We need acts of charity as much as those whom we help

St Martin de Porres: "Even with a torrent of tears I would never wash from my soul the stain that my harshness toward the unfortunate would create."

During the three years of my undergraduate studies in London, I have used much of my free time to volunteer for charities. During the first two of three undergraduate summers I volunteered with a central London law centre, an organisation which provides free legal advice and representation in court for those who cannot otherwise afford it, focusing on matters such as welfare benefits, immigration and tenant-landlord relations. I initially conceived of my volunteering with the law centre as work experience for a career at a City law firm, but very quickly came to realise that this was the wrong attitude to take into the office. I came to realise that as much as the clients needed the support I was helping to provide, I needed this act of charity as much as them.

 

By needing this act of charity I don’t mean that I also needed support with welfare benefits, but that helping to provide the law centre’s charitable work was changing me for the better as a person. London residents, including myself, often don’t realise the extent of poverty under their noses, even in the wealthy central areas. Coming face to face with numerous clients who were clearly struggling with chronic illnesses which prevented them from working, and yet whose benefits had been reduced or removed altogether, which in turn exacerbated their already fragile physical and mental health, was a reality shock I really needed. I realised how privileged I am to not have to worry continuously about funding my life, to have a support network of family and friends, to be able to undertake paid work, to take breaks to rest from this work, to have a healthy and functioning body and mind. And with this realisation came a sense of duty – a keen awareness that I should use at least a portion of the time, money and energy I have to the benefit of others who are less privileged than myself.

 

I carried this sense of duty with me as I left the law centre to return to my studies in my second academic year. In my day-to-day student life I started paying more attention to the way I behaved – judging people less and understanding them more, mindful that they may have problems on their mind which I have no idea about, mindful that I had an entitled upbringing and most people didn’t. I realised that at UCL I found myself in a social and intellectual environment which many people desire to but cannot join because of various life circumstances, and therefore did my utmost best to graduate with a First and make use of the academic and social opportunities UCL offered, as they would have. My view on politics changed as I found myself moving left from centre-right. I began making sure I always had change on me to give to the homeless.

 

Considering the change in my outlook on the world after my first undergraduate summer, I found it very natural to then return to the law centre during the next summer. The opportunity to tangibly help other people was not anymore just work-experience (especially because by this time I had dropped the ambition of going into City law), but something I desired to do for its own sake. It filled a gap in my conscience which I previously did not know needed filling. I had come to feel a particular kind of enjoyment in the work – not the kind which had me jubilant every second I did the work, because sometimes it could be very dry indeed, but a deep sense of happiness that by spending my time and energy this way, I am making a genuinely positive change in someone else’s life, a change which may have been easy or even dull for me to bring about, but was of immense importance to the client I thus helped. From an idea I intellectually accepted but rarely acted upon, performing acts of charity became something I specially sought out, something I needed for a deep sense of happiness I hadn’t felt the need for before.

 

This idea of a causal relationship between acts of charity and a particular kind of happiness, is, of course, not new, and is quite prominent in Christianity. The author of the Acts of the Apostles (20:35) quotes Jesus as saying “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” As a Christian I believe that man is made in the image of God, and that by giving we are coming closer to that which is our divinely instituted primordial nature, since “every good act of giving…[is] from above, coming down from the Father of all light” (James 1:17). This is because God is love (1 John 4:8) – out of love he has given us our world, ourselves, and even his own Son to save us from the moral wreck into which we made ourselves. Acts of charity are a form of love, because in them we actively will the good of the other, so performing them brings happiness because we are being as God intended us to be. 

 

But to speculate about the Christian relationship between charity and happiness is one thing, to experience it as true is another. After all, one can theorise about Christian teaching as much as one likes, but never surpass a purely intellectual engagement with it – just like historians study beliefs and practices of past societies without actually taking those beliefs and practices to heart. My volunteering experience has shown me that simply taking a step and actually acting on Christian teaching in performing acts of charity, even if it is for the wrong reasons at first, is able to transform me into a better person as the experience made me link charity with happiness. After all, it is only God’s grace which sanctifies us and makes us better people, but we need to take the first step out of our own free will. We need acts of charity for our own good as much as those whom we help through them.