“When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you….so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:2,4).

We are all junkies for approval. Our heavenly Father knows that and (Praise God!) he does not discourage this craving but encourages it in a positive direction. Matthew 6 is a wonderful revelation which, if taken to heart, gives the sinner like me power to do good in secret without any particular heroism being exercised.

Doing good things to be seen by others and to win their approval is a tough case. But God does not ask me to give it up. He merely asks me to make a substitution: Do it to win his approval (John 5:44). This is cool. This is like the guy who walks into a saloon and buys drinks all around, and laughs off an insult, and smiles when someone at the bar spills beer on his new boots. “What’s gotten into him!” they whisper behind his back. “How come he’s not his usual ornery self?” But he has a secret: an hour ago he learned his Uncle LeRoy died and left him a million bucks. Who wouldn’t be generous-hearted?

The Apostle Paul couldn’t care less about other people’s approval (1 Corinthians 4:3). And he couldn’t care less about other people’s credentials (Galatians 2:6). “Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath. Of what account is he?” (Isaiah 2:22).

When you think about it, why do we waste our lives worrying about the opinion of people who aren’t even on the right wavelength?

Last week on American Idol, they raised a lot of money for a lot of people.  Millions and millions of dollars, raised by celebrities, by regular people, by everyone who watches TV.  None of this was bad.  It’s good to see people moved by pain and need to give.  But the whole spectacle of “Idol Gives Back” glosses over the truth of real charity.  No glut of cash from anyone, including the government, can change a human life like the simple solution of discipline.  Also called initiative.  Also called work.  After all, only a small percentage of America’s poor are unable work. 

In college, [Adam] Shepard read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, which argues that only government intervention can rescue the working poor from what Ehrenreich portrays as a desperate plight. Shepard doubted her thesis and wanted to test it. So after graduating, he went to Charleston, South Carolina, with a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, $25, and a made-up tale of woe. He spent the first two months in a homeless shelter while he worked as a day laborer. He later found a permanent position with a moving company, which gave him a stable income. This allowed Shepard to buy a (very) used pickup truck, rent and furnish an apartment with a coworker, and start saving. 

During this time, he was on a strict budget, buying clothes at Goodwill and lunching on peanut butter crackers and Vienna sausages. After ten months, he left Charleston due to an illness in his family. By that point, he had saved over $5,000. Along the way, he had met dozens of marginal citizens whose lives he found relentlessly fascinating. 

And he wrote a book about it called Scratch Beginnings, “to disprove Ehrenreich’s argument about endemic poverty.” 

Critics have dismissed Shepard’s claims by pointing to the fact that he enjoyed an array of government services, from food stamps to bus rides to homeless services. But everyone Shepard encountered at the shelter and in the bad neighborhood he later lived in was already using the same services. It wasn’t the public services that lifted Shepard out of destitution-it was his own initiative. Indeed, if spending money on government services were the best way to cure poverty, it would no longer be a problem. 

You really ought to check out the story, and the book.

Charity appears to be the new black among celebrities, or so suggests the cover story in this week’s edition—the “Money Issue”—of The New York Times Magazine. On the cover are actress Natalie Portman and Martha Villaseñor Antunez, a Mexican businesswoman Portman supports through her pet philanthropy, microfinancing. (Portman works with FINCA International to give poor populations worldwide access to credit.)

The article chronicles celebrity charity from trendsetters like Oprah and Bono, to those better known for antiwar diatribes like George Clooney, down to smaller fries like NFL quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, as these folks clue in to (a) the actual need or (b) the fact that it takes a feat to get attention in the 24/7 modern milieu of celebrity life—or (c) a combo of both. The Times story is one of several lately to remark on the trend.

“Most celebrities no longer have charities; they have causes,” the story says. A publicist in the article adds that celebrities now need “something for People magazine to shoot . . . You can’t just get $20 million a picture; you’ve got to serve turkey to the poor, too.” In the age of TMZ and Perez Hilton, the E! Channel and swarming paparazzi, stars stand out through public action. They “have to do something with all that attention.” As Portman tells the Times, “If they’re going to follow me around and take pictures, I’d rather talk about [microfinancing] than what dress I’m wearing or who I’m dating or whatever nonsense people care about.”

