What do you give away? I mean on a regular basis. Whether its to friends, to family, to the poor, to various charities, what is your regular output? This is a question that I’ve been thinking about lately, and honestly the answer is: probably not as much as I should. However, that leads us to the question I want you to answer today. How much should we be giving away? C.S. Lewis’ response was very simple, he argued that we should just make a practice of giving away more than we think we can afford. However, it’s not hard to find people who will tell you that you must give away exactly 10% of every paycheck to a church, or that you’re an American and thus obviously wealthy, so you should be giving away at least half of everything you earn. There are also people who will tell you that you should keep only the bare minimum necessary to keep you fed, clothed, and under shelter and give away everything else. Similarly, there are plenty of people that will tell you should only give away what you can afford, or what you feel like giving, or even that you shouldn’t give away anything at all. So, this is my question for you today: how much should we be giving away? How can you tell?
You all know the rules for this: write a story of 1000 words that presents and defends your answer to the question above.
The only things I give away regularly are sarcastic comments.
Time is valuable to give away, time and thought and action. Attention is another thing that can be given that people seem to appreciate. Time and attention.
Or money. People like that too, because then they can do what they want with their time and attention.
Things that I aim to give whenever possible is food, shelter, water, support.
As to how much to give away, it’s hard to quantify, but however much we can is how much we should give. …too circular?