Do celebrities give more than The Church?
Just watching the Ellen show and she gave away $10,000 and a brand new car to a family in need. They wrote into the show exaplaning their situation, Ellen chose them out of the the thousands of stories I'm sure they get weekly. They got on the show and Ellen gave them this 'blessing' (the word I would use). Seems to be the way it went down. It got me to thinking about The Church and how many times I've had conversations with Non-Christians about their view of The Church. One of my friends who's not a follower of Christ said, "DC, Celebrities give more to people in need than churches do. Churches act like they're scared of people who are in need." Obviously he was making a generalization but it made me wonder how much of that is true? Do (on average) celebrities give more to people in need than the church? How much of what he believes is purely based on the Christians he's been around? How much of his perspective on "Christians" is based on me? How many stories have I heard or read about people in need and not even batted an eye about doing anything about it or helping. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that there is at least one other person in a church somewhere who can identify with that. Jus sayin. Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ...if Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today." THAT IS DEEP! Thinking of all of that makes me ask myself the question DO celebrities give more to people in need than churches? Things I know as I write this post:- I know I can't do everything, but can I do something...
- Ellen is one celebrity, Oprah is one celebrity. Yes they give A LOT away, but they're only reaching a certain percentage of people.
- Giving for lots of organizations is a tax write-off.
- Giving doesn't mean that you "care".
- Giving out of little (as Jesus says) is sometimes more than giving out of excess.
- Giving isn't all about Dollars and Cents.
- Giving doesn't directly correlate to how much you care or where your heart is...BUT give DOES directly correlate to how much you care and where your heart is. (think about it).
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I have given that some thought too. Here’s my .02 worth:
For one thing, a celeb’s income far exceeds the average Joe’s, so we have to do the comparison by % of income given rather than how much it was.
Another thing is that the mainstream media reports on the few celebs that give. Do you ever hear on the news how much the church gives, responds, puts forth effort/manpower and prays? Not so much. And in most cases, the church has to bring it to the media’s attention (think Food Drop) to get any press over it, whereas the media fawns all over every little thing a celeb does. This may account for a portion of why nonbelievers think the way they do about the church.
Good thoughts Annette!!! Very true too!
Annette makes some really good points. One thing that I’ll add here is that Celebrities give and then boast about it. That is backwards to what Holy Scripture tells us to do. The Church gives tons and rarely ever boasts about it.
This doesn’t mean that the Church shouldn’t be doing better than it is. The Church seems to be more interested on spending money on itself and its constituents than it does the lost, broken, and poor.
I love your points Cory! They are all spot on…this is the fundamental question I was trying to touch on. Not trying to point out who gives more, or even point a finger just simply asking the question are we doing the best we can.
Love the way you think!