Christian charity

Somewhere between turning the other cheek and turning out the money-changers in the temple lies a right and respectable model of behaviour for those of us who wish to honour God in our daily walk. I don't have a one-size-fits-all guide for ascertaining exactly which course this is, but I do know two extremes it is not. One is the abuse of God's name for personal gain at the expense of others, as experienced recently by Sara. That form of godliness strikes me as a scam designed to take in credulous good-hearted and well-meaning people.
And the other is the let's-not-make-waves, they-will-know-we-are-Christians-by-our-niceness brand of meekness to a fault.

Case in point: A certain person (let's call him Caesar) was invited out to lunch. The restaurant advertised that lunch meals would be served within fifteen minutes or the meal was free. Caesar's lunch break being limited, he was naturally anxious to get back to work, and went so far as to time the arrival of the food. When it arrived a good twenty minutes after ordering, he attempted to bring the matter to the attention of the waitress, and was immediately voted down by his fellow diners, who were obviously uncomfortable with the idea of holding the restaurant to its word and were apparently more interested in not making a scene than in following up on a perfectly good policy.

My guess is that they were simply people who couldn't deal with confrontation in any form, and didn't want to come across as critical of the waitress. But it seems an insult to God to cloak such timidity in the guise of Christianity, as if being a Christian means never being able to point out error in others or to complain of a wrong suffered. This reminds me of situations when an item of defective merchandise was not returned because 'it would be such a bad testimony to complain.'

I think the misconception here arises from a careless mixing of the rules governing the secular and the sacred, the personal and the institutional, perhaps an audacious statement because of course I believe that our Christianity should transcend every aspect of our lives. I propound, however, that applying principles for Christian individuals wholesale to institutions, policies, or governing bodies, is not what God intended when He called us to a life of personal holiness and commitment.

That misapplication of principle is where we get criticism of capitalism as such a brutal, uncaring, unloving, and therefore, surely, un-Christian economic system. Yes, capitalism can be cut-throat. As Churchill said, it's the worst economic system, except for all the others. (A socialist economic system, run by evil fallen human beings, is ten times scarier than a capitalist economic system run by evil fallen human beings.) But it's not the point of the economic system to exemplify Christ's ideal kingdom; it's the job of the people in the system to model Christ's character. What does that entail? In the professional level, it should involve good stewardship of one's assets; living as prudently as possible; seeking out the best bargains (but not using unethical means to do so); and using the bounty to bless others. One should not attempt to coerce the system into shouldering the burden of demonstrating Christ's love to the masses; in fact, that's a cheap cop-out of one's own individual responsibilities to love one's neighbour.