What has come to my attention the past few months is how often it happens that we perform ‘charity’ without charity. Charityless charity. We are masters at it. How do I know? I’ve seen it. Let me give some examples.

First, it happens when we perform supposedly charitable acts, not out of love (i.e. charity) for others, but out of love for ourselves.

The other day, I overheard a Roman Catholic who was incensed that my wife would (ab)use her position as an ESL teacher to invite people to church. This lady was convinced that her calling was to work with Muslims, and teach them English, and never mention Jesus. She might think that she is loving others by being an ESL teacher, but her words show the lie. She actually told my wife why she had become an ESL teacher in another country and culture for six months. It was because she needed a new perspective on her life, and she wanted to “refocus”. To my wife it sounded like she was just having a midlife crisis. Self-love is not a good motivator to charity, because it always prevents us from actually thinking about the other person and what it would truly look like to love them. If we believe that good works save us, all of our charity falls into this category, because we are actually doing it out of self-love. We are using others as a tool to try to save ourselves.

Charity without charity also happens when our “charity” comes out of commitment to some sort of philosophy rather than love for others. When we do this, it doesn’t help others, it harms them.

A few years ago my wife and I began the process of trying to adopt a baby from Ethiopia. We were working with an adoption agency in Minnesota called, Children’s Home Society and Family Services (CHSFS). After we had our home-study completed (where a social worker comes into your home to decide whether you are fit to be parents) CHSFS emailed us and told us they weren’t willing to work with us because we wouldn’t agree to never use physical discipline. Leaving aside the fact that we had asked before we started working with them whether they had a strict policy against this, and they had said that they didn’t, this became ever more frustrating the more I thought about it. What was this decision? It was a decision to leave an orphan in Ethiopia rather than to place him in a loving home. Why? Because CHSFS doesn’t actually love children. They love their philosophy of how children should and shouldn’t be disciplined, and they are willing to sacrifice the children on the altar of their philosophy.

It is possible for charity to contain no charity at all, and the more I see it, the more I recognize it in myself. Is your charity worth anything to the people you are supposedly serving? Or are you just serving them to serve yourself. If so, you’re not doing them any favors, and you’re not helping yourself any either.

“And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:3)

So what is my conclusion? All charitable work done by non-Christians, and all charitable work done by Christians, but not out of love, is worthless. In fact, it’s not just worthless, it is harmful to those supposedly being helped.