Dale Perkins, Victoria

“Charity is the instrument by which justice is denied”  

– Chris Hedges, The Real News

       All who consider themselves to be progressive are awakening to a discomforting reality about one of the core values coming out of the civilized world. That is the private corporate world has orchestrated all governments to strip away civic, public services to deny programs which sustain the poorest of the poor, leaving only charity as the lone enterprise licensed to offer basic sustenance to the poor and the economically marginalized. 

“Charity is the instrument by which justice is denied”  

– Chris Hedges, The Real News

       All who consider themselves to be progressive are awakening to a discomforting reality about one of the core values coming out of the civilized world. That is the private corporate world has orchestrated all governments to strip away civic, public services to deny programs which sustain the poorest of the poor, leaving only charity as the lone enterprise licensed to offer basic sustenance to the poor and the economically marginalized. 
        To add salt to these wounds, these same large private corporations will only legitimize certain respectable institutions, such as institutional churches and faith communities to offer charity. And in the process charity becomes a mask to legitimize predatory capitalism.
        Thankfully people like American Chris Hedges have the courage and intellect to expose this travesty and the illusion that it’s the modern way to run the ‘body politic’ and service agencies operating openly in most countries and regions of the world.  We are all told daily just to “trust the System”.
       Hedges delves into a past manifestation of this phenomenon found in (of all places) the Nazi regime in Germany during the 1930s. Siting the work of Claudia Koontz in her book The Nazi Conscience, Hedges shows how Nazism attempted – successfully it appears – to convince Germans that they were being protected and defended by offering a moral philosophy of universal human rights based on the “positive” values of community and  ethnic purity. 
       Even Hitler  preferred to portray himself as a “practitioner of virtue”, his justification for persecuting and killing millions of Jews, homosexuals and any other ‘deviants’ he could identify and isolate. 
       Hedges writes that as our system becomes crueler it extinguishes all values and potential for democratic engagement by the poor and marginalized. They are only reluctantly allowed to be a part of the equation, but they don’t exist as significant players in society. That leaves only charity as the one tolerated social responsibility allowed to exist. 
       And how easily and quickly the “helping agencies” fall into line.  Coming from an institutional religious community, I see how readily and eagerly the Christian church has embraced charity as one of its most important functions. The central actors in our charity institutions become expert at  milking the charity cow, i.e., they become very effective fund-raisers and can orchestrate gatherings and events that command rich benefits for their institutions.  Small cells in every pastoral charge and parish provide a cadre of volunteers who offer their services to these institutions, because they are doing good charitable work for the ‘poor’ in our community. What is missing in the process are prophetic justice initiatives that disturb the system and its tireless operatives whose primary function is to keep the wheels of the ‘System’ working. 
       Were important players within these agencies allowed to operate ‘outside the box’ they might locate other values and themes which aren’t being heard. For the Christian church community they might re-discover their real founder, Jesus of Nazareth, who was decidedly a revolutionary. 
       He spoke out against the principalities and powers of his day – it got him killed in his mid 30s. His birth parents fled into neighbouring Egypt soon after his birth, where as refugees they stayed until most of their oppressors died or faded away and they thought it safe to go back home.  And there they dwelt in the back-water territory in relative quiet and peace – all devout Jews living the best life they could eke out.
       Of course, centuries of apologists have emaciated Jesus’ life and message and adapted it to fit comfortably inside the dominant culture in each and every society they inhabited. However, they definitely changed Jesus’ radical message of love of the enemy and the marginalized, into ‘Hallmark’ sentimentality, individual piety, holiness and prosperity which has now become the bedrock of the institutional Christian church.
       I imagine similar things happened with Buddha and Mohammed and all the other patriarchs who preached other brands of religion and spiritual practices in their time and place.  Now we are seeing the emergence of another religion – corporate capitalism and the so-called free market economy. 
       And just as insidious, this religion has assumed total control over the social norms operating in our modern world. But one fact remains according to this religion – charity is good, and  needs to be the norm for bringing everyone into the picture.
       Most of us aren’t even aware of its influence and control. We’ve just allowed the Private, Corporate Managers to set the agenda and run the show. Can there be an awakening?  And how likely will it mean including most of us in the transformation, or have we become so compromised that we no longer can play any  useful role in bringing in a just and fair society – especially since we have so much  charity to hand out?