Do You Believe in an “Eleventh Commandment”?

Alan Wolfe, an astute analyst of American society, recently suggested that contemporary “Americans have added an Eleventh Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not judge.” He went on to propose that “if one is giving advice, one should do it tentatively; although it is a term of derision among Christian conservatives, the idea of the ‘Ten Suggestions’ rather than the ‘Ten Commandments’ is exactly the tone in which most middle-class Americans believe we ought to establish moral rules.”

That is a very large claim. But consider it, for a moment, as a sketch of how some of us might respond when others press us to accept their version of “definite rules” for giving. Have you ever been in that situation? Did you feel like invoking the “Eleventh Commandment?”

There is nothing new about such a response. Catherine Beecher offered her own version in of “thou shalt not judge” in 1841. “Each person is bound to inquire and judge for himself, as to his own duty or deficiencies; but as both the resources, and the amount of actual charities of other men are beyond our ken, it is as indecorous, as it is uncharitable, to set in judgment on their decisions.”

The conversation goes on. Some wouldn’t accept Beecher’s decorous rebuke as the final word. Are there no common standards that apply to all of us? Can we grow without hearing the criticisms and corrections of others? Does the etiquette of “tentatively” rendered “suggestions” inhibit the expression of passionate convictions? Meanwhile others would embrace Catherine Beecher’s conclusion and cheerfully endorse the courtesy inherent in an “Eleventh Commandment.”

And your response?

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What is the Relation Between Our Ways of Giving and Our Ways of Serving the Cause of Justice?

Edward McGlynn, a New York Catholic priest, publicly challenged his Church in the 1890s to rethink its approach to giving. "Charity is a noble virtue,” he maintained, “but to make the whole world an almshouse is carrying it to the absurd. The noblest charity is to do justice – not only to procure, at the sacrifice of self, in an unselfish spirit, some improvement in the condition of mankind, but compel tyrants to do justice to the victims they have wronged.”

McGlynn reminds us that all efforts to establish the right discipline of giving – whether tithing, “fair share” giving or “sacrificial” giving – are finally inadequate without an equal commitment to work for justice. Indeed, any preoccupation with the “rules” of giving might well deflect attention away from the larger issue.

Can you think of exemplars of this approach to giving? What have you learned from them that helps you in your own understanding of giving?