Can a Fetus Feel Pain? Does It Make a Difference?

I read an article yesterday titled “Fetal pain is a lie: How phony science took over the abortion debate.” And as you can imagine, it explains somewhat that a fetus cannot feel pain. And as a pro-lifer I thought to myself, “Even if that’s true... so what?” Is it ok to kill a person if they can’t feel it? We can do that outside the womb! And we can do it to adults too. Is the fact that the fetus can feel pain really the issue?

Obviously, at some point between conception and birth, the child in utero begins to feel pain. All this article is actually saying is that a fetus begins to feel pain at 24 weeks rather than 20, as was previously believed. This means that any ban on abortion after 20 weeks based on the premise that a fetus can feel pain should at least be pushed back to 24 weeks. For every argument the article makes about how “detrimental” the false belief of a 20 week limit is, you gotta ask yourself... if we shift it to 24 weeks are we really in a totally different place now? It makes no real difference. But here’s what happens... pro-lifers want abortion banned altogether (pretty much), but such things rarely happen fully in an instant. So we work towards that little by little, and we’ll go for an excuse to ban it after 20 weeks; namely that the fetus can then feel pain, because that’s better than nothing. The problem now is that articles like this can make like “feeling pain” is the sole basis for sparing the life of a child in-utero. No; we spare the life of a fetus because it’s an innocent human life. We want to spare that unborn life essentially on the same basis that we spare the life of any person outside of the womb.

The article focuses on an example of a child which developed heart trouble in utero. This is a kind of framing of its own because even the article acknowledges that this is an extremely rare motivation for abortion. And really, it’s blurring the moral issue of abortion with other moral issues, similar to euthanasia. But if we turn to the other 99% of cases, let’s ask ourselves, why does fetal pain come into the picture? Why is it a factor in a mother’s decision to abort a child? As a pro-lifer, I’ve said that it shouldn’t matter whether the fetus feels pain or not - in either case it’s not ok to kill the child. But the author of the article seems annoyed by the fact that more and more women are concerned that the abortion will hurt the child. But there you have it... these mothers are showing the same concern for the child as one has for any human being. Is the author annoyed because they’ve lost ground in trying to dehumanize the child? In order to justify yourself in any murder, you generally have to dehumanize the victim... objectify them; see them as (in the case of a fetus), “just a lump of cells” or merely “a product of conception.” But when you start to think about their pain you’re basically saying “Well, if I’m going to kill this child, I want to at least do it as humanely as possible.”

If you read the article, it’s spun this way... that mothers considering abortion go through great emotional anguish over the decision, and that false science (a four week gap, remember), is unnecessarily adding to their distress. And it makes people like me out to be the bad guy, as though I have no compassion for what these women are going through. Now, I’m no medical professional, but surely if a woman was concerned about the fetus’ pain, anaesthetic can solve that problem? To me, it seems like the mother is really just looking for reasons not to abort. And so they should. I get that they’re emotionally distressed over the decision, but so you would expect from someone who is intending to take a helpless, innocent life! As much as we are told that the fetus is “not yet a person” or “cannot feel pain” or “is just a lump of cells”, (phrases so often argued by pro-abortionists), you cannot escape the truth. This phenomenon of emotional distress felt by mothers considering abortion is called guilt. But I’m not insensitive to it. You have to make a distinction. I knew a girl who felt no significant distress (or at least that she would show), and she’d had three abortions by the age of 18. She had probably been successful in dehumanizing the baby in her own mind so that it was “just a product of conception.” Others who do feel emotional stress may still be selfish in their decision... “It’s terribly sad, I know, but I just can’t abandon my career right now.” And then there’s those rare cases where the baby is probably not going to live for very long outside the womb anyway. Of course this is a cause for distress... just as making the decision to terminate life support for your husband lying in a coma would be a cause for distress. It’s a similar situation, your womb essentially being “life support” for the child. These are serious moral dilemmas involving human life... there ought to be emotional distress! But the fact that there’s emotional distress over the decision doesn’t provide an answer to what the right decision ought to be. Doing whatever it takes to alleviate the distress by dehumanizing the child is clearly not the answer. Feel distressed... you’re supposed to!

