Relative

“Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.” – Khalil Gibran

Professional athletes, movie stars, business tycoons – we love to see their philanthropic efforts.  And for the most part, I’d like to think abundantly rich folks give a portion of their wealth to charitable causes.  Whether they do it for publicity or out of a genuine desire to help is not our judgment to make.

Ten-percent of one’s wealth is the Biblically accepted baseline for giving back to God what is rightfully His.  Where exactly this 10% should go is debated, but I’m a firm believer that any worthy cause is an acceptable allocation of the 10%, whether it be entirely to your church or charities or simply sharing with a brother or sister in need.

A millionaire’s 10% is incomparable to mine.  A millionaire’s 10% is more than my 100%!  Does that make his/her tithing more important than mine?  Of course not.

It’s all relative, of course.  While the richest among us have the potential to make the biggest individual splashes – and they often do when they donate 7 figures to a particular cause – the cumulative efforts of the middle and lower class can have just as big an impact.

It’s easy to give comfortably.  Once we pay our bills, buy our groceries, fuel our cars, and take advantage of this week’s sales at Target, then it’s relatively easy to squeeze out some remnants for our brothers and sisters.  Once number one is taken care of, then maybe we’ll do what we can to help others.

But as Mr. Gibran states so brilliantly, “generosity… is giving [away] that which you need more than [others].”  What a statement!  And what an idea!  To give to others before taking care of oneself.

Mark 12: 41-44 talks about a poor widow who gives to the offering box a tiny donation in relation to the others who gave before her.  Yet Jesus applauds her above the others because her donation was a bigger sacrifice.

We live in a greedy world where the richest few continue to get richer while the majority of the world continues to live in poverty.  Instead of griping about the rich, maybe if those of us in the middle upped our efforts we could reduce the unnecessary starvation plaguing the world.

We’re called to love one another and to help each other when we are in need.  If my current movie project becomes the success I hope it will become, I will be doing incrementally more to carry my weight in bringing this world back up from the poverty it’s currently in.  I’m already working hard to take care of my brothers and sisters, but I want to do so much more.

Care to join me?  Give money to your church, to your favorite charities, to a friend or family member who is struggling.  Then take $5 or $10 and donate to the movie project I’ve been commissioned to oversee.  I promise to be generous with whatever success the movie finds.  And I will pay everybody back someway, somehow when the movie finds financial success.  I promise.