Thursday, March 12, 2009

Charity

I've been thinking about sacrificing in giving and the idea reminds me of this powerful and surprising scene at the end of the movie Schindler's List. There is an urgency about the generosity of some people I have known. Perhaps it's because the truly generous know what their love and resources can do, so they withhold very little.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the ending of the movie brings up an interesting dilemma: how generous should you be? Or on the flip side, how much is too much?

I think from a Christian worldview the answer is: it depends what God asks you to do. We aren't God, we can't do everything. We have to eat, sleep, and have shelter. We have to trust that God is going to pick up the things we can't.

The flip side is, if you're using a secular view - is there any way to determine "too much"? I'm not sure there's ever a good way to determine where we should stop. And I think the result of that is immense guilt because we could have "done more."

cathy b. said...

I think the emphasis is that we should trust God to take care of OUR clothing and shelter (consider the lilies of the field).
My take on Schindler was that he was not truly charitable until that moment when he knew he could have done more.