I can’t help thinking that it’s really science that has created this distress by giving women the option to abort in the first place! You really want the distress to go away? Then ban abortion altogether! Then the only distress that remains is over children that die naturally, just as it’s always been since Adam and Eve. God has given us this incredible privilege, and we’re very lucky to live in a time when we’re actually able to peer inside the womb and observe the development from an embryo to a baby! What expecting couple isn’t filled with excitement and joy to go and watch the ultrasound? It’s an amazing privilege. And as a Christian I watch in-utero footage, and I learn what we now know about the reproductive system, and I stand in awe at God’s workmanship! Glory to God! But we have taken this privilege and abused it. In times past, if a woman didn’t want her baby, she would have to wait until it was born and then, if she had managed to numb her conscience enough to do it, physically go and discard it in the woods or drown it. But now we’re quibbling over whether we can do much the same 20 weeks after conception, or can we extend that to 24!? It’s kind of nuts if you ask me.

Talk no more so very proudly,
let not arrogance come from your mouth;
for the Lord is a God of knowledge,
and by him actions are weighed.
The bows of the mighty are broken,
but the feeble bind on strength.
Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger.
The barren has borne seven,
but she who has many children is forlorn.
The Lord kills and brings to life;
he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
1 Samuel 2:3-6

Polygamy and the Bible

In the Bible, Jacob had four wives. King David had eight wives. King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 mistresses. And these men were all exemplars of the faith. So one may be inclined to say that the Bible promotes, or at least does not prohibit, polygamy. And yet Christianity has always been identified as a religion which limits marriage to monogamy between one man and one woman. So how do I deal with this apparent conflict? The typical answer Christians give is that those men did something which was wrong, but that the Biblical narrative doesn’t overtly address their sin. And I think this answer is sufficient in probably most, but not all, cases. We are supposed to know, even from the story of Adam and Eve, that monogamy is God’s intent for marriage. It is very often the case in Biblical narrative that characters will sin, and we’re supposed to identify it as sin ourselves rather than being told explicitly somehow, “and what he did was a sin, by the way...” Contrary to many people’s idea of the Bible, the Bible does not aim to fully define what is right and wrong. God created us with a conscience which tells us right from wrong, and because that conscience has become corrupted by sin, we need guidance from the Bible which can align our consciences with the truth. Or to say it in other words, the Bible is not an exhaustive table of right and wrong - we already have a basic sense of right and wrong; but the Bible reminds us through many examples of what right and wrong is, because we’re inclined to stray from what we know to be right, and then to justify ourselves. The Bible doesn’t have to spell out every sin for us as though we would otherwise have no idea. When Cain killed Abel, he knew he’d done wrong, long before the Bible said “Thou shalt not kill.”

So when it comes to polygamy, we should know that it’s wrong, and we all do... this is precisely why we’re marvelling at the fact that Solomon had 700 wives! And the Bible does explicitly tell us in Deuteronomy...

And he [the king] shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away... (Deuteronomy 17:17)

And of Solomon, who had 700 wives and 300 mistresses, it later said “And his wives turned away his heart.” (1 Kings 11:3). We’re supposed to make the connection here, if we hadn’t figured it out for ourselves already, that Solomon had done wrong. And while the Bible never explicitly condemns Jacob or King David for their polygamy, we’re supposed to read those stories knowing that they were doing wrong; and when you do, you pick up on how their sin affected their lives, and we see characters suffering over jealousies and related issues. We ought not to forget that for as many examples as there are of polygamy, monogamy is still the norm throughout every stage of Biblical history, such as with Moses, or with Abraham (despite the incident with Hagar which is explicitly acknowledged as error), or with Noah.

The Bible does explicitly tell us that the intent for marriage is to be between one man and one woman. It tells us this from the beginning in Genesis 2... “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24). And whenever the Bible speaks of marriage in a prescriptive sense it assumes one wife, such as in Malachi 2, and in New Testament passages like 1 Corinthians 7 or Ephesians 5. In fact, the point these passages are making is to parallel marriage with our relationship to God, and what it’s saying about our relationship to God is that it is exclusive. The Church is “one body”, and “betrothed to one husband”.

