Its that time of year again. The air is cool and there is a wonderful sense of joy in the atmosphere. You walk into your local mall or Wal-Mart and there are holiday decorations everywhere. The clerk at the register is wearing a Santa hat and says, “Have a happy holidays” as you walk out of the store. Then, while walking to the parking lot, a nice individual from the Salvation Army stops you and asks for some change.

It is all part of the Holiday Season, and it brings a smile to your face through the first week.

But do you actually drop any change into any of the Santas’ tin can containers?

Forgetting Charity This Christmas Season

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 What is your New Year’s resolution?

I don’t usually make a resolution. The idea is to mainstream for me, but I do secretly think about it.

I might not actively participate in the global activity, but I can and do say to myself that if I were to make a resolution it would be to do this or do that. Last year, the resolution that I could’ve done was be more organized.

It is a year later and I can’t find my cell phone today.

This year is different. I am going to announce a New Year’s resolution. It is not because it is good publicity for altnoise… Well, not entirely. I decided to do this for another reason.

The Inspiration Behind My Decision

About an hour ago, I logged into my facebook account and clicked on over to the groups link. I wanted to see how the altnoise facebook group was doing. As soon as the listing page of all my groups loaded, a picture caught my eye. It took me a minute to figure out what was the picture’s subject. It was a boy hunched over with every rib and bone potruding out of skin.

He was dying of starvation and I just finished eating a bowl of popcorn.

I’m not trying to make you feel guilty for not giving all your money to the starving kids in Africa. I never really thought twice about those television commercials asking for my money (It doesn’t help that the host is usually an overweight celebrity). I don’t know why, but this time the picture broke my heart. In all of my preaching about compassion and service, I haven’t really done much for this kid.

2008 Resolution To A Compassionate Commitment

2008 is going to be different. I am making a resolution to do something about it. I will support a Compassion International child.

It is a highly trusted program that lets you support a child in need of the bare essentials of life for a small amount of money each month.  I am not  loaded with money, so this should be a good balance between doing something notable and not put a burden on myself that I cannot handle.

 Alternative Resolution Blog Meme

In addition of announcing my resolution to make a goal of improving humanity, this post serves as a beginning of a blog meme for 2008. I am tagging Urban Monk, Tall Skinny Kiwi, A Life Today, and ZoeCarnate to give a resolution post and make a calculated commitment to better humanity in some fashion.

Here are the rules.

1. Announce a resolution for the upcoming year to positively impact someone’s life.
2. Make it a physical and reachable goal. Don’t just say that your resolution is to be more compassionate to everyone you meet. The best resolutions are something you can reach. A common resolution is to lose 20 lbs. this year. A resolution following this meme could be to give $20 a month to help improve the drinking water in Central America.
3. Make it big enough to have an impact on them and you.
4. I would also encourage you to tag between 3-5 other bloggers to enter this meme and create resolutions and also direct them to this post so they understand it.

Extra Stuff 

If you don’t have a blog, I still encourage you to take part in this project. Add your own reachable compassion resolution for 2008 to the bottom of this article. Be forewarned, your making a public proclamation that can be seen by everyone.

If you do have a blog and I didn’t tag you I want you to participate also. Follow the rules and have fun. I am actually tagging every one of my readers, but it wouldn’t be good if I listed them all.

Problogger Tagged

There is also one blogger that I am putting extra pressure on by tagging him here. Darren Rowse of Problogger, I am formally sending you an invitation to participate in this blog meme.

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We all know that it is important to help improve our global community by giving to those in need. Many times, we will give a young lady in a white shirt an umbrella to walk across the street in the pouring rain. Other times, we give our extra Egg Mcmuffin to the homeless man standing outside the McDonalds. We don’t mind being charitable in this fashion. It is easy.

What about the rest of the time?

In the first examples, we weren’t worried about the one in need of help taking advantage of us. We had complete control, and we didn’t lose anything of major value. Money is different. We’ve all heard the stories of fraud and horrible money management when it comes to charity organizations.

Who Should we trust?

Purpose Of Charity Concerns

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The problem is that there are so many damn people problems in the world. What can we actually do? I’m not a superhero who can stop the genocide in Darfur. I’m not a millionaire who can help out the bankrupt amusement park owner who turned our city around. I can’t even stop time to help guide a lost stranger to his destination. I want to do something, but I dont have the time/resources/initative/skills/power/influence/income/ability/charisma/personality/../../.. to do what is required to affectively change the world.

I am not alone in this but maybe I am looking at it wrong. We don’t have to change the world. I do not know anyone who has the capabilities to change the world, but everyone I know has a desire to do it. There are simple things that I can do to improve my world. We all have the capabilities to change our world. If  I changed my world and you changed your world by following these 5 simple things then our world will be changed and over time we would have changed the world.

