Charity in Christianity

Charity is love.

Christians believe that God’s love and generosity towards humanity moves and inspires us to love and be generous in response.

Jesus taught that to love God and to love neighbour are the greatest commandments. In Matthew chapter 25, Jesus identifies himself with those who are poor and excluded, and teaches that we will be judged, not on how beautiful our altars are, but on the way that we treat others. We cannot profess to worship God in church, yet not express that love practically to our neighbour. And our neighbour is not just someone local to us.

 In the story of the Good Samaritan Jesus made clear that our neighbour may be someone on the other side of the world, who is not ‘one of us’ but different. Because of our common humanity - because we are each created and loved by God - we cannot allow anyone to go without what is needed for a dignified life.

Charity is a vibrant expression of love.

But this expression is made comfortable if we keep in mind following.

·         We are accountable how we earn our money and how we spend it?

·          This is not our money, God is the real owner and we use this during our life on earth.

·         We can use our money in our life time, we cannot take it with us; what we take is our deeds.

Charity serves the following purpose.

·         Charity corrects social injustice.

·         Charity improves our character and behaviour.

·         Charity improves the economy.

·         Charity is not just giving money: it involves our effort, guidance, help & kind words.

·         Our money never decreases when given in charity, on the contrary it increases.

What is Charity?

A common understanding of charity is what many people of faith would call ‘almsgiving’

- a strong tradition in both Christianity and Islam - as well as Buddhism and other

faiths. We get motivation from our faith, whatsoever discipline we belong to. We learn

through our respective religions that charity is not an optional extra but an essential

component of faith.

Let us first see what is charity? Charity means willingness to help others. Helping those

who are really in need is a rare and good quality indeed. People are often reluctant to

help other. They care only for themselves or their nearest and dearest. They are selfish

people who do not know what charity is. There are others who spend huge sums of

money on charitable institutions but pay no attention to their poor relatives or near

ones. They want to impress others by donating large sums, but have no heart for those

who really suffer. This is selfishness. They act on selfish motives. A truly charitable

person should help those who are actually in need. He should be willing to help a needy

man whether he is a relative or not. To possess such an unselfish loving heart, one

should first learn to love his kith and kin. But it should also be noted that such a love

should not confine itself to family circle. The right way to cultivate the charitable habit is

to start loving one’s kith and kin and gradually extend that love to those are out of the

family. Such a person can love and sympathise with all those who deserve it. Only that

sort of mentality can be called really charitable.