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Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson
What Are The Limits To Your Generosity?
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“We’ve been generous in the past, and we hope to be generous in the future,” [Linda] Lacy said, “but we can’t save the world. I don’t know where our limits are. We have a budget, too.”
Mark Bixler
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The tsunami in Asia, hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, earthquakes in Pakistan, mudslides in Guatemala. In recent months, we have seen catastrophe after catastrophe of human suffering, loss, and devastation.
Recent disasters in our world have opened the floodgates of donations. Yet, as the catastrophes continue, the donations are decreasing. Not only that, news coverage of far-away disasters has slowed down, as we grow numb to endless tragedies. The devastating mudslides in Guatemala have barely made a dent in our collective consciousness.
The charities now report growing “donor fatigue.”
“After donating about $1.3 billion to help the victims of the devastating Southeast Asia tsunami and then contributing $1.7 billion to support relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina, many donors appear to be running out of steam.”
Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
At the same time, our economy is entering a period of “stagflation.” One cause is the destruction to oil production caused by the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Inflation by itself is usually accompanied by brisk business conditions and an all-too-healthy economy. Stagflation describes a world in which prices are going up but people can’t afford the increased prices.”
Steve Butler
Contra Costa Times
So, as the need for help increases, the demands on our own budgets increase. When do any of us we reach the point of saying, “Enough! I can’t give anymore.” My question is, In the face of overwhelming need, what are the limits to our generosity?
I don’t pretend to have the answer to this question. I do have some observations about the limits of responsibility for finite human beings.
In some respects, the question itself is a sign of our times. The internet and television have shrunk our world to the size of electrons. Not so long ago, news was local. Before instant communication, the rest of the world would not know about a tsunami in Indonesia, or a hurricane in Louisiana, or an earthquake in Pakistan, or a mudslide in Guatemala for days or weeks or months or years afterwards, if ever. Now, with the speed of electrons, as soon as tragedy strikes anywhere, we know about it everywhere.
While l was teaching in a theological seminary, I had a conversation one day with two of my students. One was a young man from Puerto Rico. The other was a young man who was a refugee from El Salvador, whose entire family had been murdered by government thugs. The refugee was lamenting the fact that Americans didn’t care about the suffering of his country. And the young Puerto Rican chimed in with the statement that he was glad he wasn’t an American because Americans are so selfish.
At that point, I felt the need to respond to these two comments by pointing out that each one was expecting all Amerians to care about his cause as much as he did. At the same time, other aggrieved and/or suffering people expected Americans to care about Korea and South Africa, saving the whales and the redwoods and the spotted owls, protecting the rights of farm workers, and a laundry list of other oppressed people and worthy causes. I pointed out that finite people cannot do everything. The best any of us can do is to choose one area of need and do our best to help in that area.
This conversation with two young seminarians, both foreign students, brings to the surface a range of conflicting emotions, attitudes, and beliefs about human responsibility. The root meaning of “responsibility” is the ability to respond. The question is, How much can any of us respond to the needs we see around us, both within our own communities and around the world?
Underneath the question itself is another word, which I decided long ago was the most unhelpful word in the English language. I am very careful about language, both in my own writing and speech. I am also very conscious of the words that other people use. And there is one word that I work very hard to avoid, both in what I say to myself and what I say to others. It is the word, “should.”
”Should” carries with it an amazing arrogance. “Should” claims that the speaker knows better than you do what is best for your life. “Should” is also a word chock-a-block full of judgment about what is right or wrong about your actions.
I made a decision years ago, as a seminary student, that I would never use the word “should” any time I preached a sermon. I have heard too many sermons that were nothing more than lectures telling people what was wrong with them and what they “should” do or “should not” do.
I am confident that I never used the word “should” in a sermon. In my preaching years, I always assumed that my task was to tell people what was right with them rather than what was wrong with them. In my vocabulary, “should” can never accomplish that function.
I have made the same decision about my writing. I am very careful never to tell you what I think you “should” or “should not” do. I intend never to use the word in any article or book I write. I will not tell you what you “should” do, ever.
And this brings me back to the problem of donor fatigue. At the same time that technology has made us more and more aware of catastrophic human need, many of us also carry deep guilt about our responsibility to give to anyone who asks. Every time we see more pictures of human suffering, many of us feel the incessant demand, “You should do something!”
This is particularly true for people who have grown up in religious institutions that have taught that it is better to give away money than to have it. I grew up in a church that taught poverty rather than abundance. One example we heard about often was the story of the poor widow who gave away all she had to live on. We heard about this story as the prime example of what God wanted us to do.
My husband and I used to attend a church in San Francisco. In urban San Francisco, homeless people are everywhere. We could count on the fact that someone would be standing outside the church on Sunday demanding money for something. We would hear the story about how the car broke down and they needed money to get back to Oregon. (For some reason, they always had to get back to Oregon.) And if they didn’t get money, they would start to proclaim very loudly, “And you call yourselves Christians. You’re supposed to help.”
In other words, if you have money, you “should” give it to others. For those of us who learned that being good meant being poor, we can easily feel guilty for having money when others don’t. Each time the media assaults us with gut-wrenching images of human suffering, the word “should” romps around in our consciousness, telling us that we “should” do something.
And for Americans, there is the added burden of being the world’s superpower, supercop, and superfixer. If it happens anywhere, much of the rest of the world will tell us that Americans are both collectively and personally responsible to fix it.
In his book, The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey makes a significant distinction between Circles of Influence and Circles of Concern. Circles of Influence are those things you can do something about. Circles of Concern are those things you care about but cannot change.
“Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about.
Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. “
Stephen Covey
My student from El Salvador focused everything through the lens of the horrors and grief of his own losses. He could not understand why the whole world was not rising up in anger and outrage. What he could not see at that moment was that there are more than six billion of us in the world, and no one can take on the sufferings of everyone else. We would all collapse under the burden.
“For donors like Linda Lacy of Atlanta, who said she gives 10 percent to her church, First Baptist Church of Atlanta, and an additional 10 percent to charities such as the Boy Scouts, Samaritan’s Purse, the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association, the string of disasters underscores something she already knew.
“There is such need in the world,” she said.
She has traveled to Brazil on church mission trips, she said, and her husband has helped build churches in Montana and Pennsylvania. He just got back from several days feeding storm victims in Mississippi on a trip coordinated by the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, based in metro Atlanta. Members of her Sunday School class traveled to Iran after an earthquake killed thousands there in December 2003.”
“We’ve been generous in the past, and we hope to be generous in the future,” Lacy said, “but we can’t save the world. I don’t know where our limits are. We have a budget, too.”
Mark Bixler
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I return to the comment by Linda Lacy, which ends with these words: “I don’t know where our limits are. We have a budget, too.”
Even abundance has limits. No matter how much money you have, you do have a budget. You are one person, living in one place, with your own limitations. You are not infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent. In other words, you are not God. And if you notice, even God doesn’t make all the suffering go away.
My own personal challenge always comes back to my tendency to get caught up in overwhelm. Seeing too much, attempting to do too much, the feeling that I “should” be doing more. I can think of no combination better suited to fill life with frustration, anxiety, and lack of accomplishment than this.
As Covey makes clear, there is a difference between being concerned and being effective. Whatever your personal challenges, you simply cannot do everything. The key is to choose something within your own Circle of Influence.
The choice again comes down to focus. Among all of the needs you see before you, and with the limitations of your own time, money, and energy, it is up to you to choose how you will respond, not because you “should” but because you can.
This article was originally published October 18, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-10-18.htm.
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE… FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.” www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
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