‘Abundance means having more than enough.  So a society without an understanding of what enough is will never experience abundance’ – Bob Goudzwaard*

I was rather proud to find out that Beaconsfield – the suburb where I live and drink most of my tea – was recently deemed the most generous neighbourhood in Western Australia.  We gave more than all of the suburbs in Perth’s golden triangle – boom! We did this despite earning 7% below the median wage – bam!  We gave the most as a percentage of income in the state of Western Australia – ker-pow!

Well, I was rather proud of this news until I arrived at the second sentence in the article, which revealed that on average we gave $227 this past year despite earning $75,000 in that same period.  So a regular Beaconian (?) gave 0.3% of their income away – $4.36 per $1,400 weekly wage.  That’s still higher than our national giving of 0.226% of GDP (the lowest ever since we started recording), but 0.3 percent?  Do we really deserve the title of ‘most generous’ with that paltry amount?  I have friends who are on welfare who give away more than twenty times that as a percentage of income.

If you’re responding to the above in the same way that I did, you’re probably attempting to do some quick maths to calculate last year’s tax-deductable donations as a percentage of your income, and you’re already half-way up your moral horse and about to join me as I gallop and shout my way ‘round Beaconsfield’s top paddock (Bruce Lee Oval for those in the know).

But before the rodeo starts, let’s remember that giving in God’s books was never about getting the sums right, and didn’t attract labels like charity or philanthropy that make the giver feel good.  Giving to the economically poor was simply an act of justice (correcting unequal division of God’s abundant provision) and righteousness (following God’s design for a flourishing earth and the people who live on it).  It wasn’t so much an obligation as an indication of whether a person or a nation was flourishing and living along God’s patterns for creation.

It’s pretty logical really, because the cracks always appear at the weakest points first, and society is no different.  The vulnerable in our society are the canaries in our proverbial carbon-free coal mines.  They feel the heat and price rises and changes in the legal, welfare, and social safety nets quicker than we do. Their vulnerabilities make them highly sensitive to new injustices, and thus they serve as sentinels of sorts in our society.  Perhaps that’s not the way we typically think of communities or people who are dependent on welfare.

But in the biblical narrative of God’s goals and purposes for humanity, the vulnerable are always a metaphoric mirror that God holds up to the rest of the community.  Their deficiencies and needs are often highly reflective of wider – and usually deeper, more hidden – societal short-comings.  And so whenever the biblical prophets had a strong message of correction for those in power, it almost always involved pointing to the situation of the vulnerable as if to say if everything’s so peachy, why are these people not doing so well?  Think Nathan, David and Uriah’s wife.  Elijah, Ahab, and Naboth’s grapes. Amos, Uzziah and the ‘special’ taxes levied on the economically poor.

But the flipside is also true: when the vulnerable are flourishing, the kingdom of God has arrived in greater measure. And so Jesus stood up in the synagogue and read from Isaiah about releasing the captives and the oppressed, stating that with his arrival, these things were about to be rolled out.  That’s why Jesus answered John’s question from prison – about whether he was the messiah or not – by pointing  to the improvements in life for the blind, the sick and the poor rather than the number of people following him or the number of conversions and baptisms.  This was key evidence that God’s kingdom had arrived. The cracks were closing up.  Society was on the mend.  Things were beginning to align with God’s design and purposes for humanity and creation.

This suggests to me that Australia’s suburban and national giving are two small indicators that our national ‘progress’ is perhaps less peachy than we think it is.  Our pleasure, health, education, consumption, comfort and GDP levels have steadily risen in recent decades, and our sentinel canaries are singing a song – but the trained ear will recognise that the tune has more in common with a dirge than a hymn.

Keep the marginal close if you want to hear the heartbeat of your community.  Better yet, make them your friends, learn their names, share your meals and your life, the resources you’ve been given to disburse.  And chances are, when folks ask whether Jesus really makes a difference in the world, you won’t need to point to the number of conversions or baptisms or people following him.   You’ll just be able to introduce them to your friends from the margins and let them tell their story.

I reckon it’ll be euengellion-esque, gospelly. Good news.

[insert fireworks]

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*Reclaiming our future: the vision of Jubilee (2001, 183).