{"id":866,"date":"2012-05-01T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T00:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=866"},"modified":"2022-04-08T05:48:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T21:48:37","slug":"34-doing-charity-every-which-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=866","title":{"rendered":"55. Doing Charity Every Which Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

“But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing<\/strong><\/span>.” [Matthew 6:3<\/span>]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[1] Let not your left hand know what your right hand is giving. [2]\u00a0Chinese billionaire philanthropist Chen Guangbiao in Taiwan<\/a>. [3]\u00a0\u00a0Chinese philanthropist Lee Choon Ping handing over cash to sick girl’s mother<\/span><\/p>\n

On our first visit to the Norbertine Abbey in Tongolo, Belgium, in 1989, we were shown a place where loaves of bread were distributed to the villagers through an opening in a concrete wall during the war. Drastic reduction in agricultural production always came in the wake of wars. Food became scarce and villagers had to rely on the abbey for even basic sustenance. To save the villagers from embarrassing themselves in coming to collect bread, countless loaves were dispensed in that manner without the giver and recipient meeting face to face. The oven never stopped baking, so long as there were people pulling the bell for bread. But the guest-master added, \u201cIt was also one way of practicing the teaching that our left hand should not know what we gave with our right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As far as we know, every religious and ethical tradition in the world encourages charitable acts in which neither is attention drawn to the giver nor is the recipient made to feel demeaned or undignified.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Chinese billionaire philanthropist from the mainland went on a charity trip to Taiwan in 2010. Whether he was wantonly distributing red envelopes (hongbao<\/em>) filled with cash to individuals or staging elaborate displays of donations to established charities, Chen Guangbiao (\u9673\u5149\u6a19) vehemently practises flashy philanthropy, carried out with much fanfare. To be sure, he came bearing gifts, huge gifts, some NT$500 million (US$17.2 million) for the poor in Taiwan. He wanted, he said, to reciprocate Taiwanese generosity towards the Sichuan mega-earthquake relief, to share wealth from fellow Chinese in China with the needy in Taiwan, and to encourage wealthy businessmen to do likewise. He succeeded in giving away quite a bit of money and raked in a great deal of publicity too, not all of which was positive. But he also kicked up a huge storm of controversy in the process. His trip offers a useful starting point for dialogue on some different ways people do charity and on philanthropic questions. We choose three issues for dialogue in this post.<\/span><\/p>\n

[1] Demeaning the Poor?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Chen nearly did not get to make the trip. As his reputation preceded him, the Taiwanese authorities had legitimate concerns before issuing him the visit pass. They feared his ostentatious ways of doing charity might offend some Taiwanese political sensibilities, and they considered whether doling out cash in a public line-up might not make the poor look bad.<\/span><\/p>\n

An elderly lady who waited for Chen at his hotel received NT$70,000 and wept in gratitude. The poor lined up in designated stations and received NT10,000 each. Minor scuffles occurred everywhere he went, and some desperately resorted to capturing his attention by kneeling and crying to him for help, making sensational headlines on prime time TV news and causing critics to give Chen a taste of the sharp end of their tongues for causing the \u201cTaiwanese poor\u201d to stoop to such shame. Sensing the heat, Chen pulled back and scaled down his \u201chongpao distributing\u201d itinerary.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is easy to feel a sense of \u201cunseemliness\u201d about Chen\u2019s philanthropic spectacle. The trouble is, one cannot deny the incessant voice of approval from the poor themselves who are Chen\u2019s immediate beneficiaries. When poverty stares you in the face and you struggle desperately to cope with the demands of daily existence, the last thing you need is listen to charity in an academic discussion, or wait in a welfare office for hours or days to finally feel the touch of a gift in your hands. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “The good news\u00a0 to a hungry person is bread.” Talk is cheap. To the poor, charity is useless if it is not concrete and immediate. And so, to the poor who received cash gifts at the long queues everywhere he went, Chen is a saint whom they vehemently defended by lashing back at his critics with words like, \u201cWhat is wrong with lining up to receive cash assistance when we really need it? We are poor. We can use some help so we may have a better Chinese New Year. Mr Chen helps. He helps now<\/em><\/span>. He really helps, on the spot<\/em><\/span>. We are deeply grateful for his generosity. You are well to do. You are not poor like us. You talk. You don\u2019t like what he is doing. But what do you do for us here and now? Do you know how we would live through this Chinese New Year without his hongpao? Do you even want to know?\u201d Indeed, critics talk and then they leave. But the poor remain poor and the hungry remain unfed. Jesus did not call us to write beautiful theses on poverty and methods of poverty-eradication. He broke the bread and gave. The good things we have received in life are blessings meant to be multiplied and shared. Our calling is to pass the bread.<\/span><\/p>\n

