The heart of philanthropy

Trent over at The Simple Dollar wrote a great piece yesterday that kind of dovetails with what I touched on briefly in my previous post on the 10% Myth. You can read his post here.

I’d like to quote his closing thought on this topic, then ramble a bit on my own:

Quote:

“Different people have different talents and different ways to give of themselves. What matters is that you actually do give, whether it be working hard so that you can make a donation to help a cause or directly working for that cause. What matters is that you put your talents to work in the end for a cause that is important to you. To me, that’s what a spiritual life is all about.”

Now, I will disagree with him on his comment that living the spiritual life is concerned with DOING something.  But, not knowing Trent or his personal views on religion, I won’t quibble on semantics.  That’s not the point here.  I do think, however, that he captured a truly important concept in that paragraph that I feel too many “spiritual” people skip right over.

You not only owe it to yourself and your family, you owe it to the world at large and to God to be financially successful to the point where you can share some of your wealth with others.  Some of you might think that you don’t have “wealth” to share, but I assure you, you do.  Per capita income in developed countries is so far being the imagining and dreaming of residents of developing countries, it’s unbelieveable.  Dollars a month (“the price of a cup of coffee a day”, as the Christian Children’s Fund commercials tell us) can guarantee one child food, immunizations and an opportunity at education.  How in the world can we, as compassionate people, not find some change rolling around in the couch cushions for this?