Change Your World

• Drop Your Change in the various charity buckets at McDonalds, Wal-Mart and your local gas stations
• Allow others ahead of you in line, on the road or walking in a door
• Help clarify an issue for a confused stranger or coworker
• Even if you are incredibly busy, stop what you are doing to look the individual talking to you in the eye.
• Ask your casual acquaintances, “How are you doing?” Then when they give any of the convential answers, ask them again “Really, how are you doing?”

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I both agree and disagree. Theologically, we do not need a mediator between us and God. We can go directly to Him with our prayers. On the other hand, we also need to confess our mistakes to other individuals. He or she might not be wearing a black suit with a white collar, but he could be. Every time we do something that hurts another individual does hurt God. We do need to confess to him, but we also hinder the growth of our community.

We must not forget that everyone we come across with on the street, i.e. our neighbors, is an important part of our community and must be respected. Sometimes we hurt those we know closely and need to ask forgiveness directly from them. Alot of times, we close ourselves off from the community and intentionally hurt those that we hardly know. We do this so we, ourselves, don’t get hurt. You might not ever see them again, but you still have negatively affected their outlook on life. This is why everyone needs a friend, priest or pastor that he or she can confess their mistakes too. We need to admit and own up to our mistakes to God, but also to our community if we have any desire to reform the world into what God desires it to become

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Someone came to Jesus with this question: “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”

 “Why ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. But to answer your question—if you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments.” – New Living Translation [Matthew 19]

Asking The Right Question? 

This  is the story of a successful man wanting to know what he needs to do in order to get into heaven. We all know this type of person whom treats life like it is a giant checklist. The majority of people like to focus on Jesus’ answer, but I want to focus on the question.

Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?

We all know what this man is asking. What does he need to get into heaven. Take out eternal life and insert love, happiness, laughter, or contentment. Wouldn’t that question sound a little knaive? How do you define happiness and how much love do you want?

Jesus answered his question to follow the commandments.  He knew the man had asked the wrong question, but Jesus followed the path of the man’s reasoning. If you want to have eternal life by doing good deeds, then follow the commandments. If you want to do something to become happy then act friendly towards others.

More Please

Our desires don’t end there. My two year old son has just learned how to say the word more. He drags out the o and has to dip his chin to say it, but one cookie, jump or tickle is never enough. He wants moore.

We are all like my son. We always want to do the next thing, increase our happiness, or accomplish more responsibilities for status. The same goes for the man in the story. After Jesus told him to follow the commandments, he replied “Then What?”

Limits and Check Lists

At the end of the story, the man could not obtain the perfection he was seeking so he gave up. Jesus told him that if he wanted perfection then give away everything he had and follow Jesus as he healed the sick. Of course, giving away all of our posessions wasn’t the point.  He knew from the first question that the man did not understand. The man focused on a goal that continuously grows and there is nothing that we can do to mark these things off our list. Do you want success? How much does it take to be successful? Do you want balance? How much of the world must be balanced? We can put limits to how much we desire, but we will never be able to add these things to our bag of accomplishments.

The Finish Line 

Is this all to say that success and happiness are evil. I could not be a Christian if I  followed this logic. The man in the story was wanting to obtain Eternal Life. These things are all good as long as they are not the Finish Line. Jesus said that we need to first seek to develop a world where God’s inherent good artwork can be seen from creation. This is our finish line.  My role as a father is to develop an unselfish and servant-oriented environment in the family. My role as a stranger is to be friendly and helpful. When we put this as our finish line then success, happiness and contentment become the refreshing water along the run.

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When we invest in any of these through our average bank, we have no idea where it goes. The bank simply gives the money to a company whom can be trusted to make money – even if the company leaks it to the murderers in Darfur. On the other hand, there are community development banks and credit unions whom intentionally invest their money into socially conscious products and resources. The investments could vary from the environment to foster care to developing affordable housing to fair trade efforts. This is the chance to actually take part in the process of Restoring God’s creation.  Get Rich Slowly actually go into detail of how investing in these socially conscious programs will not create a huge dent into your wallet.

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I’ve been reading about Darfur for close to a year. There are shows, albums and newspaper headlines dedicated to the slaughter going on. I have tried to live with empathy for the struggles going on in the region. I even made my middleschool computer class make posters and write an article using Microsoft Publisher and Word. Most of them couldn’t pronounce the Country’s name and a few were bored and frustrated with the project. Yet, I still feel guilty that I haven’t done anything about it and I don’t really feel their struggle.

I suppose this describes most of us. Horrible acts such as genocide does not resonate within us. No matter how hard we try and want to, our lives continuously revolves around our own segment of the world. This truth was probably easier to swallow before the internet and live news broadcasts, but it is something that we have to face. How do we handle knowing about Darfur, which is located halfway around the globe, and continuing to live in our world?

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