On Charity, Justice, Social Media, and the Church
Faithful living in a world of counterfeits.
Much of what passes today for charity and justice is vain self-service and performance. Rather than works done in service of others, our benevolence, protests, and social action are done with mixed, self-serving motives to draw attention to ourselves. Consider this essay a cluster of four related yet distinct shorter essays, all driving toward a shared end: in a world of vanity and performance, Christians must discern how to draw attention to their collective good works.
Here is a summary of the sections below:
When charity draws attention to itself, it loses all value and becomes vanity.
When protest is disconnected from embodied service to a community, justice becomes performance.
Social media tempts us with the opportunity for self-congratulatory attention, and it can quickly steal whatever true virtue lies within our motives.
In a world of vanity, performance, and attention-seeking, the church must discern how it promotes its good works, lest it turn mercy and justice into exploitation.
On Charity
Consider charity the highest of all virtues. Unlike many great virtues such as prudence, temperance, or chastity, charity has as its object the well-being of someone else. Charity, at its best, seeks the good of the other at our own expense.
Translated from the Latin word caritas, charity finds its origin in the Greek word agape, which we often translate love. In what is likely the most well-known passage in all of Scripture, the Apostle Paul eloquently captured the importance of love (agape):
…If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres…
... And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13:3-7, 13).
The renowned author C.S. Lewis summarized this passage well: “Agape is all giving, not getting.”[1]
Yet, in the Christian tradition, what makes charity the highest virtue is not merely that it is other-centered but that it originates in a love only made possible by God first showing such love to us. “God is love,” the Apostle John said (1 John 4:8). True charity (love) is only possible when we have received a Divine love that enables us to love those who are naturally unlovable to us (1 John 4:11-21).
Such love can radically reorder our hearts so that we are moved toward those needing our support, even at risk and cost to ourselves. After all, charity is grounded first in the Son of God, who gave his life for us (1 John 4:10).
For centuries, the Christian tradition has recognized that true charity is not self-serving but is motivated solely by the well-being of others. The French Reformer John Calvin understood that when we see our neighbor in need, we must be willing to go to the “end of our resources,” which must be administered according to “the rule of love.”[2] Abraham Kuyper noted that charity—Christian love—will only be authentic when we “give [our] time, [our] energy, and [our] resourcefulness to help end such abuses for good, and when [we] allow nothing hidden in the storehouse of [our] Christian faith to remain unused against the cancer that is undermining the vitality of our society in such alarming ways.”[3]
True charity is always motivated by the good of the other with no regard for oneself. Charity that draws attention to the one doing good loses its value.
Several years ago, I led an effort at a previous church to partner with a local child advocacy center to raise money for its efforts to care for vulnerable children in our community. I stand by the good work that the congregation did to support this organization. Yet, I cannot deny that my work in that effort was filled with mixed motives to make a name for myself as someone who cared about taking care of the vulnerable and abused. I often wanted to be seen as a charitable person more than I wanted to be a charitable person. Looking back, whatever individual charity I may have performed was lost to drawing attention to myself while trying to do good for others.
When we do good for others through a camera lens or highlight our good deeds by sharing them with our friends or promoting them on social media, our charitable acts are more for ourselves than others.
When charitable works are performed to draw attention to ourselves, all virtue is lost, and our deeds are little more than vanity.
On Justice
About six months before moving into our new home, a local socialist organization protested against gentrification outside our future home.
Here’s the thing: I’m not mad or bothered knowing that our front yard became the stage to protest against gentrification in our city. Genuinely. I likely share many concerns of those who held signs on our doorstep. Yet, looking back at the pictures of this protest, I can’t help but take issue with the fact that I don’t know who any of the protestors are. Of the eight or so individuals visible in the picture, only one is recognizable as a neighborhood resident. I’ve never seen the other faces before. Furthermore, this organization has been absent from my neighborhood since they staged this protest nearly three years ago.
What justice came from the protest in front of my house? Was it justice at all?
If charity is the highest of all personal virtues, justice is the highest social attribute we can achieve. As Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff has explained, “Justice is present in social relationships insofar as people are enjoying what they have a right to. The dark side of enjoying that to which one has a right is being wrong; to be wronged is to be deprived of that to which one has a right. Thus we could also say that justice is present in social relationships when no one is wronged.”[4]
The people of God are frequently exhorted to seek justice for others (Isaiah 1:17, 58:3-7; Micah 6:8). This exhortation is most often directed toward the “quartet of the vulnerable”: the poor, widows, orphans, and immigrants. Within any society, these groups represent the vulnerable low ones who, as God’s image bearers, have certain rights of which they are frequently deprived. Jesus identified with such vulnerable persons and said that whoever gives justice to the vulnerable is giving justice to Jesus himself (Matthew 25:31-46).
I hesitate to pit charity against justice; Scripture certainly does not choose between the two. Just as true charity is rooted in the love God has shown us, true justice is rooted in the rights he has bestowed on those made in his image. Yet, in ordinary discourse, charity and justice are often set at odds with each other in that charity is regarded as something optional while justice is required. It is optional for us to be charitable in giving a homeless man $5; justice requires that we restore the rights of the poor. The former makes us feel better about ourselves, while the latter makes us feel uncomfortable, even guilty.
