2024-10-19 A Meditation on Generosity

“6 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 9 As it is written, “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” 10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. 13 By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. 15 Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor 9:6-15 ESV)

Accumulating spiritual wealth, the best move of the Christian saint and soldier is to learn to live still near to the despair and trying climates. That is, we easily cocoon ourselves and try to evade any and all of those scarier digs: what, after all, today can I say that is proof-theoretically complete, that preempts the “gotcha!” of our own hidden demons? That is, we bare all because we have learned that this momentum, this bracing for impact, this holding down the fort or the storm-tossed raft, is bringing about a Resurrection side of things as well as the scarier absence of company and of assurance that precedes Resurrection.

The soldier envelopes her or himself with certainty—yes—but a certainty somehow polite towards man in his or her innocence, and rude and confrontational to the spirits of pride and complacency and collaboration with sin. The soldier’s calm demeanor is meant to be that of one with nothing to lose, that is, no skin off our back if rejected, if demeaned, if harangued, if mocked. We are, after all, now wealthy in Spiritual Things, and use these immediately and without hoarding, to be apropos to the climate and to be near to the self-giving of a Christ or a Buddha or a Mohammed or a Deity. It is Action with a tear in the eye. It is Activity with the Unspoken in the air. It is Actuality with boisterous reactivity unto the trials and the temptations.

Temptations to be something we have long comfortably assumed was our Repose and Avoidance: we Avoided those tempting thoughts, for all “law” creates its opposite and does tempt, because we were found Intact and Uncorrupted, even though we can envision for a passing moment how we might have succumbed. We can envision for a passing moment that all things are Yes in Christ Jesus: the Yes of decisive moves: this I reject, this I accept, no, that is off-limits, and no, that is a yawn and so utterly devoid of tempting allure. See? For we are sinners soup to nuts, and cease with the illusion that we are somehow “mostly Kosher”.

We are not mostly kosher; we are headlong and furiously in Momentum either towards or away, and this Momentum brings with it a comet’s tail of blustery and efficacious Goodness. Goodness in our wake, that is, the goodness of a soul healthsome because of accumulating immediately some Wealth from its contrition. Some outside influence. Some jibe and verve from its Honesty. Some off-loaded new Responsibility from its sincerity. We are sincere as soldiers of a Cross held most High. We are sincere because His wake, His comet’s tail, His bedrock undercurrent most Peaceful, is what we tap into. We tap in, and are immediately rocketed either to be those who hoard or discomfit the Encounter with a peer, or those who spend liberally and find new Life in the fellowship. In all this we can be made over as hypocrites; we can fail to meet the test; we can like the sound of contrition better than it’s in action mode.

We can, in short, have left behind the innocent sins of youth, and become scheming, corrupt, advantage-oriented, duplicitous, and more. The better angels direct man’s Christian deeds to benefit all comers, but let us say all comers in some sequence or order: and let us be brave, having confronted our own sins, to start with our hearts in the right place, not appeasing that corrupt agent, but first—though we forgive all comers—those most benighted and blighted by society.