Meanness is ugly. Grabbing is unattractive. Black Friday events are dark indeed, as the retail sector’s excuse for a greed-fuelled shopping frenzy sparks scuffles and scrums across the country. Determined ninja-shoppers jump queues, elbow, shove, and even punch each other in their determined pursuit of alleged bargains. The spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge, the lead character in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, is alive and well. We don’t have to be penny-pinchers to qualify as stingy: we only need to insist that most of our pennies and pounds are spent on us. Dickens paints Scrooge, the wizened old skinflint, as a ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.’ Hardly a handsome portrait.
But we don’t have to wrestle with fellow shoppers to qualify as cheap. We’ve all been around people who work overtime to be last in line when it comes to paying. At the coffee shop, they open the door and insist that we go in first. This is not out of courtesy: it is a tactical manoeuvre ensuring you get to the counter first, and will be more likely to flash your credit card. Or at the end of a pleasant meal, their sudden departure to the bathroom is timed precisely to coincide with the arrival of the bill at the table. Returning from the loo, their relief is heightened by the knowledge you’ve paid in their absence. It is even more irritating when they try to make a virtue of their meanness, insisting they’re thrifty, when in fact they’re just tight.
All of this manipulative meanness not only takes a lot of effort, but actually robs us of the joy of giving. A recent sociological survey featured in the book, The Paradox of Giving, revealed that generosity is very good for us, and not in a silly, telly-evangelist, ‘Give and God will make you rich’ way. The meticulous research revealed that the more generous we are, the more happiness, health and purpose in life we enjoy. Generosity not only blesses others, but brings a smile to our own hearts too.
And generosity, more importantly, changes the world. The early Christians profoundly impacted their culture with their generous lifestyles, even though most of them were poor. In their day, generosity was not widely valued; Roman society embraced a system called Liberates. Simply put, the code went like this: you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. A tidy arrangement, unless you were poor, and had nothing to give. Widows and orphans found themselves stranded at the bottom of the social food chain.
In beautiful contrast, the early followers of Jesus gave their service, their money, their goods, their time, their safety, their creature comforts, and their reputations, with a generosity that was not just a series of isolated, unusual actions, but a way of life. They scattered good everywhere, freely and indiscriminately. They looked for sweaty feet to wash, and even went further. When terrible plagues hit, and huge swathes of the population fled the cities, abandoning the sick, the Christians stayed behind, nursing the ill, even though some of the carers died in the process.
It’s been said that we are most like God when we give. Those early believers didn’t just share words and ideas about God, but they showed a confused world what the giving God looks like.