There is what appears to be a contradiction in the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes start with instructions for us to let our lights shine, that the world may see our good works and glorify our father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16) However, later in the same Sermon, Jesus instructs us to keep it secret when we help the poor, pray, or fast. (Matthew 6:1-4)
But there may not be a contradiction at all. The first instruction comes in the context of us being persecuted for righteousness' sake. (Matthew 5:10-12) In an earlier article (See A Martyr Complex.) we pointed out that the one thing we are allowed to "glory" in, is our persecution as Christians. Paul said that he gloried in the "cross of Christ". (Galatians 6:14, Romans 5:3, 1 Corinthians 1:18, 2 Corinthians 11:30)
But there are some issues that become a bit ticklish with regard to whether they should be kept secret or whether they should be spotlighted. At times we have erred on the side of letting others know about charitable work, in the hope of encouraging others to join in helping the cause. We figured that if it was just a matter of us losing out on a "reward" in heaven, the reward was not so important as the genuine needs of suffering people which could be alleviated if others would help us to help them.
Over the years we have become less inclined to consider that argument a valid one. There is just too much temptation to want others to see us as heroes; and supposed concerns about the poor can blind us to our own wrong motives. Ultimately, we are each going to have to answer for what we personally have done to help the needy, and it isn't really our job to push others into doing what they probably are not going to do anyway.
However, there are other grey areas. Take our free work, for example, especially when it was being done in India. We sought publicity for that because we felt that it was a way of preaching the gospel, i.e. of showing people the practical applications of living by faith, in that we have the time that is needed to do practical things to help others as an expression of God's love. Because we were making our offer to others without regard for how "needy" they were, we refused to classify it as "alms-giving", even though we tended to favour the poor more than the rich when offering our services.
But in the past two years we have come up with a new test of the public/secret dilemma, and that is our commitment to helping people who are suffering from kidney disease. For starters, most of the people we have helped have not been poor. In fact, we have found that richer patients actually benefit most, because they tend to have the connections and discipline needed to arrange for an organ transplant, and to take good care of their new kidney once they have received it.
However, donating a kidney to someone who is dying of kidney disease definitely IS an attempt to help the "needy". Not poor, but needy, all the same. So do we keep it secret? Or do we let our light shine? Donating a kidney seems to come under the classification of "healing". Jesus did not specificcally command his followers to keep all healings secret; but he did make efforts to keep many of his own healings secret.
Our situation is further complicated by the need for more public education in the field of organ donations. The general public knows very little about how serious the need is, and about how easy it is to help out. We have been amazed at how irrationally many people (even including some medical professionals) react to the whole idea of live organ donation, even though the risk is on a par with having a baby. They treat it as crazy for a living donor to offer a kidney to someone, despite the fact that thousands of kidney patients die each year for lack of enough kidney donors. (Of course these same people changte their thinking quite dramatically if they or someone they love suddenly finds themselves in need of a kidney transplant!)
Amongst ourselves there has been some debate about whether we did the right thing in 2002, when we contacted a journalist and agreed to co-operate in making a television documentary about our efforts to donate kidneys to people who need them. We contacted the journalist in the first place because we expected that there would be claims that members had been coerced into donating, or that they were doing it for money. We wanted people to see, instead, the life and death issues that had really inspired so many of us to donate. Our efforts backfired dramatically, when the journalist selected to research the matter turned out to be obsessed with launching his own personal attack on us.
Jon Ronson became bogged down in such red herrings as the fact that one of our members lived in a Children of God commune for a couple of weeks a quarter of a century ago. To his credit, he did not accuse us of coercion nor of receiving payment for our donations. But he did succeed in planting serious doubts about the whole idea of kidney donations through innuendo, and through outright misrepresentation of a medical ethics expert in Boston who actually wrote a paper about how one of our members had convinced him of the good that can be accomplished through anonymous live kidney donations.
But the question of whether we should have gone to the media in the first place continues to be raised. It is a bit like discussing whether it would be right for a Christian to bet on a horse race if they thought God was telling them who to back. If the backed horse wins, people say nothing; but if it loses, then everyone can say (more or less rightly) that the person making the bet was deceived.
Our own deception, if we are to call it that, came from a kind of double-mindedness. We wanted to inspire others to donate kidneys (and it would have been so easy to do, if the documentary had simply focused on the issues that relate to live organ donations), but to do that, we needed to come across more or less as heroes... not the sort of thing that we are supposed to "let our lights shine" about.
We are still inclined to glory over the persecution that we have received for donating kidneys to people in need. It is so convincingly unfair that it almost certainly stems from serious personal conviction that people experience with regard to the subject. After all, whole movies have been made glorifying a single individual for donating a kidney to a close friend or relative. But when a group of Christians donate half a dozen kidneys to complete strangers as an expression of Christian love, suddenly it becomes not a hearthwarming story, but a monstrous scandal. We cannot help but believe that such a reaction constitutes genuine persecution for doing good (and that it probably comes because of an unwillingess on the part of the person doing the report to consider a similar action himself). Such persecution is the sort of thing that we, as Christians, are entitled to let the world hear about. "Rejoice when you are persecuted, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before men..." (Matthew 5:12-16)
On the other hand, if it just makes the public (and the authorities) more cautious than ever about donating kidneys (and about approving kidney donations), then it hardly seems like something to rejoice about. It would have been better to have let the matter drop. And that is pretty much what we have done for the past year, since Jon Ronson's disgusting documentary came out. The documentary got a few people thinking about live organ donations, but we would not argue with those who believe it set the whole debate backwards by several years.
We do not have any easy answers. Having been so roundly condemned for donating kidneys has been good for us spiritually. On the other hand, we still grieve over the hundreds of people who have died over the past year for lack of kidney donors. People continue to ask us for donors that we cannot provide. Something needs to be done, and yet it is out of our hands. We pray that the door may open through other individuals for the public to hear the truth about the relatively small risk involved in saving someone's life, and the great spiritual satisfaction that comes to those who take that risk. And we call on the media and other public voices to do what they can to turn the spotlight on the issues as they really are.
