FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION UNDERNEATH

If believing in God is so important to living a meaningful life, can those who don’t consider themselves spiritual find meaning in altruism? Can someone immerse themselves in a lifestyle of investing time, energy, and finances into charity and generosity for the purpose and pursuit of growing altruistically? The fundamental question underneath these, however, is this: what is the purpose of finding meaning in anything we do if we don’t believe in God?

Is it possible altruists find meaning in practicing selflessness? Of course. But more importantly, from where does selflessness derive its power? After all, practicing selflessness has power, otherwise it wouldn’t draw the attention of those who seek to serve in that way. But why is selflessness so important to our pursuit to begin with?

HOPEFUL EXPECTATION

The dichotomy between altruism and belief in God is that one (altruism) is purely trusting in the effect of selflessness on behalf of the growth of a society, while the other (faith) is the action of placing trust in the unseen under the acceptance and hopeful expectation of the impossible being manifest into reality by the transcendent power of God.

THE FAULTINESS OF GODLESS ALTRUISM

Altruism does actually require trust in the unseen, believe it or not, since it requires trust in acquiring resources as well as their proper allocation. But what of choice and belief? The altruist chooses to believe that the power of giving and investing is morally acceptable and good/favorable because it promotes human flourishing, but they don’t all believe it requires belief in God to be effective.

If we really reflect on this though, is God’s omission from the desire to be generous actually viable of the intrinsic nature of altruism itself? Furthermore, how can anyone say anything is objectively good (such as the power of giving) without God’s existence? And lastly, why is human flourishing important if not for God?

A WORLDLY LEGACY

Faith doesn’t—and can’t—lean its fundamental pillar of hopeful expectation on such a dubious device as human whim to be selfless; rather, it places its focus and trust on the transcendent grace of God to move His will into our empirical reality. Secular altruists must rely on volition and humility in order to be auspicious at anything they invest themselves in under the umbrella of human expansion alone.

Their weakness is that they don’t rely on God, they don’t give any glory to God, and so they consider their altruistic label to carry all the weight of their worldly service as their legacy, and according to them their legacy is more valuable than the idea of their eternal status after death.

SOURCE OF ALL POWER

Belief in altruism doesn’t grant it power any more than belief in God doesn’t cause Him to exist. God is the source from which the power of all things originate, and without God no things would have any power. The only reason altruism is even possible is because of the resources God planted on this earth for us to use to glorify Him.

Secular altruists can pretend God is unnecessary in the picture of generosity, but they misunderstand that without God, there is no picture because there would be no Painter; there would be no one to consider the Painter’s tools or the effects of His tools, nor the paint used on the actual canvas—if not for the Painter.

NOTHING WITHOUT THE PAINTER

We want to be generous and believe our desire to give is what grants us purpose, but we don’t give a second thought to why we desire to be generous, or how the spirit of generosity resides in our hearts, nor why that is “better” than its opposite. We value the auspiciousness of witnessing resources being put to good use, but that doesn’t abdicate God from His throne.

It makes people appear foolish to consider a Godless world where they, too, wouldn’t exist—all in attempt to supplant the idea of a world where people don’t need God. We want to erase God to avoid having to seriously consider the eternal consequences for our sinful nature, but that isn’t very humble, practical, or viable when we can’t prove it’s true, is it?

ONE OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD

It may be safe to say that nearly everyone carries with them some amount of altruism. Any selfless act is altruistic, and yet many altruists do not place faith in the biblical, transcendent, personal Yahweh. The difference is that the unbeliever chooses not to acknowledge (or is so spiritually inept that they can’t recognize it) the source of their desire to be generous is not a cozy, warm-hearted place inside themselves, but is actually the reflection of one of the many characteristics of God.

