The Sense of Giving

Sir: Groaning somewhat after a heavy fish meal, and lighting my seventh cigar for the day, a vague notion struck me a short while ago that I should attend a little to the needs of my soul. There is actually no positive Christian commandment forbidding one to do this. But when I searched in the small pocket below my trouser-belt where I usually keep this valuable and dirty heirloom, along with old rosary beads and receipts and two-cent coins, I found to my perturbation that it had vanished completely. And I remembered that the last time I had seen it was on September 23, 1965, when I had gruffly and unwillingly given a drunk a two-shilling piece in mistake for one shilling.

I do not wish to weary you or your readers; but there is a rather delicate theological problem involved. What point is there in my continuing as a regular Mass-goer and basher of the eardrum at public meetings, in expectation of a somewhat remote heavenly reward, if that part of myself which is to receive the reward has in fact evaporated? Perhaps superstitiously I associate my peculiar circumstances with my total neglect of almsgiving since that glorious and notable occasion three years ago. I propose therefore to go to my bank and remove one-third of my accumulated private savings and put it in a plain envelope and then put the envelope in a box for the Biafran appeal.

Some of your readers may find themselves in the same dilemma, as they choke on their eighteenth ice cream cone for the day, or drag themselves page 607 along to a mediocre film for the twenty-third time in a single month. No doubt some critic will point out that I am lacking in Christian prudence; that I am trying to limit the licit enjoyments of the population; that I have been secretly influenced by the world-wide Communist conspiracy to substitute rubber tacks for the metal ones in our boots and so afflict us all with skin fungus. But I must point out that everyone has free will; that it is not an actual crime to give alms to the millions who are dying of hunger in Asia and Africa; and that I am not diminishing any of my licit enjoyments, but simply getting rid of the surplus money I would otherwise spend on things that make me want to vomit.

I am really trying to deliver my fellow-citizens from the semi-Puritan sense of duty that makes us all feel that money spent, even on cosmetics that increase our ugliness or pulp magazines that decompose our minds, is better used than money given to the destitutes who were probably immoral and lax to get that way in the first place. I suggest that we should endeavour to surprise ourselves and our Creator, who is, I have heard, kindly, and will not enjoy damning us for filling our guts with edible rubbish while His other children are dying for lack of what we do not want. For myself, I will do this, whether or not anybody agrees with me; for I feel obscurely deprived without that peculiar part of me which Christians call a soul, and intend, if I can, to re-animate it.

1968 (528)