Generosity

             You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. (II Corinthians 9:11)

If any of your people—Hebrew men or women—sell themselves to you and serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free. And when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed. Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress. Give to them as the Lord your God has blessed you. (Deuteronomy 15:12-14)

My Sunday School class is listening to and considering sermons by Timothy Keller about generosity, and I’m trying to catch up on the vocabulary words. As a bit of trivia, the word generosity occurs three times in the NIV translation of the Bible, all in II Corinthians 8 and 9. Generous and generously appear 19 times, starting in Deuteronomy and ending in James. Give shows up more than a thousand times.

The passage from Deuteronomy impresses me as a key in the understanding of generosity. Someone has sold him/herself to you and served you for six years. In the seventh year, whether the debt is paid in full or not, the Law required you to release the person. Their debt was to be forgiven or cancelled. But that wasn’t the end of it. They were also to be given supplies with which to begin a new life. The last sentence in that passage may not be an official definition of generosity but I think it is now mine, and I’ll even take it out of context. It’s not limited to those who have sold themselves to me or are otherwise indebted to us.

I suspect we all have a love/hate relationship with generosity. One of my goals for my "One Plus” garden is to harvest so much that I not only can give some away, but I want to.  “Here! Have some chives, please!” But that’s not really giving as the Lord has blessed me. After all, He’s also given me tomatoes that I’m loathed to share because I “need” to stock up on tomato sauce, tomato juice, tomato soup, etc. to get through the year. If I get two tomatoes, God has blessed me with enough to give one away, but I declare that to be legalism and turn my back. Giving away what we don’t want is easy, or at least easier.

At some point, there was a study involving groups of people who had been given “aid” by other groups. It was noted how frequently and quicky the recipients grew to resent the “aid.” One reason for the resentment was the unspoken demand for gratitude and submission. We have helped you. Now you owe us your thanks, and you are obligated to reciprocate by living as we “suggest.” Another reason is that generosity can do more harm than good.

Other studies and my experience show that what is given may do harm. T-shirts were sent to east Africa, and they destroyed the market for African textiles. Eggs were sent to south Asia and chicken farmers were put out of business. After the shooting at Sandy Hook, people sent stuffed animals, that were tossed into a warehouse. Clothes sent south after Hurricane Katrina were thrown in piles. What was so generously sent was not needed or wanted.

One of the things I tend to feel most generous with is information. I collect a lot of trivia and (I hope) useful information, but it’s not necessarily welcomed. On the other hand, others may want to give me their excesses, and sometimes, I’m not as grateful as I could be. And when I haven’t been what someone considers sufficiently grateful and when I have been generous in a way someone doesn’t appreciate, I’ve been accused of being too proud. And I’m not going to insist that the accusation isn’t true.

All of this leads me back to the need to be wise in our generosity.