The Principle of Giving

by CHARLES E. JEFFERSON (1860-1937) The commandment of giving is for all. It is addressed to no one class or circle. It is for the poor as well as for the rich.

"Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." —Matt. 5:42

There is evidently some mistake. How can a man do that? If a man should do that he would be a pauper in less than a month. There must be a mistake.

Possibly it is a wrong translation. The King James Version was made nearly three hundred years ago, but the newer translations do not change a syllable. Possibly Matthew wrote it wrong. What do the other Gospel writers have to say? Luke has the same idea, and here are his words (6:30): "Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again!" That is worse yet. There is no relief In that direction. Possibly the context will throw light on the sentence. It is evidently only a part of a large sentence, the beginning or the end of it, and after we have read what goes before and what comes after, the mystery will be made clear. But the sentence that goes before has no connection with this one. It ends a paragraph. The sentence that follows has no connection with this one. It begins a new paragraph. This text of ours is a complete sentence. It ends with a period. The context affords us no relief.

What shall we do? The easiest, laziest thing to do is to say that it is figurative, that is, it means nothing. If a thing is figurative it does not amount to anything. Jesus was simply talking to entertain and astonish. It is an easy way to get rid of the New Testament simply to say it is figurative. But this will not answer. If it is figurative it means something, and if it means something we must find out what the meaning is.

What shall, we do with it? The question is an important one, because there are many sentences like this scattered through the New Testament, and if we learn how to deal with this sentence, we shall know how to deal with all sentences that belong to its class. This is a sentence which seems to be impracticable, and the charge made against Christianity just now is that it is not practicable for men living under present conditions. It is beautiful but theoretical, lovely but incapable of being reduced to practice. Now, if Jesus was visionary, and laid down rules which cannot be obeyed, then he is not the world's Redeemer, and we must look for another. We men are obliged to live upon this earth, and the only teaching that helps us is teaching that can be translated into conduct. If Christianity is beautiful to think about on Sunday, and impracticable on Monday, we cannot afford to think about it even on Sunday. The religion which we need is not a beautiful dream, but a solid reality which we can make use of along the dusty and difficult way. It is well worth our while, therefore, to find out if this sentence is the command of a visionary, or the exhortation of a man who knows the practical and indispensable principles of everyday life.

To understand the sentence we must first study the art of Jesus in public speech. He had a fashion of speech founded on certain principles, and it is by grasping these principles that we become able to interpret his sentences.

I. JESUS’ MANNER OF SPEAKING ABOUT GIVING

First of all, Jesus invariably spoke in such a way as to secure the attention of his audience. This was his first aim. This is the first aim of every man who knows how to speak. Unless he gets attention there is no use of him speaking at all. If he gets and holds attention he is a good speaker; if he cannot get attention he is a poor speaker, no matter how many good things may be said about him. Physical presence has nothing to do with it. Learning has nothing to do with it. Rhetoric has nothing to do with it. Men with a style as polished as that of Apollos have proved tedious and tiresome, while men with a style ragged and unkempt have charmed audiences unable to escape their power. Grammar has nothing to do with it. A man may be faultless and dull, and a man may murder the Queen's English and succeed. What does an audience care for grammar when held in the grip of a man who knows how to talk? The first thing a speaker must do is to get attention, Jesus always got it. To get it he made use of various verbal devices. It is not easy to get attention, and it is harder still to hold it. Men are preoccupied. Their heads are filled with their own ideas and schemes, and only a strong man can compel them to listen.

The door is shut, and he who would enter must knock loud and long. Jesus knew how to knock. He used pictures. All men like pictures. We all have the child in us, and the child in us likes pictures. Jesus used pictures constantly in his preaching. The parables are so many stereopticon views of spiritual truth. The peasants of Palestine stood with open eyes looking at the verbal pictures which this genius from Nazareth painted. He used something stronger than pictures paradoxes. He said things which on the face of them were contradictory; leaving it for the audience to wrestle with his contradictions and find out if they could how they could be reconciled. "Do you want to be great, be little." "Do you want to be chief, be least." "Do you want to be first, be last." "Do you want to rule, be a servant." "Do you want to save your life, lose it."