One of the biggest celebrity newsmakers of 2008 is Oprah Winfrey, for hosting “The Big Give”—her primetime reality-game-show event on ABC in which contestants give away large lump sums of cash. More than 15 million Americas tuned in the first week. (The $300 million Oprah has given to charity makes her America’s most generous black celebrity in history, according to Business Week.)

Actress Drew Barrymore also appeared last week on—what else?—“Oprah” to donate $1 million to the U.N.’s World Food Program, which had recently announced that skyrocketing energy costs and spiked consumer demand in developing countries brought commodity prices up by 40 percent in half a year. Talking about how “this has changed my life,” Barrymore noted her seven-figure donation is by far the largest she’s ever made. “Nothing,” she admitted, “has ever felt so good.” In January, Bill Gates, who will trade Microsoft for full-time philanthropy by July, began advocating market forces (what he calls “creative capitalism”) to alleviate poverty. For a while, there were even reports that Paris Hilton was planning to tour Rwanda once she got out of jail. The Red Cross and Oxfam now both employ celebrity-outreach directors to get more of them involved.

Hollywood’s philanthropy fad, while hardly representative of a majority of actors in west L.A., much less Americans, does make for an interesting contrast next to the giving patterns in U.S. churches, which were once the nation’s font for charity but now seem to be moving the opposite direction of Hollywood as they report bottom-scraping lows for giving. The average church member now gives 2.6 percent of his income, yet the (growing) yearly disposable income of just the nation’s 100 million evangelicals tops out at $850 billion.

Author Ronald Sider points out that if less than 1 percent of this amount went to provide microloans, it would raise the standard of living for the world’s poorest 1 billion people by 50 percent in one year.

After a half-century, books by Thomas Merton remain widely read; The Seven Storey Mountain is a spiritual masterpiece. The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton, published in 1959, has still-valid insights; for example, Merton writes that the Pharisees and Judas “had a system all worked out, and a lot of special prayers for every penny given away. It was a very efficient system, almost like a modern ‘charity’ with a huge filing-system and a big sucker list of names… The Pharisees knew how to take care of the poor in such a way that the poor would be always with them.”

Merton notes that Jesus said, “for such gifts, the poor would be always with them. There is a distinction between Charity, the theological virtue, and Charity a modern word meaning a mechanical and impersonal kind of alms giving, as, for example, when a millionaire leaves all his money to ‘Charity.’ The poor will always be there for this kind of alms giving, where the rich man, infinitely distant from the poverty of the poor, scratches with a pen on a paper and starts a long series of bookkeeping entries and abstract transactions which end up a long time later with a nervous social worker scolding a group of kids who are trying to play baseball in a crowded street somewhere in a slum.

Merton concludes wisely that “Without love, alms giving is no more important an activity than brushing your hair or washing your hands.” How much love does our current system of big welfare and big charity show? The good news, though, is that some churches and Christian groups do show love. (We try to tell some of those stories in World.)

 I was sitting in the hospital waiting room, mindlessly watching the television. It was “Days of Our Lives” or “As the World Turns” or “General Hospital” or one of those soaps. A sultry young woman had just caught her boyfriend alone in a room speaking in hushed tones with another sultry young woman, and was confronting him vociferously: “I knew you two were up to something!” Just then, from behind every door and sofa and potted plant exploded an army of birthday well-wishers: “Surprise!”

Boy, has that often happened to me!

From the hospital I was headed to Frank Vesci’s to have my right turn signal fixed. It just stopped working two days ago and I have an appointment to drop it off tonight. I’ve been trying to avoid right turns for two days but some are unavoidable. A few cars behind me seem miffed, though I’m using hand signals. No doubt they think me chronically irresponsible — which I would think of them were the tables turned. Little do they know it’s a brand new problem and I’m on my way to take care of it.

All of which makes today a day for remembering to give the benefit of the doubt. We all have something weird going on that no else can even imagine.