In a wonderful sermon on Isaiah 58:6-10 and 61:1-4, the late pastor and author Tim Keller explained how God doesn’t demand optional service from us, but justice for those made in God’s image:
The reason [people] would rather use the word charity [instead of justice] is charity is never obligatory. See, charity is optional, right? You may want to be charitable, maybe not. If you’re not helping the poor, then you’re not being charitable. Well, that’s a shame. You ought to be more charitable. Justice is not an option.
What is God saying? He is saying, “Every human being is in the image of God. If you understand the fact I created all human beings and they’re all in the image of God, therefore, if you turn away from them, it’s as if you’re turning away from your own flesh and blood… To turn away from your own flesh and blood is wrong. It’s not just uncharitable. It’s wrong.”[5]
I recently saw a picture of a protest downtown against the Democratic Party leadership in our city. The news stories were filled with reports of people outraged by the party's recent actions. Yet, pictures of this protest looked anything but outrage. At least half the participants had their phones in front of their faces, recording the day’s events. This footage undoubtedly ended up all over their social media accounts.
Do you think this is justice?
Outrage is a common response to the injustices that occur all around us. That anger we feel in our gut when others are deprived of their rights comes from a deep sense of justice given to us by our Creator. Yet justice is only achieved when something changes in the lives of those living the daily realities of injustice: when the poor have enough to attend to their needs, when vulnerable children are made safe, when immigrants retain the rights they are due, and so on.
The liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez once asked, “You say you care about the poor? Then tell me, what are their names?” His point is clear: it’s not justice until it becomes a lived reality in our daily relationships with those in need.
Protests can be good. Social media awareness can be good. Drawing attention to systemic injustices can be good. However, justice becomes performance when these actions are separated from embodied service to a particular people in a specific place.
And performance is not justice at all; it is exploitation.
On Social Media
I once went on a mission trip to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. I stumbled upon the blog of one of the Indigenous pastors who did not like to partner with those who came on mission trips to the reservation. He called us “tourists” who want to come in for a week to take pictures for social media. The problem with tourists, he said, was that we care little for the suffering and injustice faced by the community for the 51 weeks we aren’t around. The trip is more about us than the people we serve.
Driving into a poorer community in your city to help its residents is good. Attending a protest to seek rights for vulnerable communities is great. Giving your time, your money, and your resources is valuable.
However, as soon as these acts end up on social media, the true motive behind our actions is called into question. Jesus once warned against making our good deeds known to others:
Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
(Matthew 6:1-4)
The problem with publicizing our good works is how quickly they become about us rather than those we serve. Social media, like a trumpet, has its uses, but as soon as we draw attention to ourselves through our good works, we risk depriving our charity and justice of any eternal value.
On the Church
How should Christians and local churches consider promoting their good works in a world of vanity, performance, and attention-seeking? With great caution and discernment.
It is striking that just a few verses before Jesus’ warning against making our good deeds known, Jesus exhorted us to “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). How do these teachings square with each other when they are only a few verses apart?
Notice the emphasis in each passage. In Matthew 6, Jesus warns against using good deeds to bring honor to ourselves. In Matthew 5, Jesus encourages us to shine before others so that God would receive glory. True charity and justice have the glory of God as their goal. Charity and justice are fulfilled when we seek the glory of God and the good of our neighbor instead of our own.
Anything else is a counterfeit.
In the age of social media and performance, pastors, ministry leaders, and church members often believe that others must see and praise our efforts for them to be validated. Jesus tells us that this desire to be seen robs our good deeds of value and invalidates our ministry.
The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck sternly warned us to this effect:
Mercy has its roots in a heart full of love, but it is easily externalized altogether and focused on the alms themselves (Matt. 6:1-4; Luke 18:12), as the Pharisees did… making a meritorious work out of it. But giving alms to gain honor or salvation or to be rid of the problem (Luke 11:8; 18:4-5) is definitely wrong and is without blessing (2 Cor. 9:5, 7). Giving alms ought to be done from love (2 Cor. 8:9-10), quietly (Matt. 6), without display (Rom. 12:8), and cheerfully (2 Cor. 9:7). This also condemns the worldly habit of promoting benevolence through charity fundraising dances, plays, fireworks, concerts, lotteries, and bazaars. All of these mock true Christian benevolence; these are not at all about the sufferers, but about the enjoyment.[6]
The Church, at its best, has subversively challenged the values in every age in which it finds itself. Bavinck’s warning may go too far to be considered a universal rule for every case. Yet, in a world that accepts vanity and performance as counterfeit replacements for charity and justice, the church might best challenge the values of this world by keeping our mouths (or keyboards) shut and allowing our Christian love to speak for itself.
[1] C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis (18 February 1954).
[2] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.7.6-7.
[3] Abraham Kuyper, The Problem of Poverty, 62.
[4] Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Justice, Not Charity: Social Work through the Eyes of Faith” in Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World, 403.
[5] Tim Keller, “Good News to the Poor”, March 28, 2010.
[6] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics 2:446.