A second principle. He dealt with but one truth at a time. He always spoke to create an impression. He knew that the human mind is not capable of taking in two ideas at once. He singled out one truth which he wished to stamp upon men's hearts, and then drove that truth home with all the energy of his great nature. There was a theory once current among our theological wise men which had it been universally accepted would have wrecked the entire church. According to this theory Christianity is a system of truth, and the entire system must be presented in every sermon. The example of Jesus’ preaching is a flat contradiction to this theory. He never presented truth as a system. He often spoke without referring to his divinity or his death or to the sin of man. There are many truths that man needs to know and these must be presented one at a time. This was the method of Jesus. I do not know of any public speaker so reckless as Jesus was in his allegiance to this principle of speech "one idea at a time."

Thirdly, Jesus trusted his audience. Some men are always afraid of being misunderstood. They say, "Now, please do not misunderstand me, I did not mean to say" and then they spend three minutes in explaining what they did not mean to say, and then they squander five minutes in making plain what they had intended to say, and the result is that half the people do not know when they get through what it is that they are expected to believe. Jesus trusted the people. He tossed his sentences into the air with great boldness, saying, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." Some speakers weary an audience by running things out into their finest details. Jesus allowed men to do their own thinking. He simply started them, gave them a hint, a mental push, and then said, "Now think it out for yourself." Second-rate speakers wear the audience out by a foolish striving for mathematical accuracy. They load their sentences with parentheses and tack on amendments and qualifying clauses. They inject here an adjective which subtracts and there an adverb which supplements, and the mind is exhausted in trying to carry the great load. Some speakers seem to speak an hour when they speak thirty minutes, and others seem to speak thirty minutes although they have spoken for two hours.

II. EXPLAINING THE PRINCIPLE OF GIVING

And now we are ready for our sentence, "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." That is a principle of life. Every man ought to give it place in his heart. Without that principle life would be a wreck, a failure. But this is not the only principle. There are others just as important. There is one other far more important. No principle lives to itself, and no principle dies to itself. They are all united in the Lord. Love is the central principle of human life. Jesus announced that first of all. Love was the heaven he arched above men's heads before he began to preach. Love was the foundation he spread beneath their feet before he attempted to teach them the way of life. Love was the sun which he hurled out into space, and all other principles were planets to revolve around this central sun. All that he said must be read in the light of the sun. All that he commanded must be interpreted by bringing it into relation with the chief of the commandments.

"Give!" That is a planet. Its orbit is determined by the sun. It is limited by love. But Jesus would not encumber his sentences by modifying clauses. He wanted his idea to stand out clear and sharp, so that every man would feel it. He was talking to Jews with itching palms. Their ambition in life was to get. They counted themselves happy in proportion to their success in adding to their accumulations. The whole nation was moving in that direction. Men passed before him in an endless procession, and they were all in pursuit of money. The Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and the publicans and the sinners, good and bad, pious and wicked, they all alike loved to get rather than to give. And he threw at them this great principle, "Give! Turn round. You are moving in the wrong direction. You are missing the glory of life. You have the wrong attitude; take a new one. You live to get; live hereafter to give! Give to the man who asks thee from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." He burned that idea into the substance of their brain. They never got away from it.

III. THE LIMITATIONS OF GIVING

But suppose he had gone at it in a petty and punctilious way. Suppose he had said: "Now you ought to give under certain circumstances and on certain conditions. If you can give in justice to yourself and your wife and your children and your dependent relations, you ought to give, providing you have first investigated the needs of the person asking assistance, and convinced yourself he would not be injured by the acceptance of your bounty." How tame and commonplace all that would have been. It would have made no impression. Nobody would have remembered it. Matthew would not have caught it, he could not have written it in his book. We might never have known that Jesus said it. But he said it in his own unique and magnificent way, and those men never forgot it. To the day of their death they talked about the carpenter of Nazareth, marvelled at the passionate way in which he had told them that men ought to live to give.