When I have eyes to survey the riches we often take for granted, I can’t help but recall this portion of the 30th chapter of Proverbs:

“Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with the food that is my portion,
That I not be full and deny You and say,
‘Who is the Lord?’
Or that I not be in want and steal,
And profane the name of my God”

I’m used to praying that my family won’t be impoverished. I read this proverb and think that we needn’t worry about the other end of the spectrum, that we are a long way from riches. But it occurs to me that we enjoy a living standard that is wealthy, compared to the rest of the world, and certainly to the writer of this proverb. We are full, we are fat and happy, and we are surrounded by distractions that invite us to say, not with our mouths but with our actions and inactions, “Who is the Lord?”

Immanuel is no less God with us when we find ourselves amidst plenty, but our attention is naturally lured, most of us, to trinkets and comforts. It makes me wonder if, when I am praying that poverty never befalls my family, I ought to pray that we see more clearly through our abundant blessings. This is an especially compelling notion as I consider the trash bags crammed into and around our trash can outside, stuffed with wrapping paper and food packaging.

When it comes to Christmas, we needn’t adopt stern asceticism, any more than we should depend on good works to save our souls. We are liberated to rejoice in wealth or hardship, I think, when we have given over our hearts neither to possessions nor their absence, but to the author and perfecter of faith.

Recently my seven year-old, Stephen Caleb, read a letter we received from the Ronald McDonald House, and decided to give them all the money he’s been saving toward a robot. Caleb loves robots. He’s been talking about buying a robot for a year, and saving his dollars. But instead of buying a robot, he handed over his robot money to the woman running the local Ronald McDonald House, and smiled as he did it.

To forfeit something we hold dear, absent a heart of giving, is despicable piety. Not to be inclined to give, meanwhile, is hardheartedness. But to give so freely is, with reference to the proverb, not to be over-full at all. It is to say, to a world that wants to forget: This is the Lord. I hope one day I can shine as brightly as this seven year-old boy.

American Muslims are expanding their charity efforts, Chicago Tribune says, and that may speed the assimilation of Muslim immigrants.

Instead of simply building Islamic centers and building the Muslim community, Muslim charities are expanding their efforts to help all needy, regardless of their faith. In Chicago, over 50 mosques have joined with the Greater Chicago Food Depository to give away over 25,000 pounds of meat. Organizations like the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, The Inner-City Muslim Action Network, and The Downtown Project have all expanded to include services for non-Muslims.

Experts say the shift shows that Muslim immigrants are beginning to think of themselves as Americans. Omar McRoberts, associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, told Chicago Tribune, “These sorts of shifts should be of interest at least as much as people have been interested in and drawn into depictions of Muslims as uniformly violent and worthy of suspicion. … To pay attention to only one kind of depiction and to ignore alternative self-depictions coming out of Muslim communities is sort of a dereliction of citizenship.”

Some Muslim charities have been the target of suspicion in the past. The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development came under suspicion last year for supporting organizations linked with Hamas, but the trial ended in a mistrial last October. The bulk of Muslim charity still goes to international aid, but attention to local needs is increasing.

MuslimCharities.com explains that Islam requires its devotees to give away 2.5% of their possessions to “take from those who have wealth and give it away to those who do not … to balance social inequality.” Islamic law includes all impoverished people, not just Muslims, among the people Muslims have a duty to aid. Charity, the website says, “is a way of bringing justice to society. And justice is the essence of religion.”

Kevin Begos posed an uncomfortable question for the charitably-inclined this year: “How much of that money is well-spent, and how much of it is squandered? The uncomfortable truth: no one knows for sure, and even worse, few are checking.”

Begos pointed out that there is little government oversight for charities and the IRS rarely investigates suspicious activities. It does require charities to fill out IRS Form 990, but Begos noted that the form has only broad financial categories, and it’s hard to tell if expenses are legitimate: “Indeed, deciphering a 990 would challenge an ace detective — and probably has. Yet should a donor have to moonlight as an accountant or detective just to make sure his or her money is properly spent?”

Rusty Leonard, founder of Ministry Watch, told WoW that his and other charity watchdog groups act as detectives on a donor’s behalf, rating organizations on their financial transparency and efficiency. (Ministry Watch has just released its annual list of 30 exemplary ministries.) Leonard agrees, however, that the IRS Form 990 is a “completely insufficient document.” An investment analyst, Leonard sees a wide gap between the information companies must disclose to investors and the information charities must disclose to donors: “The standard of transparency that we apply to nonprofits is quite low in comparison.”

