What is Charity?

What is Charity?

I talked with someone today who struggles with taking care of her children while interacting with her husband whom she divorced years ago. She is happy enough and doing all she can to be a good mother, yet she still struggles with her husband that she split up with several years prior. She did mention one thing that I found to be quite interesting. She mentioned how selfish her husband is at this moment, and many of us wondered why she didn’t catch that at the beginning of their marriage. She told us that he was selfless until she needed to focus some of her time and attention on their children. That is when the selfishness struck in.

What does this have to do with Charity? I think it has a whole lot to do with it. Charity is the opposite of selfishness. When we are truly thinking about how we can help others, then sometimes our needs don’t matter.

So Charity… that means being nice right? There is more to it than that! Charity is also the attitude that comes with it. I love this quote by Dr. Goddard himself. He says,

“In an effort to understand charity, it is important to know what it is NOT. It is not artificial good cheer. It is not a thin veneer of politeness on a distressed soul. It is not holding our tongues while judging and resenting others. Rather it is a sacred and heavenly gift…”

According to this quote, we cannot pretend to have charity towards one another. It’s something that we need to strive for and get used to doing.

I love the idea that in theory, we get to choose how we are going to view another person. We can view them as a mortal would view, or as Jesus sees it. That is the true mindset of charity as Dr. Goddard himself explains it.

However, there are things that get in the way of us having Charity towards one another, even our spouse. That term is referred to as gridlock.

Have you ever had a conversation with your spouse multiple times to find that it was never resolved? What about not being able to communicate in a light hearted way, but you are filled with anger or resentment to towards the purpose with still no solution to the problem?

Dr. John M. Gottman would refer to this as gridlocking. Neither partner can come to a consensus and a fight is drawn out until both partners look selfish. It is a process to go against gridlocking, but one thing that Dr. Gottman mentioned is to understand and know the dreams of the person you are speaking with. It is similar to seeking to understand our spouse and seeing it from their point of view.

My challenge for my readers this week is to step back and think of an interaction when you acted less charitable than you should have with someone you speak to regularly. Think about how you could have been less selfish and more directed towards them. Then, the next time you speak with them, try seeing from their viewpoint to develop a greater amount of charity towards them.