But the principle has limitations. Love sets limits to all giving. We are never allowed to give unless our giving is a service. The little child may be enamoured with a box of matches, and asks his mother for them. She declines. Later he asks her to prepare his favorite meal. She does so willingly. Love and a mother cannot give unless her gift is a blessing to her child. It is not love to give that which harms another. Do not desecrate the noble word “love'“ by throwing it on the shoulders of a mischievous sin. That is not love. It is weakness.

We are under the same great law wherever we go. We meet a man on the corner. He has been in six saloons and wants to go into another. He wants a dollar to get something to eat. We refuse. Do we break the law of Christ? We keep it. We must not give to any man unless our giving will do him good. All Christian giving must be a service. When we hurt by giving we wound the heart of Christ. The shiftless and lazy man comes to us for another loan. We do a man wrong when we encourage him in his shiftlessness and abet him in his improvident courses. “It is exceedingly difficult to help men with money without hurting them." Charity is a terrible evil," said Edward Denison from the slums of London. It is a terrible evil, this indiscriminate, reckless giving, scattering money with a thoughtless hand, and demoralizing the very people we are trying to help.

IV. HUMAN OPPOSITION TO GIVING

Let us look at it in its naked simplicity this great principle of life. "Give!" That is a Christian word. That is not a word of this world. The world never spoke that. Jesus uttered it. The world inscribes upon its banners, "Get!" That is the ambition of all great cities. Does a man want bread, he must struggle for it; does he want money, he must wrestle for it; fame, he must work for it. What is a city but a few hundred thousand human beings huddled together in a few square acres of land, every one of them striving to get!

But getting is not the great thing in human life. I hear men say with a twinkle in their eye—he is a money-getter as though that were a great eulogy. But what does if mean? A money-getter? He may be a mean, narrow, contemptible wretch. We are animals so long as we live to get. We came into the world with our fists tightly clinched, and some men need an entire lifetime to get their hands opened. The shut hand is the symbol of animalism; the open hand is the emblem of the new man in Christ. Animals live to get. The lion goes forth to seek his prey. Some men are like the lion. The city is a forest in which they search for victims. The dog snatches the biggest bone and runs. His ambition is to get. The hog steps into the trough with all four feet because a hog lives to get. Man alone is capable of giving. He can stand erect with open hand, his face toward his brother's face, and can imitate the example of Almighty God and be a dispenser of benefactions. You do not live unless you live to give.

V. THE PRINCIPLE OF GIVING IS FOR ALL

The commandment is for all. It is addressed to no one class or circle. It is for the poor as well as for the rich. There is a feeling prevalent today among the poorer classes that their poverty releases them from the obligation of giving. Where do you find such doctrine anywhere set forth in the Scripture? By what word of apostle or Lord has the poor man been released from the obligation of giving? The Lord is the friend of the poor and so he urges them to give. He does not want them to be dogs under the rich man's table. He wants them to take their places among the hosts of the redeemed. It is only by giving that we enter into the life of God. A poor man can give much, but a rich man cannot.

Give! The word comes to those who are in moderate circumstances. Give, and do not delay. Giving is one of the duties we like to postpone. We say, "When my income is larger, when times are better, then how generous I shall be." The man who waits to give until he can give largely is in danger of never giving at all. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. Give now. It is a mistake for a man who wishes for happiness and to help others, to think that he will wait until he has made a fortune before giving away money to deserving objects."

Give! The commandment comes with special emphasis to the rich. For to whom much has been given from them shall much be required. A man with wealth in a world like this has weighty responsibilities. His temptation is to dress in fine linen and fare sumptuously every day, and forget that needy humanity lies sick at his door. As a man prospers in this world's goods he naturally adds to the number of his luxuries, and these luxuries in time become necessities, swallowing up his income, and leaving him little opportunity to obey Christ's command to give. The stewardship of wealth as taught by the Redeemer of the world fastens upon a rich man's soul a weight of responsibility for whose discharge lie must answer at the judgment day.

Give! That is the attitude for every soul to take. That is the disposition for every soul to cultivate. Let the poor man say, "I will give out of my poverty." Let the rich man say, "I will give out of my abundance." Let every man say, "I will make it a principle of my life to give, and nothing shall set limits to my giving but the golden law of love."

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