DEIFIED MANIFESTATION OF SACRIFICIAL LOVE

Our love for the opportunity and blessing of being generous originates from a Source transcendent of our very understanding of altruism. This explains why the act of giving is not meant to be a substitute for faith, but a resource by which God’s sacrificial, unconditional love can spread to meet the needs of those lacking through faith; done in the name of Jesus, the deified manifestation of sacrificial love itself.

This also explains why it’s so backwards and twisted when people give and give and say there is no God, thinking their way of life dignifies their lack of belief in reflecting God’s heart but denying His involvement or existence. We become the people with the fancy tombstones and verbose legacies, but very tragic eternities.

SOUL OF ALTRUISM

What is the soul of altruism? Behind every selfless choice is the decision to put away the pursuit of reward, recognition, or any form of merit, and only leave in place the yearning for another person to experience peace, joy, or contentment. The soul of altruism lies within a person’s belief that others should be treated compassionately and lovingly, but that very belief derives from the very character of God.

Our decisive selflessness is a characteristic of God, and yet we try to avoid saying we are living for God, because if God exists and altruism is only good because God is the author of what it means to be generous, then that means there are devastating consequences for practicing generosity in the name of replacing God.

FOUNDED ON THE LOVE OF GOD

If altruism is the personal belief in the selfless concern for others’ well-being, then unconditional love is seeing a hurting world through the eyes of God and recognizing the lack of loving someone who needs love is the soul of hedonism. Altruism doesn’t require an argument for love.

Faith, on the other hand, is founded on the love of God through Jesus Christ, and doesn’t require or push for an argument for human flourishing. God commanded us to be fruitful and multiply, and Jesus told us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength; and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31).

Where altruism confronts Christianity at the crossroads is in the way God requires that we give of ourselves on His behalf, but not as a presupposition to His preferred nonexistence.

ITS REASON IS TRANSCENDENT

Altruism requires a reason to be able to stand on its legs, but human flourishing doesn’t have a reason to stand without God commanding it. In that vein, giving for the sake of giving doesn’t make sense; the real reason for giving is intrinsically transcendent, and only God is transcendent. But secular altruists would say there is no God in their decision to be altruistic. Its foundational legs can’t stand on that premises, and that’s why this type of altruism is stoic and poignant all at once.

Loving others sacrificially only carries significance once we recognize the opposite of viewing human life as invaluable is morally unacceptable because a morally perfect God gave us the standard to live up to, and failing to meet it isn’t merely a mistake, but a sin.

OPPOSITE OF LACK

We cannot carry the desire to be selfless without first understanding the opposite of that very desire; our desire to give is in opposition to the preference to receive, to take, or to not be lacking. We comprehend that a lack is not always a good thing, but when it comes to believing in God, we decide morality is subjective, so we choose to believe giving is just a part of the evolutionary process, and that as a part of the progression of human flourishing the human mind must have learned the ability to choose generosity over selfishness simply for the sake of avoiding lack.

Where we fail is at the very beginning where we judge the status of lacking as “bad,” but we can’t explain why it’s bad without God. Everything falls apart from that evolutionary argument for altruism just on that thread alone.

THE FAITHFUL STANDPOINT

This is the soul of altruism from a faith standpoint: Giving to others from our abundance by looking at the world through the eyes of the Holy Spirit of and loving people through the transcendent power of His will, rather than through our limited, finite humanity. The samaritan loves and gives because they can and they acknowledge the moral obligation to do what is right by God, for the sake of God.

The person of faith gives because they remember what Jesus gave for them, and that we will one day give an account to God for how we used the resources given to us by Him. We cannot hold a relationship with ourselves in this way because we are on the same plane as ourselves. Only God can give to us what we could never give to ourselves, and that includes an almost esoteric sense of seeking to give and to serve, even if only because it’s the right thing to do by God and not by personal choice, whim, or chance. It’s not an accident to be sacrificial.

It’s Godly and it is rare, because the compassion of Christ-like altruism is growing colder with fewer examples of what it looks like to love like Christ without denying His authority over us.

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