Whole Life Offering Book Excerpt 1 of 6: The Divine Origins of Philanthropy

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Pastor Foley

Were Christianity to select a single word to describe the breadth and depth of the relationship between God and human beings, it could do worse than “philanthropic”.

In fact, not only is Christ still called Philanthropos—“The Philanthropist”—in the liturgy of the Orthodox Church, but the term actually owes its 5th century B.C.E. Greek origins to a god.

Prometheus is imprisoned by Zeus, the king of the gods, for “philanthropy”—specifically, his deep, personal friendship with human beings. Cries the bound Prometheus, “Look at me, the unlucky god who is chained up for exaggerated affection for the mortal beings”.

The term “philanthropy” originates, thus, not with reference to human acts of beneficence toward humanity but rather with a god’s love of human beings who, it is worth noting, are depicted as incapable of reciprocating anything of value in return.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, The Whole Life Offering: Christianity as Philanthropy, scheduled for release in January 2011.)

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Exclusive Excerpts from the Forthcoming Whole Life Offering Book

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Pastor Foley

Even as you read this post, I’m happily typing away on my second book, entitled The Whole Life Offering: Christianity as Philanthropy.

I’m writing the book with the goal of equipping individual Christians, pastors, and ministry leaders with a thoroughly biblical perspective on philanthropy.

The core idea is this: philanthropy is so much more than financial giving. It originates with God’s gift of Christ to us and comes to fruition in each of us as we offer our whole lives to Him by comprehensively mirroring to the world His love and care.

The book is due to be released in January 2011, Lord permitting, but over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing with you excerpts from the book’s Introduction so you can see why I’m so excited about what I’m learning and writing.

I debuted some of this material in Toronto during a retreat with my dear brothers and sisters from Voice of the Martyrs/Canada, and in September I’ll be teaching the first seminars on it in Cambodia (at Child Evangelism Fellowship’s Asia/Pacific Conference) and Memphis (in a one day event for the Memphis Leadership Foundation). I’d love to have your prayers for that travel and for both events, as well as for future events in the planning stage to share the material more broadly.

I hope you enjoy and are challenged by the excerpts over the next few weeks. They’ll culminate in my sharing a new “Whole Life Offering Ten” list to replace the “Transformational Giving Ten” I wrote a few years back. The TG Ten list has worn well, praise God, but I’ve had a desire since I wrote it to create a list that could be equally useful to individual Christians, pastors, churches, and Christian nonprofits rather than just, as in the case of the TG Ten, Christian nonprofits.

Good times, these. I’m counting on your prayers and comments over the weeks to come, so thanks in advance for your generosity in sharing both. You know that I pray regularly for you as a practitioner of Transformational Giving—for the fruitfulness of your own ministry as well as for your reproduction as you share the TG principles in your sphere of influence. You and I are tied together at the hip in this work, and for that I am especially grateful to God.

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One Christian’s Perspective on The Giving Pledge, Part III: Street Party Philanthropy

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Pastor Foley

We opened our series on the Giving Pledge with the Guardian’s Peter Wilby offering a recommendation for a modified giving pledge. Note in particular today the concluding sentence of Wilby’s commentary:

If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to stop lobbying against taxation and regulation; to avoid creating monopolies; to give their employees better wages, pensions, job protection and working conditions; to make goods and use production methods that don’t kill or maim or damage the environment or make people ill. When they put their names to that, there will be occasion not just for applause but for street parties.

It’s staggering, really, how much of the philanthropy in the Bible ends up quite literally rolling out into the street. Whether with Levi, Zaccheus, the Banquet Feast of The Lamb, or dozens of other philanthropic episodes, street parties are part and parcel of Christianity-as-philanthropy.

Philanthrocapitalists might puzzle over the following street party and, in light of Givewell’s most-lives-saved-for-the-least-money calculus, struggle to compute the philanthropy of the Son of God who tells it:

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’

This is not the most lives saved for the least money. This is a parable that shrugs off the notion of scarcity the way that contemporary philanthropy shrugs off the efficacy of self-emptying personal relationship.

Notes Luther, with additional commentary from Torvend (p. 65):

“It is necessary that you…deal with your neighbor in the very same way [as Christ has dealt with you], be given also to [the neighbor] as a gift and an example.” The Christian is taught by Christ, albeit in a “loving and friendly way,” what to do in the world. Passive in the reception of Christ as gift, the Christian is to become active in service to the neighbor in need because such work fulfills the commands of Christ, actually benefits the neighbor, and tests the authenticity of faith, that gift itself that rules and guides one’s living in the world with other persons.

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