« Back to blog

Charity is More Than Giving Money



Twitter Facebook Email More...

I have a few posts working their way down the assembly line for the next week. But for now, for the purpose of not remaining silent for too long, I again offer some words from Kuyper, words that are intended to challenge us.

A charity which knows only how to give money is not yet Christian love. You will be free of guilt only when you also give your time, your energy, and your resourcefulness to help end such abuses for good, and when you allow nothing that lies hidden in the storehouse of your Christian religion to remain unused against the cancer that is destroying the vitality of our society in such alarming ways. For, indeed, the material need is appalling; the oppression is great. You do not honor God's Word if, in these circumstances, you ever forget how the Christ (just as his prophets before him and his apostles after him) invariably took sides against those who were powerful and living in luxury, and for the suffering and oppressed.
--- The Problem of Poverty, 62.

He speaks here against the socialist movement of his time in Europe, but the words remain helpful and challenging today.