Too Much Red Wine for Dinner

After having a bit of wine with good friends the topics of politics, economics, and religion came up. I was not surprised to find out that I did not share the views of some of my friends, but interestingly enough this night of wine and discussion has turned into an email dialogue that allows me and one of my very close friends to discuss issues that are of great importance to the world we live in and to God.

I'm picking a few sections of our email dialogue to post because there are parts of the conversation that I would like to expand upon with others in the blog realm. I will attempt to break up various sections of the discussion so that no single post is overwhelmingly long.

First Question Friend Wrote:

"I woke up at about 3:00 am this morning, thinking about some of the things you said yesterday. I was really surprised when you said that the U.S. gives less to charitable causes than other countries as a percent of GDP. I was fairly sure that I had heard the exact opposite, but I’ll grant you that it may have been from a source that is more biased towards promoting a positive view of the U.S. Probably either Rush [Limbaugh] or Fox News. Anyway, out of curiosity, I plugged “charitable giving as percent of gdp” and the second listing that came back was this site for something called the Charities Aid Foundation: http://www.cafonline.org/Default.aspx?page=12183 This was a totally random thing and I didn’t research the organization to see which political point of view they’re pushing, but their statistics seem to contradict the information that you’ve gotten."


First Section of My Response:

I read through the entire article at the website you linked in the email (see above link). There are two things that jump out at me in reading through it in comparison to what I said last night during dinner.

1. 
   
   This is a measure of individuals’ charitable giving and there is no tracking on how the donations are used. By contrast, my comments last night revolved around national (governmental) foreign aid as a percentage of GDP. To be fair, individual US citizens are more likely to give a higher percentage of their money to charitable causes (1.7% of GDP according to the article, although I’ve seen some statistics that put this lower). I would not dispute that. However, there is no indication of how this money is spent or what it is used for. I looked around a little online for details on the breakdown of where the money goes. Found this article with a few reputable sources and a few I’ve never heard of: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-07-charityfaith_N.htm. According to the figures in this article roughly one-third of individual giving goes to houses of worship (Christian, Jewish, Muslim). I would like to see a more detailed breakdown on which types of organizations, other than houses of worship, that donations are going to, but for now we should focus on what we do know. If the one-third of giving goes to houses of worship is close to being right, then about 35.7% of the 1.7% of GDP (I think I did the math right here but I did get a little confused) that is given goes directly to churches, synagogues, and mosques in the US. The remainder goes to other non-profit organizations such as the Red Cross, Compassion International, The Salvation Army, Education and Arts funding/foundations, etc.
   
   In my experience of working in churches most of the donations that are received never leave the walls of the church that the money is donated to. It goes to pay for buildings, staff, utilities, large gymnasiums, exercise equipment, paving parking lots, church programs and budgets for things like youth groups or children’s ministry. Several churches I’ve been a part of have tried to “tithe” on all donations that they receive. Thus, they take in donations throughout the year and use 90% of the money on operating expenses, running the church, and 10% of the money goes to local, regional, national, or international assistance to the needy and impoverished. My point is, at least with the donations made to churches, the money individuals donate to charitable causes in the US are actually donations made that end up bringing greater value into their own lives in two ways. First, through the indirect benefit of feeling they have contributed to a cause greater than themselves, and second, but just as equally, to the direct benefit of having better facilities to worship in, more paid church staff members, money to buy books for members of the church, the ability to discount youth group trips to Six Flags or Disney Land, etc. Some churches work harder than others to keep their operating expenses down and to donate more to local, regional, national, and international needs, but these are typically the exceptional cases.

One tangential thought about this is whether or not individual charitable giving of 1.7% of GDP is something to be proud of. On the one hand, it is higher than other industrialized nations. But on the other hand, it is still a pretty low percentage especially considering that the disparity of wealth amongst all the worlds’ people—God’s children—is quite large. Consider these statistics:

The personal wealth of the top 400 Americans is more than twice the combined annual GDP of all of sub-Saharan Africa, home to nearly 800 million people, the vast majority of whom live in dire conditions. It is also several hundred billion dollars larger than the GDP of the world’s eighth biggest economy, that of Spain.
The club’s [Forbes’ 400 wealthiest Americans] richest member is Microsoft magnate Bill Gates, whose net worth, $57 billion, is greater than the annual GDP of about 120 of the world’s 180 nations (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/forb-s24.shtml).

