The Goal of Charity

“Big government” has long been given a bad rap in certain circles. Private, local institutions are often seen as the more promising players for dealing with social issues, especially – questions of poverty or hunger or healthcare or education.

This First Things article may therefore come as something of a surprise. It starts by documenting an admittedly scandalous story: how religious nonprofits in the US have committed fraud in their use (or non-use) of government funds for charitable works programs. It highlights, for example, a Minnesota mosque’s $250 million fraud scheme, with the group having “charged the government for hundreds of thousands of meals for children that were never served.” The piece concludes by suggesting that such funds should thus be returned to the government for distribution – concerns about “big government” or not. The argument is that government programs have more built-in oversight and clearer accountability to the public, which seems like a more natural, prudent (if not infallible) guard against corruption.

But that solution may not feel like the most salutary one. After all, lots of religious groups – including Christian ones – have been given a divine injunction to care for the poor. Shouldn’t their institutions be the most keen and skilled in doing so, then? And won’t they have greater capacity to be effective if they’re given more funding?

It’s not an easy needle to thread. On the one hand, yes, it does seem like they’d have a better handle on such efforts, and not just practically or technically. Government approaches to social programs can often be driven by a utopian – meaning, faulty – vision that government should and can handle all the problems of a society. The kernel of truth, there, is that there’s certainly a significant role for government in offering particular kinds of social regulation and services that one wouldn’t want private organizations to sponsor: the army, the police, the road system, border controls. But the total elimination of poverty or disease or hunger is not within its power, and so to hand over the funding that would otherwise keep that dream in hand doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.

But, on the other hand, private charities and religious groups don’t necessarily flourish when pumped with cash. The First Things piece is proof of the point. First of all, such money often comes with strings attached that can require such groups to temper or redefine their approach in a way that’s inconsistent with their mission. But there’s also an even larger kind of mission drift that can happen. That bigger problem is this: the “goal” of Christian charity isn’t to try to fix the world; it’s to witness to the love of Jesus. Money without love is not what people need, to a Christian mind. But when a given initiative is being given funds that the institution has to then try to grow or maintain, a certain anxiety can creep in around maintaining that funding. And then money does seem to be the dominating reality, and the whole point of charity gets lost.

So, setting aside questions of big government or small, of the relative efficiency of the private or public sector, First Things here offers a good check for us, in terms of assessing what we even realize we’re looking for when it comes to the idea of large-scale charitable works programs, at all. Less poverty, less pain, less hunger are all worthy ends to pursue through such programs. But they’re not the only or the ultimate ends worth pursuing. And on their own, they’re not necessarily the primary end specifically Christian charity was meant to serve in the first place.