Charity is the act of giving to others what they believe that they desperately need. A desperate need is one that puts me in despair, when I do not get what I think that I desperately need.
The purpose of charity is to limit despair.
People only genuinely ask for charity when they are desperate.
Charity has become institutionalised and is now run by charitable institutions, which are governmentally controlled. Ironically, the biggest charitable Institution is the Government itself, although it sees itself as a public service rather than a charity.
The Public Health Service is a prime example of what many people believe that they need when they are desperately ill.
The Government relies on publicly funded charities to pay for what the public desperately needs and the government is either unwilling or unable to provide.
As a charitably minded institution itself, the Government encourages public charities, run on private donations, with tax concessions and merit-able awards for generous donors.
Charity is generally seen to be virtuous work by both governmental and religious organisations. Both have come to rely on charitable donations by generous people for them to operate as a not for profit business in a profitable way.
At election time, political parties desperately need the charitable donations of generous sponsors to fund their election campaigns. The Christian Church has a long dependency on charitable donations from its congregation; to fund its grass roots operation and to be seen as a charitable concern, itself.
Charity is desperately needed by all victims who believe that life is happening to them in a desperate way. When I am being a victim of a desperate life, I need charity to allay my despair.
Shelter for the homeless, food for the poor, medicine for the sick, and relief for those facing disaster, are all seen as being in desperate need of charitable assistance.
The greater gift that a desperate person can receive is hope, not charity. Unfortunately, hope can neither be given nor donated to another. Hope only works when I take responsibility for my own actions. When life happens by me, hope works wonders. When I hope charity will happen to me, it is charity I seek, not hope that I have. When I believe that good things happen by me, I create my own good fortune and I no longer need charity.
Charity is not a long term solution to the problems of despair. Desperate people will always despair and will always need charity, when there is no hope of them helping themselves.
The only thing that charity ever relieves is the guilt of those who hope that their generosity will do some good.
Charity endorses, but never changes, the belief that when life happens to me in a desperate way, I need charitable people to be kind to me.
Charity begins and ends at home, when I take responsibility for whatever is occurring in my life and I take personal action in the hope of a better experience of life.
When we stop compensating the victims of their own desperate belief system and start to encourage their hope in the fortunes of their own endeavours, charity will hopefully become an unnecessary evil; rather than the necessary evil that is commonly believed to be.