How Rich Are You?

So what, you ask?  You work hard for that money, right?  The Rich Listers explain that they want people, particularly those with the means to view their web site, to understand that they “are in a privileged minority.”  They “want people to feel rich.  And give some of their extra money to a worthwhile charity.”  They observe that:

• $8 could buy you 15 organic apples OR 25 fruit trees for farmers in Honduras to grow and sell fruit at their local market.
• $73 could buy you a new mobile phone OR a new mobile health clinic to care for AIDS orphans in Uganda.
• $2400 could buy you a second generation High Definition television OR schooling for an entire generation of school children in an Angolan village.

A few days ago, I was inconveniently reminded of these comparisons.  As I snacked on a blueberry scone at my Starbucks “office,” I read a front-page story in the Washington Post about America’s 11 million “hungry” people (or, as the government now says, those who lack “food security”).  As I sipped my $2 drink, I perused a report (p.A20) on the dislocated and dispossessed Sudanese refugees in Chad who were fortunate to have escaped the genocide.

Annoying questions quickly filled my head:  Am I sufficiently grateful for what I have?  Shouldn’t I give $4 to someone who is “food insecure” rather than treat myself to Starbucks?  Am I doing all that I can, as Jesus has directed, to alleviate suffering among the least of God’s children?  Will the Lord agree with my self-serving assessment?

Do you ever feel guilty that you’re not doing more to help others with the wealth that God has entrusted to you?  I do.  Some would insist that these guilty feelings are nothing more than the unhealthy product of an oppressive social construct.  They would promise that we can have healing and freedom if we ignore – or better yet, eradicate – these feelings of guilt.  It sounds good, but I’m skeptical.  I’m more inclined to believe, like natural law proponents, that guilty feelings are a symptom of knowledge of our guilt – in this case, knowledge that we are breaking a foundational moral principle by not using more of what we have to help others who have so little of anything but great material needs.

Some of you may rarely, if ever, feel guilty about the extent to which you’re sharing the wealth.  But just because you lack feelings of guilt does not necessarily mean that you lack guilt.  (I suspect that a (very) few of you lack feelings of guilt because you aren’t guilty.  You generously and tirelessly give of your time, talent, money and possessions.)  Consider this:  do you find yourself rationalizing or making excuses for your financial choices, for how little you are doing to alleviate your neighbors’ suffering?  According to Professor J. Budziszewski, these attempts to justify ourselves are among the telltale signs of guilty knowledge (What We Can’t Not Know, pp.113, 118).

In English, “to justify” can mean [1] to make something just, [2] to show that it is just, [3] to maintain that it is just, or [4] to feign that it is just.  The striking thing is that the first and fourth meanings are exactly opposed.  According to the first, I am justified when I am finally brought in line with justice.  According to the fourth, I am justified when “justice” is finally brought in line with me.  Guilty knowledge demands the former;  we attempt to appease it, however, by means of the latter.  We rationalize.  We make excuses (id. at 154).

The Rich Listers achieved their goal, in my case.  They’ve underscored what – thanks to my conscience – I already knew.  I can do so much more to alleviate poverty than I did today.