A fresh approach to how we treat one another and build our neighborhoods, our cities, our communities surfaces. Oh, how we need be reminded of the difference between charity and justice from time to time. And I dare say it makes a lot of us uneasy. It certainly makes me uneasy. Without intent to demean or play down the charitable instincts of so many of us here, let us be clear.
Charity can be an expedient.
Charity can be an attempt to make tolerable really miserable and unjust conditions, hoping to take the edge off, quench the fires, and bribe the sufferer into silence. Charity tends to support an unjust status quo . Charity tends to provide safety nets rather than radically assaulting the inequity making the safety net an option. Charity steadfastly refuses to attack the conditions it seeks to ameliorate. That insight hits a lot of us church folk, certainly us preacher types, close to the bone.