This Thanksgiving, President Bush wants us to give back to our communities.
In a reflective mood as he looks toward his final year in office, President Bush delivered his first official Thanksgiving speech Monday, urging Americans to “show their thanks by giving back” and to remember that “our nation’s greatest strength is the decency and compassion of our people.”
It was a call to action, in a sense, from a president whose first instinct after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was to ask the public for “continued participation and confidence in the American economy,” a request that has been widely interpreted as advice to go shopping.
By contrast, Mr. Bush on Monday asked Americans to consider the “many ways to spread hope this holiday: volunteer in a shelter, mentor a child, help an elderly neighbor, say thanks to one who wears the nation’s uniform.”
Now, I’m certainly no opponent to charity. I love giving and sharing my resources. But I agree with Thomas Sowell. All of this talk about giving back “irritate[s] me like chalk screeching across a blackboard”.
I have donated money, books, and blood for people I have never seen and to whom I owe nothing. Nor is that unusual among Americans, who do more of this than anyone else.
But we are not “giving back” anything to those people because we never took anything from them in the first place.
This Thanksgiving, my family and I will be thankful for all of the ways God has blessed us. We’ll be most thankful for the gift of forgiven sins and the gift of becoming children of God. We’ll also be thankful for the gifts of family, friends, strong jobs, material prosperity, and much more.
In response to our thanksgiving, we will give to others freely and generously as a reflection of the free and generous gifts we receive from God. But we will not be giving back. Not to Madison’s poor, because they’ve never given us anything. And certainly not to God — nothing we do for Him could ever begin to approach even a partial repayment for what He’s given us.
One Comment
With a more (heh) “charitable” reading of President Bush’s speech, in which his religion is factored into account, one could say that “giving back” refers to how we “give back” to God what He has bestowed upon us - taking into account that while we cannot “repay” Him, we can certainly “give back” some of what we have received from Him, and as Jesus said, to give to others is to give to Him.
Still, your point and Mr. Sowell’s is well-taken, and perhaps the better way to approach someone for charity, instead of playing upon obligation, would be to simply ask nicely.
We’re almost done studying Anthem in my Literature class, incidentally. Should be interesting essay reading soon.