assumptions and conclusions.

Of course, there are those who disagree with Beauchamp (and Pinker). Just five days after posting Beauchamp’s article, ThinkProgress.org posted “9 Reasons Why 2013 Was Not the Best Year in Human History.”

Those nine reasons are all related to problems concerning climate change and environmental destruction—but they are primarily problems looming in the future, not ones experienced so much in 2013.

If Beauchamp, Pinker and those who agree with them are right, does that mean that the words quoted by MLK, Jr., and President Obama, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” are becoming more evident? Maybe.

Or could it mean that the seeds of the Kingdom of God sown by the followers of Jesus are growing and bearing visible fruit? Perhaps.

If you disagree with the main contention of Beauchamp’s article, let me then ask you this question, If 2013 wasn’t the best year in human history, what year would you suggest as being the best year for the people of the whole world?