Thursday Thirteen No. 28: Accepting Charity

As an English teacher, I have often been required to teach students about politically correct language--what proponents of the stuff might call language free of bias. While some adjustments to our usage are useful and important, others are downright absurd. This is always the case when we have to talk about subjects that make us uncomfortable. We trade accurate, specific words for vague ones not to protect the dignity of the people we're talking about but to keep our distance from them.

Consider words connected to poverty. We have transformed the poor into people in need, the abused into people in crisis, and the mentally ill into people with issues. We have reduced charity to mere financial support.

Though these days the word charity refers to assisting the poor, it has its roots in love. Charity appears in the King James version of the Bible as a synonym of agape, or brotherly, love. I like this meaning of the word; it is kind and generous, free of the negative connotations that come with the contemporary use of the word. Bringing the ideas of compassion and love together results in the definition of a generous love for a friend, not some nameless person in need with issues.

Here are 13 passages from the King James Version of the Bible that include the word charity where more recent translations say love.

1. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. (1 Corinthians 8:1)

2. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. (1Corinthians 13:1)

3. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2)

4. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:3)

5. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not... (1 Corinthians 13:4)

6. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.(1 Corinthians 13:8)

7. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

8. Let all your things be done with charity. (1 Corinthians 16:14)

9. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.(Colossians 3:14)

10. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. (1 Timothy 1:5)

11. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.(1 Peter 4:8)

12. Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity.... (1 Peter 5:14)

13. And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.(2 Peter 1:7)

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Photo: The door to the compartment at Topsmead in Litchfield, Connecticut, where the very wealthy Edith Chase would leave food for travelers who needed refreshment along the way.