Despite his usual wariness of government involvement, Leonard believes there should be a regulatory framework for charities – a charitable SEC that enforces penalties if charities misuse donations. Ideally, however, Leonard would like to see donors band together, refusing to provide funds for organizations that don’t meet minimum standards of disclosure: “The average donor still doesn’t even understand what’s going on, doesn’t have a clue how their interests are being trampled upon on a regular basis because they’re unorganized.”

As for unscrupulous charities, “They’re willing to throw the donor under the bus,” Leonard said. “Is that a Christian response?”

As the nights get colder and Christmas draws closer, Christians face again the question of how to care for the homeless. Some assume that with charities and city shelters giving food, clothes and beds, the homeless choose to be homeless, hungry, and cold. But some homeless advocates told WoW the reality is more complicated.

Mark Swanson, director of community ministries at All Angels’ Church in New York City, said some homeless avoid shelters because some of the larger, public shelters are violent and unsafe. Tom Basile, director of the Bowery Mission, told WoW that other homeless prefer the freedom of the streets to the shelter’s rules. Basile once offered an empty bed to a homeless man who refused it, saying he didn’t want to follows the rules that went with it. Basile said homeless individuals merely mirror the values of the culture at large: suspicion of authority, stubborn individualism, and “an unrealistic view of what it means to be free.”

Swanson asks a key question: “If you’re walking down the streets … and you run across some homeless guy, what do you do?”

First, Christians should treat homeless individuals with humanity. Prentiss Allen, a formerly homeless man now at the Bowery Mission, told WoW, “People see us in the state that we’re in and they have the tendency to shy away from us. … I talk to them as a person. I don’t talk to them as an object or a thing.”

Second, Christians should give a dollar or a sandwich. Some analysts contend that most money given goes for alcohol or drugs, but Ed Morgan, president of the Bowery Mission, said, “Earn the right to be in someone’s life by friendship and by giving a cup of cold water in the Lord’s name.”

Third, Christians should accompany the gift with a suggestion about the need for long-term help. Organizations like the Bowery Mission and All Angels’ Church offer not just food but housing, education, and spiritual guidance. Many organizations have cards that Christians can give to the homeless people they meet.

Finally, Christians should understand that a real solution demands community effort. Throwing money at the homeless “eases our conscience, but it doesn’t deal with the issue,” Swanson said, contending that the evangelical church has neglected social justice issues. He tells Christians, “You give, period. But then you’ve got to do more than that. You need to go back to your church and say, ‘We have a problem.’”

Basile said the needs of the homeless are inescapable, but he gives a warning: “If you don’t figure out a response, your consciousness will be eventually deadened.”

On MSN Money, Matthew Plowright cautions charity gift-givers to do some research before they buy a goat for a village in Africa this Christmas.

Charities like Oxfam, Christian Aid Ministries, and World Vision offer Christmas gift catalogs for people who want to purchase a goat or build a beehive for villages in need. Two environmental charity groups argue that the gifts are a cynical gimmick that is doing more harm than good. World Land Trust and Animal Aid say that in drought-drained areas, a cow or goat can deplete farmland and drain the water supply. An indignant Christian Aid counters that they work with local organizations to determine community need and only send cows where there is enough water for them to drink.

The debate raises the question of how consumers can evaluate the effectiveness of the charities they support. Several organizations track the transparency and financial efficiency of charity organizations, but they only evaluate how well the charities manage their money, not the charities’ effectiveness. Oxfam is among Charity Watch’s top-rated charities. Ministry Watch gives World Vision a four-star rating for financial efficiency and bestows five stars on Christian Aid Ministries. Charity Navigator gives World Vision, Oxfam, and Christian Aid excellent ratings.

Jill Lacey, editor of Capital Research Center’s Compassion and Culture newsletter, told WoW it is often up to donors to research the effectiveness of the charities they support. She tells donors, “Think narrow and deep.” Find one organization that reflects your passion and your view of human nature, and then do deep research. Make phone calls, ask questions, and invest yourself in their work: “Don’t just give of your money. Give of your time.” When you do, Lacey said, “You’re going to care. You’re going to care enough to ask the right questions.”