Nevertheless, whereas many Christians, I think, try to explain all instances of polygamy in the Bible as “they were doing wrong”, I’d say we need to be aware of at least one situation where polygamy is allowed for. There is the case of levirate marriage in the Bible. This is a practice which is not unique to the Bible, but has been known in many cultures around the world. This is the case where, if a man dies and he has no children to carry on the family’s heritage, that man’s brother is obliged to marry his widow, and the widow is obliged to marry the brother. And it seems that this obligation exists even if that brother is already married, leading to a case where polygamy is not only permitted, but where there is an obligation to enter that arrangement. It doesn’t seem to be an enforced commandment, though, since the Bible speaks of the right for the brother to refuse, and the only consequence of this is that the brother should be ashamed of himself (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). But given the allowance for levirate marriage, when we come to read about a man named Elkanah in 1 Samuel who had two wives, perhaps we ought to be at least a little uncertain as to how we should judge him. It may be, though it doesn’t say, that he necessarily had two wives through a case of levirate marriage? We don’t know. And where the Law says “If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved...” This passage goes on to speak about inheritance, and not favouring the firstborn of the loved wife. But to me it makes the most sense that this is said in the context of levirate marriage, where inheritance is the primary issue, and where a man is surely going to love one wife, and possibly not be terribly in love with the woman he was obliged to marry through the levirate custom!

So I think that in so many cases where the Bible speaks of men married to two women, levirate marriage is probably the unstated, implicit reason for it. And there's reason, from the Bible, to believe that levirate marriage was probably the only valid exception to a monogamous marriage. Look at the following passage where the religious experts come to Jesus, trying to catch Him out teaching something perverse... They say:

"Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, [listen to what they say here] whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife." (Luke 20:28-33)

"Surely the woman can't have more than one husband!" is the argument, and this argument is based on the Law of Moses! Jesus answers that nobody is married in the resurrection. But we see that even for the people under Moses, monogamy was the standard, with levirate marriage being probably the only valid exception.

Levirate marriage is still no excuse to justify polygamy today. It applied to Israel in particular because God had a purpose in keeping the separate tribes of Israel somewhat separate, and ensuring that inheritance was kept within each tribe. The reason for this, as far as I can tell, though there is probably a better answer out there, is that part of the reason we know Jesus Christ was the Saviour to come is because He fits the criteria according to the prophecies... that He would be from the tribe of Judah, and born in Bethlehem. So by the time of Christ there still had to be a tribe of Judah, and Bethlehem had to still be identified with the tribe of Judah.

Finally, I want to look at Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”. Here he says, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28). The format of Jesus’ arguments in this part of the Sermon is like this... “If you think this or that is a significant sin, be aware that every sin starts in our thoughts, or intent.” How would we get to the stage of actually committing adultery, physically, if we prevented it getting further than thoughts becoming intent? As regards polygamy, surely the initial intent is adultery, and the only difference between adultery and polygamy might be that our (first) wife consents to the relationship with the “other woman”. But I would say that this is no less adultery, especially from God’s perspective. We know this because Jesus said in another place, “whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery.” My point here being that even if the wife is out of the picture, and is quite happy for their ex husband to have “moved on”, this is still adultery in God’s eyes. If having another wife is a sin after you’re divorced, how much more is it a sin while you’re still together!? Even if your wife consents, it only means that you’re both committing the same sin together.


You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. (Exodus 20:17)

It's a New Creation!

A few days ago our family expanded by one; my wife gave birth to a new baby boy! He's our third. And amidst the joy of having that new baby, it's hard to recall the hours and days leading up to his delivery. In fact, the joy of having this little child so far outweighs the visible discomfort of my pregnant wife, and the very audible pain she was in during labour, that it actually takes effort to try to bring it to mind. But I do recall, as my week-late wife was struggling to walk from one end of the house to the other, what I was thinking at the time...

