Who Am I?

The Didache 15 – Do Not Hesitate To Give

Posted: June 25th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Didache | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Didache 15 – Do Not Hesitate To Give

This series is reflecting on the Didache if you want to read it separately.

Be not a stretcher forth of the hands to receive and a drawer of them back to give. If you have anything, through your hands you shall give ransom for your sins. Do not hesitate to give, nor complain when you give; for you shall know who is the good repayer of the hire. Do not turn away from him who is in want; rather, share all things with your brother, and do not say that they are your own. For if you are partakers in that which is immortal, how much more in things which are mortal?

The Teaching is as bad as the Holy Scriptures about commanding us to give, to give extravagantly, and to give cheerfully. And I’m lousy at giving. Frankly, I don’t understand how the overwhelming majority of those within American Christianity screen out all the ways we are commanded to give, to care for the poor, to be generous, to not be ruled by stuff, and all the different ways it is put. I can’t. I know I don’t do anything like what we are told to do, but I’m also unable to screen out the commands and somehow decide that all is copacetic.

There’s not sense here that it’s the eternal stuff that matters and the earthly stuff is just a shadow. Rather, the things that are happening here and now are that in which we partake most deeply. These mortals things are shaping us into the person we will be eternally. We can’t be one thing and something completely different in the resurrection. We will simply be more fully and completely and utterly visibly the person we have made ourselves to be. There will be no darkness in which to hide.

The more deeply I delve into Christianity, the more I understand why Jesus said it is difficult for the rich to enter into life.