Are we a Nation of Skinflints?

I think I am capable of being a moderate man. But when I saw the headline on the front page of the Otago Daily Times, August 10, 1968 – ‘New Zealand Stops Aid for Refugees’ – a sense of horror took me by the throat.

To fight or not to fight in the Vietnam War; to pray or not to pray; to use the Pill or else to throw it away; to carry protest banners or sit at one’s own fireside – these are the topics of our day, and one can recognise that one’s opponents may be those of honest principle who have their own variety of friendship with God. But neither God nor the Church have ever left us in any doubt – in the final weighing of things, there is only one kind of Christian – those who give food to the hungry and clothes to the naked. They knew it in mediaeval times:

If hosen and shoon thou gavest nane
The fire sall brenn thee to the bare bane . . .

They had not forgotten the words of Christ, branded on the hearts of His first listeners, that those who did not give to their suffering neighbours would be cast into darkness and burn in the fires of hell. So gentle and humane a man as St Francis recounted a vision in which he had seen a couple in Hell, imprisoned for ever inside a corn measure, who had made money out of the starving during a great famine.

It is no help for people to claim that their goods are their own and they can choose to give or not to give. St Ambrose told his listeners that a man who had two cloaks in his closet while his neighbour had nothing to wear was a robber, since God had given him the extra cloak so that he could give it away. By the same token, in these days of rapid international communication, those who know that children are starving in other countries and do not give of their surplus to relieve that starvation are murderers.

I can well understand why the Government of New Zealand has not chosen to make public its decision to cease entirely to give its accustomed page 597 financial support to the budget of the United Nations office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency operating among refugees in the Middle East, and why we have heard about it only indirectly through the horrified honesty of Rev. R.M. O’Grady, the assistant general secretary of the National Council of Churches. The reason is that the members of the Government responsible for this homicidal decision have a guilty conscience. They know that what they are doing is an enormity. And in an habitual bureaucratic manner they have tried to conceal their decision, hoping that the relevant statistics would remain buried among the Government’s departmental estimates. We must thank Rev. R.M. O’Grady and the refugee resettlement officer of the National Council of Churches for their charitable labour in bringing these facts directly to our notice.

It is precisely in the battle to give, to give more abundantly, and to force our Government to give more abundantly, that Catholics and Protestants can most readily join forces and march together under the flag of the Crucified Master. Can we be content even for a day to become a nation of robbers and murderers because our money-blinded Government has chosen to hang that label around our necks? The need for help has increased vastly. Yet our Government has chosen to give nothing. Mr O’Grady has said that he understands that the Government had stopped its financial support because of the country’s economic situation.

It has been a source of burning shame to many in this nation that, though we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we give little more than one-thousandth of our national income for the relief of famine and destitution and homelessness abroad. We are Unjust Stewards; and we cannot plead ignorance before the only court that matters, which is the throne of God.

‘Ah,’ it might be said, ‘why do you worry? There is room for private charity. If you are so superstitious that you think there is a God who will judge you for letting your neighbour’s children die in filth, then there is nothing to prevent you from dipping into your own pocket. Leave the pockets of others alone.’

True, we are bound to give privately; and many of us do; and of those many, perhaps those who give the most, are the ones who can least afford it. But we are citizens as well as members of the Body of Christ; and public justice and morality should concern us. There are several reasons why the quota contributed by New Zealand towards international relief should be at least two-hundredths of our national income.

The first reason is patriotism. Why should our nation be known as the skinflint of the world, while nations who have only a fraction of our income give widely and well? If our cheeks are not red, then they should be. If we do not like this monstrous national image projected in the market places of the world, then we should petition our Government until we give to others at least a portion of our surplus.

page 598

The second reason is example to our young folk. How can they grow up as Christians if they know perfectly well that we are concerned primarily with our bank accounts and the filling of our bellies and have no care for those who are dying in want? We cannot blame them if they either reject our ‘morals’ in disgust or else imitate our materialist cynicism in more obvious and even more disgusting ways.

The third reason could be our legitimate dislike of Communist regimes. If we do not give of our plenty to feed and clothe the destitute, then we are in the most obvious points of morality inferior to the Communists who at least have this to their credit. If Christians fail to obey the law of Christ, and Communists obey it, however inadequately, who then are the Christians? We cannot say that we are Christian because we believe in the Trinity and go to Mass; for if people die of hunger while we sit well-fed in our pews, we are in fact blasphemers whose claim on the name of Christian can only add to our condemnation.

The fourth reason is one of domestic justice. The larger taxes are taken from those with the larger incomes. This means that when our Government gives publicly, it is those with the largest incomes who are indirectly contributing most. And this is as it should be.

The fifth reason is one of international association. Just as people cannot exist for long when wholly separate from their communities, so no nations can exist on their own for more than a few short years. We may not know that we are unjust. But our brothers and sisters in the under-developed countries know it well. And if some day they come to take with the sword the bread we have refused to give them, will they then be robbers? I doubt it. We will have had our chance. The Church teaches that those who climb into a farmer’s paddock to take vegetables for their starving children are not robbers. Our fences will not keep our paddock safe for ever.

The final reason is charity. And there was really never any other reason, for in charity all other reasons are hidden – patriotism, justice, example and obedience. What reason have we not to be charitable? Are there families lying homeless in our streets? Do we starve? Do many of us even have to do without the most trivial and useless luxuries?

I confess that I tremble. I confess that I fear Divine retribution – not fire falling from heaven, but the inevitable disasters that may follow from a sleep of spiritual sloth so deep that when we hear that multitudes are dying of hunger, and that our elected representatives have refused the most meagre support to them, we turn in our sleep and murmur: ‘What of it? That’s the country of the Wogs and Yids, isn’t it? Let them settle their own problems.’

But the Wog Abraham and the Yid Christ, accompanied by the myriads of the glorified poor, will meet us at the hour of our death, and say: ‘We never knew them. They never gave a thing to us.’ And we will say that such a court and such a sentence are grossly unfair; for we were always good-living people page 599 who paid our debts and went to Mass. Unfortunately we will be wrong and they will be right.

1968 (523)