I knew that at any time she could go into labour, and that I couldn't possibly imagine the pain of child birth. It's beyond me how women bear it. But women not only bear it, they often embrace it willingly! My wife, for one, absolutely refuses any significant pain relief. And so do many others who are, for example, offered an epidural or perhaps even a caesarean. And as I thought about it, I figured that as a parent we willingly make so many sacrifices for our children throughout their lives, and that maybe the pain of childbirth was, at least in some way, just the first of many. Consider the effect that a parent's sacrifice later on in life has on the relationship between parent and child. The child actually gets to see the reality of their parent's love for them. The words “I love you” hardly compare to the expression written in actions. And this has the same effect for the parent where we might even surprise ourselves in seeing just how much we love our children. Our actions speak to us also of just how precious our children really are to us. And I think that the pains of childbirth effect us in a similar way. One reason a woman might willingly choose to go through the full force of labour pain is to demonstrate in actions what she is willing to go through to bring her child into this world. And in a sense I'm jealous of women because of that... the bond between a mother and child is that much stronger right from the beginning. A father will have to wait a long time for the opportunity to make any kind of sacrifice for his child that even comes close in power. I'm not saying that parental love doesn't exist apart from sacrifice, but I do think it's strengthened and magnified through sacrifice.

Now, on the day that my son was born, and while my wife was in the early stages of labour, I sat in the delivery room by her side. And as I sat there I took out my phone, opened my Bible App and read. And this is what I happened to read...

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:22-23)

What the Bible teaches throughout is that God made the world perfect, but through our sin the world became corrupt. Nevertheless, God will some day restore the world to perfection, including our bodies which age and fail. But this present time is likened to “the pains of childbirth”. It's like we're suffering through great pain in anticipation of that “New Creation”, which is also a term that the Bible uses. And as I read this with my former musings in the back of my mind, I realized that perhaps the effect of going through all the sufferings of this present world are to have that same effect that a woman's labour has in forging the bond between mother and child. Through our sufferings we truly begin to value that “New Creation”, and of course the bond between us and God is strengthened all the more! We too may surprise ourselves, seeing what we're prepared to go through out of love for God and out of steadfast faith in that New Creation to come.

Earlier I used the term “sacrifice” with regard to a woman's labour. And in a sense, it has always been a sacrifice, even before the days of c-sections and pain relief. A woman makes the choice to get pregnant in the first place knowing what lies ahead. But even in the moment, a woman's mental attitude toward her labour can make it a willing sacrifice or a begrudged act of necessity. Likewise, in this present world, Christ has told us to make the sacrifice of “taking up our cross daily”. This, too, can be a sacrifice purely because our attitude is right, and where our attitude is right it forges that bond of love between ourselves and God. Or the hardships of life can be lived begrudgingly, wherein no bond is forged; and perhaps only resentment towards God is left to grow? But Paul reassures us...

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. … Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? (Romans 8:18,35)

Finding Your True Identity

Recently I watched a documentary called “Absent”, which is essentially about the effects that fathers have on their children’s development growing up, and the consequences of not having a father growing up. For men, the father’s role is crucial in establishing one’s identity, as we model our attitudes and behaviours after our fathers. And for a girl, a father’s love is essential in establishing her self worth. When a young man, in particular, has no fatherly influence, they struggle with questions of “What does it mean to be a man?” “How am I to treat women?” and “How am I supposed to handle power and authority?” And this can happen even when a father is physically present but is simply emotionally or socially distant. And even during a child's teenage years when they themselves push their fathers away, it is a father's persistence in having an interest in their child's life that demonstrates his love to the child, and gives a child that sense of worth that we all need. Unfortunately, of course, there are many bad fathers in this world who do grievous emotional damage to their children. No father is perfect... but there is One who is perfect, and it's a very carefully chosen metaphor the Bible uses when it refers to God as our Father. He is the One who loves us as no earthly father can. And where the role of a father is to help us establish our identities in life, so too does God, far more perfectly than any earthly father we have.