We should add that, to a young man who knelt before Chen pleading for financial assistance, he refused to give a dime. Instead, he insisted that an able-bodied young man ought to work to earn his own keep. Had the young man joined the queue and not put himself up as a special case, he would have received the same \u201chongpao\u201d like everyone else.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another argument for labeling Chen a counterfeit philanthropist draws on the suggestion that there is no free lunch in this world. He is, after all,\u00a0 advertising himself at home just as he is seeking to build a good image overseas. But why are these critics so mean to Chen and yet are generous on their praises for the Singapore Government for giving money to its people, never without its media hype? The Singapore Government, to its credit, distributed some 6.6 billion S$’s worth of “hongbao” last year out of its huge surplus. It did so by plowing back this huge amount of cash to its citizens through various benefits. To be sure, any skeptical observer can say that the political leaders of Singapore were keeping an eye on the upcoming general elections, but that would be to ignore the fact that Singapore does this plow-back exercise every year.<\/span><\/p>\n

From another angle, even when pure altruism is lacking in a philanthropist very visibly doling out cash under media spotlight, and he actually feels good in the accolades that he gets, why do we seriously discount the goodness of his act? In this regard, another high profile Chinese philanthropist, Lee Choon Ping (<\/span>\u674e\u6625\u5e73<\/strong>), makes for interesting studies. Lee gives a lot, always to the seriously poor, especially to the underprivileged from the rural regions of China. One commonality marks all his gifts: they are all in cash. Why? \u201cIf you wish to help someone,\u201d he says, \u201cit is best you do so in the most direct way possible. If you wish to make a donation, then concretise it by making a true and honest donation.\u201d Imagine what he would think about all those pledges people make towards charitable causes, many of which the organizers are unable to collect afterwards!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s operative principle is the same for us Christians: If you want to do good, do so now and in a genuine, concrete fashion. Talking about doing charity and the love of God is useless unless it is concrete \u2013 something people can feel, can touch, and can experience in the here and now. Soon after he was elected and named Pope John XXIII, the phone network in the Vatican broke down. Speaking to the engineer who did not know who he was, the Pope learned of his hardship of living on low wages and bringing up a family. Three months later, against advice, the Pope implemented a 50 per cent pay rise for all those working for the Vatican. Against the Vatican bureaucrats\u2019 argument that the money could be better saved for charitable causes, the Pope warned of charity becoming justice deferred<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In August 2011, Lee went to Guizhou to do charity. Saved from death buried under a mudslide 43 years ago when he was a soldier, he wanted to make return-gifts in gratitude. During the flight, he read of a small girl needing urgent bone-marrow transplant but the family was too poor to pay for the surgery. He went straight to the hospital and handed a heap of cash – RMB300,000 in total – to the girl\u2019s mother. In fact, when the media fiercely, but mistakenly, attacked Lee for placing the heap of money right next to the head of the sick child for photo-taking [it turned out that after Lee had left the hospital, the child\u2019s mother did so at the request of reporters!], the child\u2019s father said angrily: \u201cMr Lee threw us a life line. Without his life-saving cash, our child might be dead by now. We are simple country-folks, and we don\u2019t have much culture, but we know that where life is absent, there is no dignity to talk about. Our whole family is deeply grateful to Mr Lee. We just do not understand why the media are so relentless in asking irrelevant questions.\u201d It is interesting to hear Lee say very candidly, that he enjoyed giving away money to the poor. It makes him feel good. What about all those accolades? \u201cIt\u2019s very nice to hear about them. When people applaud what I do, I feel happy inside.\u201d Sounds pretty much like an interior bliss \u2013 a reward from on high, perhaps? – and he is openly honest about it. And why should the rest of the world begrudge him feeling rewarded inside for doing good deeds?<\/span><\/p>\n

How would a radical alternative approach to Chen\u2019s look like?<\/span><\/p>\n

We remember feeling in awe when we first read a story about Dorothy Day. Together with Peter Maurin, she co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in America in the 1930s. It was a non-violent, pacifist movement that continues today to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action<\/a><\/strong> on their behalf. A firm believer in equitable distribution of wealth, she lived a radical discipleship where her heightened sense of Christian stewardship was akin to Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship. She would, for example, on pay-day reserve for herself such amount as she needed for upkeep, and leave the rest of her salary spread out on the table in the bedroom of the workers\u2019 hostel where she lived. Leaving her bedroom door open while she went out for a walk, she allowed other residents who were in need to come in and take whatever they needed for their families, sparing them the embarrassment of being seen by her<\/em>. Her actions were truly saintly. We cannot get that picture out of our minds ever since we read that story. Many things could be said about her gracious actions. They certainly resonate well with St Basil, a fourth century theologian and monastic who wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n