The gift, a moral obligation in all religions?

by time news

► Does Christianity make giving a moral duty or an ethical issue?

Every year during Lent, Christians are invited to draw closer to God through prayer, fasting and sharing. The notions of effort that underlie this period of conversion can make us forget that a Christian is first called to receive his existence, creation, other human beings, the death and resurrection of Christ, as gifts of God.

“The Christian lives his relationship to morality in a filial dynamic. He receives his life from the Father in Christ., comments Brother Jacques-Benoît Rauscher, a Dominican who teaches social moral theology at the Catholic University of Lyon. From this authentic relationship with God stems a renewed relationship to material goods to which the first Christians who “had everything in common”.

Without copying their way of life, Christians today can rely on a principle of the social doctrine of the Church: the universal destination of goods. “It consists in saying that man is the manager, not the owner, of the goods of this world. Thus, when we give alms to a poor person, we do not give him personal property, but we restore justice where there was injustice, we restore the order of the world as God would have liked “exposes the Dominican.

” Everything is connected “Pope Francis keeps repeating since his encyclical Laudato si’. More than a moral question, for Christians it is a matter of consistency of life. “To give is to take the risk of the relationship”, notes xavière Geneviève Comeau, who proposes to question the posture with which we give. Is it an overhanging posture that transforms others into assisted? Or are we looking to establish a partnership? From the Christian perspective, giving implies that the recipient has the opportunity to give in turn, as he wishes.

► How does Judaism approach the question of giving?

To understand how Judaism approaches the question of tsedakathat is to say justice, we must go back to biblical times, and in particular to the book of Deuteronomy, which enacts a whole organization around the service of the temple and the way of using the calendar. “Is there an unfortunate among your brothers among you in any of the towns of your country which the Lord your God is giving you? You won’t harden your heart, you won’t close your hand to ton frunfortunate era, but you will open your hand wide to him and lend him plenty of enough to meet his needs.we find in chapter 15.

The year of shmita is a sabbatical year that takes place every seven years. It marks a time of fallow, during which one must let the land rest and forgive the debts of those who have taken out a loan.

The rest of the time, from the third to the sixth year, “we must set aside the maasser, that is to say the tithe, a tenth of the harvest, especially for the priests. Having no territory, they do not have the possibility of living from agriculture and depend on the generosity of the rest of the group”, explains Rabbi Jonas Jacquelin of the association Judaisme en mouvement. Likewise, he who owns crops must always leave part of his crops in a corner of the field, so that the orphan, the widow or the needy can collect them without having to ask.

“Today, in Jewish conceptions of the distribution of wealth, there remains the idea that in the same way that one should leave maaser, one should devote 10% of one’s income to works of tsedaka”, comments Jonas Jacquelin. In his eyes, a broader theological principle underlies this practice: “We are all passing through this land which belongs to God. So we cannot hoard excessive wealth. »

There is in the idea of ​​tsedaka that of a rebalancing of inequalities. “At the start, it’s a principle, says the rabbi. From the moment we have regular income that allows us to live decently, it is a religious and moral obligation to give. »

► How is donation exercised in Islam?

Almsgiving is a requirement of Islam, says without hesitation Kalilou Sylla, imam of the Great Mosque of Strasbourg. There zakatlegal alms, is even one of the five pillars of Islam, along with the profession of faith, the five daily prayers, the Ramadan fast and the pilgrimage to Mecca.

It falls into two categories. There zakat itself is done once a year on the whole of the capital: a Muslim must give 2.5% of his income from the moment he has reached the minimum taxable threshold during a lunar year. There zakat al-Fitr is the alms of the end of the month of Ramadan. It was formerly paid with the foodstuff most widespread in the region where one lived, that is to say wheat in France and in Europe. But today, most Muslims distribute these gifts in money. They are “an obligation in the Muslim religion”. Not paying it is ” a sin “says Kalilou Sylla.

All these practices are codified. There zakat can thus be given to a person currently in need, but also to a person who, although he has enough to eat today, cannot project himself in several months, or even to a person on a trip.

“Words of the Prophet also indicate that we must begin with those who are closest to us. So we will first see if there are needy people in our own house. If we don’t find any, we will widen the circle to our distant family, then to our neighbours…”explains the imam, who also insists on the spiritual significance of these gifts.

Behind the obligation lies the idea that “my money does not really belong to me. It is the money of God who asks me to give part of it to people in need. In the Muslim religion, we have the concept of doing good, al Ihsan. When a Muslim makes a donation, he is asked to give his best and in the best way possible”.

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And in Buddhism?

More than giving, Buddhism prefers to speak of generosity. Ordinary generosity thus refers to donations of food, clothing and money to those in need and to humanitarian associations. A second form of generosity consists in prolonging or saving the life of human beings, but also of animals and insects. It can be expressed by the donation of medicines to people who cannot afford them and can go so far as to buy animals intended for the slaughterhouse to put them in conditions where they can live until their death. natural.

Finally, spiritual teaching is the third form of generosity. It is the greatest gift. Unlike the others, who “settle contingent and immediate suffering, but not the substance of the problem of suffering, the gift of a spiritual teaching can lead the person, if he practices this teaching, to fundamentally settle this question”underlines Lama Jigmé Thrinlé, co-president of the Buddhist Union of France.

Far from being a moral obligation, giving and generosity are more “of a fundamental practice” from the moment a person embarks on the path that leads to Enlightenment, this spiritual experience made by the Buddha. “Ideally, one should make a gift with the understanding, at least intellectual, if not profound and experiential, that the giver, the act of giving and the recipient of the gift, have no existence of their own. . If one has this consciousness, the gift becomes a sublime and transcendent gift even if it is a grain of rice.continues the Buddhist monk.

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