'Let your alms sweat in your hands, until you know to whom you should give'

The early 2nd-century Christian document, the Didache, includes advice about charity.  The last word offered on the teaching is, 'Let your alms sweat in your hands, until you know to whom you should give' (ch. 1).  In this blog post, I would like to redirect readers to an article by David Virtue on Global Christian News. See http://www.globalchristiannews.org/article/christmas-charity-weighing-up-who-you-will-give-to/. In 'Christmas Charity: Weighing Up Who You Will Give To' (30 October, 2017), Virtue points readers to two information services to do exactly what the Didache recommends: 

•       In England, see http://beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/ 
•       In the USA, see https://www.charitynavigator.org/  

Virtue gives information on the following major aid agencies: Food for the Poor, Food for the Hungry, World Vision International, Samaritan's Purse, Tear Fund, Open Doors, Barnabas Fund, and Aid to the Churches in Need.  Of these, only the last two organizations get a 'thumbs up.'  Other charities, no doubt, do much good.  The issue, though, is how much of the money raised actually reaches those for whom it is raised and/or how much top administrators are paid.

In 1994, Graham Hancock wrote a fascinating book, Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business (Atlantic Monthly Press).  Hancock begins by saying that he will not present any information on Christian aid agencies.  As a reporter, he exposed the incompetencies and corruption of the aid business.  More recently, Dambisa Moyo has written Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010).

'Missions' has come to mean almost anything done 'over there' by Christians.  It is a most regrettable broadening of the term when 'almsgiving' or 'charity' or 'aid work' would be the better terminology in many cases.  'Missions' should be reserved for those ministries that have to do with taking the Gospel to the nations--evangelistic, church planting, Bible translation, and teaching ministries.  Yet, as the Didache rightly says, charity is Christian work.  However, we will do well not to act in the manner of non-Christian, peer, aid agencies by becoming 'Lords of Poverty'.  Let us not be guilty in the manner of persons already in Paul's day who imagined 'that godliness is a means of gain' (1 Timothy 6.5).

How much money does the director of your favourite charity earn?  How much of the money raised by the charity actually goes to the people for whom the money is raised?  Is the money actually going to the cause that the charity says it is for?  And do not confuse giving to charities with giving to missions--to the sending (from the Latin, mittere, to send) of persons who bear the Gospel throughout the world.