When I became a Christian and began to read and study my Bible, and as I began to learn more about God, everything that I learnt began to shape my life and how I related to people. One thing that changed in regards to my relationship with my children was that I began to realize, from what I learned in the Bible, that as a father I had a great deal to do with helping my children learn their own identities. And so, for example, I stopped telling my children “Don’t do this or that or else I'll punish you in some way!” Instead I would say, “Don’t do this or that because that’s not what we, in this family, are like.” In other words, I tried to teach them right behaviour not as some way to avoid undesirable consequences, but rather as part of their very identity. And I was delighted when, listening to a certain Bible teacher give a lecture, that he too had done the same with his children as a result of what he’d learnt from the Bible. You see, we as fathers are really only human examples of God the Father, and therefore quite flawed. What we’re doing as fathers is imitating what God the Father does. Our identities come from our fathers in part, but truly and ultimately we find our identities in God. “Why be good?” … Because we are God’s children. There is no better rationale for being good... we are to be good because of who we are. And who are we? We are God’s children. This is what the Bible teaches.

One of the key Bible verses which has changed and shaped my whole life is this...

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

(James 1:22-25)

This illustration of looking into the mirror, which is the Word of God, and seeing your true self there has had a tremendous impact on me. You see, God made us “in His image”, but we became corrupt. We tend to think of our identity as “Whoever we happen to be” or “Whoever we choose to be”. But actually, God made us to be righteous and perfect, and we are not who we truly are due to the corruption of sin. Perhaps we can understand it this way... how often have we watched a movie scene like this where a good a kind man is somehow drugged or mind-controlled or possessed, and as he bears down on his victim, perhaps his own wife, trying to strangle them, she is crying out “Stop! Please! This isn’t you! Please, try to remember who you are!” Of course, this character can’t remember at that moment... but what if that’s us? What if we aren’t who we’re supposed to be? In the Spiritual reality we live in, it’s not that we once were righteous and have forgotten; rather that God has intended for us to be righteous but we have always been corrupt. Nevertheless, God the Father aims to make His children as they ought to be – this is what the Bible teaches.

Just as children learn how they are supposed to behave from their fathers, so we are to learn from our Father who we are supposed to be in life. The message of the Bible is not “obey My commands or else” but “obey My commands because that's who you truly are.” We're not supposed to be righteous out of fear or compulsion. The only kind of righteousness that God loves is when we freely do good, from the heart. As He said in rebuke to the people of Israel, “this people draw near with their mouth and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.” Most people who consider themselves moral will say “That's just who I am.” In other words, their morality is part of their identity. This is good. I would also say the same of myself; that I do good because that's who I am... but I go further to say “And I am who I am because of what God has made me to be.”

In the documentary “Absent”, I was most touched to hear the response of a teenage girl when asked about her promiscuity, and whether having a father would have made a difference in her life. She said “It would've made all the difference... First off, when you have a Dad, someone to protect you, someone to want to meet every guy that you go out with and, you know, lay down the law. [To say] ‘You respect my daughter and you don't do this or you don't do that.’” It seems certain that what many promiscuous women needed was a father to tell them that they were worth “more than this”. Similarly, the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians not to commit sexual immorality saying “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” And rather than see this as God's way of saying “You'll behave yourself because I own you!”, as perhaps I might have once read this passage, I look at it as God saying “Behave yourself because this is how much I love you!” The price He paid was the life of Jesus Christ, God's own Son. This is how much He values us. And what God wants from us is simply that Father-child relationship. It upsets me when my children do wrong simply because that's not who they ought to be. And this is what God wants from us... for us to be as we ought to be. Don't say “Why can't God love me for who I am?” because the truth is that who you are is not your true self and is inferior to who you should be! It is far more loving of God for Him to want you to be your true self... to be the righteous and perfect Creation that He made in the beginning. And the very institution of marriage and fatherhood exists so that we can model for our children what God the "true Father" is like.