The second article, for me at least, comes from a more reputable source and offers greater detail into wealth inequality throughout the world. It has some particularly interesting charts, maps, and graphs that I think display the dramatic differences between Western wealth and the lack thereof for large portions of the earth’s population. I am mindful that they are basing this on data that is several years old, I think based on 2000.

Regional wealth shares are interesting (see the last column of Table 2 [p.8]). North America owns about a third (34 per cent) of the world’s wealth. Europe has a fraction less (30 percent) and rich Asia-Pacific is close behind at 24 percent. The rest of the world shares the remaining 12 per cent. Figure 2 [p.12] shows how these wealth shares compare to population shares. North America has the largest excess of wealth over its ‘fair share’ according to population, which is a mere 5 per cent. Europe has more than double the population of North America, so that its large wealth share is more aligned with its population. The case of rich Asia-Pacific is intermediate between Europe and North America.(http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/discussion-papers/2008/en_GB/dp2008-03/_files/78918010772127840/default/dp2008-03.pdf) (I find particularly helpful the information, maps, and graphs that are on pages 11-15.)

I’m sure this is not news to you and there are plenty of talking heads who make great speeches about why we should care and do more. Although I do not appreciate all of their methods, I do agree that we can do more. The fact remains that the majority of people who attend Christian churches do not tithe. I’m not sure of the source but I have heard it explained that if the active members of US churches would actually all tithe on their after tax income that the churches would have all the money they need to operate and expand while still having enough left over to end world hunger (this is regardless of governmental aid or of what any other country does to help).

For me, this type of information is more personal. It is lodged deep within my mind and my heart and the “un/fortunate” (and sometimes depressing and also inspiring) reality is that knowing about and having met a few of the billions of people who live around the globe—people with little if anything to eat, no clean water, tribal rivalries, poor medical treatment (if any) for easily curable illnesses and diseases like diarrhea and Malaria—I cannot, no matter how hard I try—and believe me I do—pass this off as a problem that is “too big to be solved” or that it is “just the unfortunate reality of poor people not knowing how to get ahead” or that “eventually wealth creation in the major industrialized nations will trickle down to the poorer nations” or that “it’s their own fault for not having more stabilized governments”. These cliché responses that I hear and sometimes tell myself do not satisfy the deeper part of my soul that knows that God’s dream for this world is much better and that my selfishness, along with many of the other people in the industrialized nations’ selfishness, is directly related to the lack of resources that others have in the rest of the world. The scariest part is that even knowing some of these very people who are struggling to survive day in and day out, I still forget, or rather attempt to forget that their suffering is related to my compulsion to consume.

Are US individuals’ donations of 1.7% of the GDP helping? Yes. Would it really hurt us that bad if we raised it to 2.5%, 3.7%, or 4.2% of GDP. What would that look like in our day-to-day lives: a few less meals out, a smaller home, driving older vehicles for longer periods of time, being satisfied with the possessions that one already has and not grabbing for every new technology or gadget that comes out. I live in a type of turmoil for knowing and believing that so much about my life is wrong and trying to cloud that reality with fun activities, alcohol, work, or pep-talks to myself about how “spending more really does help the economy and eventually it will help others”. At the end of the day, whatever truth there is in the economics of the consumer driven trickle down theory, it is not enough, for me at least. I can do much more and there are many other people who want to do much more. Where, when, and how we do this is yet to be seen, but there is a day coming when I will finally stop fighting this battle with myself and God and give in to the reality that possessions, money, wealth, consumerism, image, and power are ultimately of little value.

Right now I live in an intermediate state where I wrestle with these realities and ideals while still managing to buy an iPhone, flat screen TV, and a new vehicle all in the same year. Meanwhile, my personal contributions to charities, houses of worship, and international aid have been minimal. “Why?” you ask, because I’m over spending what money I do get and running on the treadmill of consumer debt. I believe that eventually there will come a time when my calling, purpose in life, mission (call it what you will) will lead me out of the comfort of my suburban neighborhood and into the trenches where people are struggling to make it one day at a time. (Note: there are plenty of people, surely even in my own neighborhood, who are “struggling to make it” in a sense, but not likely due to lack of food, poor education, or addictions and diseases that they can find no help or assistance for.) Until that time comes, I hope to continue to wrestle and struggle in faith while asking God to shape my heart, mind, soul, and body more in line with Kingdom values.

Answer 2 Tomorrow...