General Chat

Janey, a cousin of mine (his grandmother was a cousin of my grandmother) is a retired minister of The United Church in Canada :-)

I'm not going to blow my own trumpet here but 20 years ago I heard about problems being faced by local people who were unemployed, living on benefits. I stood there saying, along with others "this is awful, someone should do something about it" So I did and 20 years down the line the charity I set up is still helping local people. I could give loads of anecdotes about people I have helped but I'm not going to. My daughter said to me just this week that it's easy to chuck money into a collection box - getting out there and doing something real about the problems is much harder.
So, I think my own actions speak for themselves!

Amanda's with me, I see!

"Charity begins at home" -- charity begins with *you*, as a certain Uncle Sam might have said. ;)

That's where I was going, Joy. ;)

That was *the* big thing drummed into us United Church of Canada kiddies: yr neighbour is everybody and anybody, everywhere and anywhere.

Our minister let me through the communion classes even when I informed him I didn't believe in that h3ll business. Not knowing who my neighbour was, that would have got me bounced!

I've always taken " charity begins at home " to mean that " home " in this instance is ones self .

Rose -- I'm sure you mean you're looking for *other people's* relatives!! haha.

"Love never faileth" -- from the same passage from St Paul I quoted up top.

Can't stand old Paul for what he did to centuries of women. Strange how he didn't notice that women were his neighbours too ... Oh well. He certainly never said he was perfect. ;)

My neighbour is here, is next door, is the person across the road, in the next country, he / she is anywhere and everywhere :-)

Yes, I have led prayers at work about my neighbour :-)

I went to a Baptist Church and the text across the front of the church was Love never faileth. many is the Sunday I have sat and looked at that.

lol Janey I didn't have time to actually read it ! ;) I was looking for relatives :)

Where is home, who is neighbour?

Haven't you folks listened to as many Sunday sermons about that as I did in my youth? ;)

Now granted, mine was a church of the "social gospel", a church that for nearly a century has made social justice a priority. But with "love thy neighbour as thyself" being the new first or second commandment and all, I think we all know who our neighbours are. ;)

Good point Janey...the word 'begins' whether you're talking of love or charity, is often (usually) (always) forgotten in the interpretation. But Begins, as you say, implies on it's own that home is the starting point, not the finishing point.

Good thought Janey. I am sure I will come back to it too, thank you.

Ann -- me neither, really -- substitute "love begins at home" -- but then I don't think or say "charity begins at home" much, or rather ever. Just because of the way it is almost always meant / understood.

But "love begins at home" does put a different slant on it, doesn't it?

If it "begins" there, it kind of has to keep going beyond ... and if it's real, it can't really help but do.

A good point - where is my home? and who is my neighbour?

Or, Julia May - is it your own heart -- and your own actions?

That's what I think the saying means.

Charity - love of others, neighbourly love - begins with the individual. If it is true charity, it can't just go nowhere, because then it wouldn't be love of others, it wouldn't be charity at all.

Charity is the impulse, what I believe in the inborn need to act for other people's benefit, not just our own.

If we all acted purely in our own interests, the human race would have died before it was born.

Of course it is natural to care for (care -- the word that also comes from "caritas") those very close to us as a priority. If people didn't care for their own children, well, once again, the human race would be long gone. ;)

But other people's children, and other people, are equally important to the human race, and we really do all know that. So we really do all know we have an obligation, simply because we are human, to all the rest of us.

Of course we can't care for everyone in the world. We have to make our own decisions and choices about how much we can help, and whom we will help.

But to offer the tired "charity begins at home" as a reason for not helping people we can't see -- that isn't charity -- love, caring. That's just pretending that there's some authority for one's choices when there isn't. There are just different ideas about what choices are better than others.

How many others, like us, had that piece as the reading at their wedding. Only 'love' was used instead of 'charity?

And do you know, with the phrase, 'charity begins at home' it never occurred to me to substitute the word 'love' for 'charity.

Janey - where is "home" is it my street, my estate, my country or "my world"?

If it's convenient to think so, then yes they certainly can LOL

Rose! You missed the important bit (like ... the point ;) ) -- the word "charity" comes directly from the Latin word "caritas" -- which does indeed mean "love", one form of it, neighbourly love. I do agree, sticking with the basic word itself, "love", makes the whole thing clearer today.

Teresa, indeed, that's a point I and some of the random people I quoted were making: "it can mean whatever you want it to mean in the circumstances". And what a lot of people want it to mean is: "you should look after only your own nearest and dearest - the rest of the world can go hang"!

Faith , hope and charity...or faith , hope and love?
I have read both versions... maybe the second is less open to misinterpretation :) now that words no longer mean what they meant 'back in the day' ....