Did He not make [husband and wife] one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. (Malachi 2:15)

The Effects of One Random Act of Kindness

This weekend I'm in the process of buying a new (used) car. In my experience, if you look online it's just full of "bait" for the old "bait and switch". So what I do is travel around the night before, going from dealership to dealership while they're closed. I choose the car I want and then I turn up first thing the following morning and buy the car I've already decided on. So this is what I was doing last night. Picture the following scene in your mind, then. It was around 10:00pm and at this point I've reached a dealership right on the outskirts of the city. I'm basically on a freeway in the middle of nowhere, walking past a car dealership. The occasional car whizzes by, but you'd hardly expect any pedestrians out here at this hour. Nevertheless, as I start heading back to my parked vehicle, I hear footsteps behind me. I turn and look to see a fairly young bloke hiking along with a backpack. Whatever... I just keep walking. But I hear that he's quickened up his pace. Just as I get to my car I hear him call out to me, "Hey, buddy!" He's pretty close to me now. I turn to him and he stops. He holds up his hands and says "Hey, don't worry... I'm not going to pull a knife or anything..." Well, that's reassuring. "I just wanna say something." Ok... He comes nearer and he says, "Look, I'm not propositioning you or anything... I don't want anything from you... I just want to give you some money. Here..." He keeps his distance, and he draws out his wallet slowly. "Here, I just want to give you this $20, ok. Years ago a man helped me out when I was total stranger to him, and I just, you know... wanna pay the world back or whatever. Ok? You might need it for petrol or something." Well, a lot flashed through my mind at this point, but I came to a conclusion. I reached out my hand and said, "Ok... thanks, man. That's awesome!" I took the money and he backed away from me before turning around and carrying on in the direction he was headed. I got back in my car and drove off, a little dazed and confused.

Now, this seemed like a very rare act to me. People usually begrudge giving an out-and-out beggar 50 cents, and yet this guy wanted to give some total stranger $20, though there was no indication at all that I actually needed any money. In fact, (it may not have occurred to him), but I was out looking at cars to buy... I'm far from being in any kind of financial need. I don't know if this guy is a Christian (though this place is close to one of the city's largest Churches), but he gave no indication that he was. In fact, he said he wanted to "pay the world back", indicating more of a belief in some kind of Karma than in the Christian God. But nevertheless, his act reminded me of something in my life...

Having no need of the money I took it anyway. Why? Well, I suppose that in all honesty, part of it is that I was in an awkward situation and just taking the money would be the quickest way out of it. But more than that, what he was doing reminded me of myself as a very young and rather immature Christian. I'd been a Christian for probably just 6 months, and as I have testified many times before, true faith leads to a change in your very character, and I could already see these changes in my life. I wanted so much to give to those in need. One day at Church I was chatting to a fellow who said to me, "I'm so worried about work... they don't have any clients at the moment and the whole business is in danger! I'm worried that I might not have a job soon!" And so I felt moved with compassion for this guy. I put $100 in an envelope and gave it to him the following Sunday. But when he saw it, he tried his hardest to be nice about it, but he handed it straight back saying, "No, you misunderstood, I'm not a person in need! Put your money towards people who really need it!" And I just felt so embarrassed! He and his wife probably never did mock me, but I couldn't help at least feel that they were mocking me behind my back. I really felt quite humiliated. And so when this fellow offered me $20 for no reason, I immediately saw myself there, and so I graciously took the money. Whether this guy is a somewhat immature Christian (offering money to those who don't need it), or whatever the case may be, the worst thing I could do is anything to discourage him from doing such good deeds as this!

Folks, if you want to give, give to those in need! I don't say this in words of boasting, but $20 is nothing to me. Nevertheless, even for me this fellow's good deed has had a tremendous effect. Here I have received $20, and it's not in me to think "Wow, what can I buy for myself now?" but rather I think to myself that, if this fellow gave to me who has no need, how much more, now more than ever, will I be prepared to offer help to others who are in need? It has stirred up that generous spirit within me. And I think to myself, even if your giving is somewhat misguided, you really can't go wrong! Your giving encourages others to give also, even as this fellow told me that "years ago a man helped him out when he was a total stranger to him." Whereas I had once seen giving to those who aren't in need as "foolish and immature", I see now that even this kind of act is full of virtue. And it touches my heart to think that God chose me to receive this "misdirected generosity", as it has caused me to re-consider the effect that my giving to that fellow at Church might have had on that family. Perhaps, rather than mock me, they were somewhat affected by my act as I have been by this stranger's giving toward me; and maybe they too were inspired to be more generous toward others themselves?


Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Corinthians 9:7)