The Generosity Gene: is giving a God-given instinct?
The little girl in the photo above is called Sreyleak and she lives near Siam Reap in Cambodia. I have never met Sreyleak but I have had a connection with her since she was about five years old through a charity concept called child sponsorship.
For the past eight years, Sreyleak and I have been writing to each other sharing hopes and dreams and now I am sending her this personalized journal in this picture – the latest idea that the charity World Vision have come up with to keep this connection alive.
No matter how perilous my financial situation might become, I could never imagine severing the connection with this child who lives half way around the world. Given my roller coaster career (my husband says I never make a career move unless it involves a pay cut) I have in the past had to reluctantly scale back direct debits to the different charities but have never touched the regular monthly payment that I make to the charity who fund services in Sreyleak’s community. So why is that?
Apparently it is all about the connection. I recently watched a brilliant TED talk by happiness researcher Eileen Dunn about the fact that giving makes us happy but it matters how we do it. Dunn proposes that giving is a basic human instinct but that this instinct is only triggered by a sense of connection.
She bases this theory on extensive research which shows that people are most generous when they feel a connection with the recipient of their largess. She points in particular to a Canadian scheme which encourages groups of donors to sponsor refugee families’ move to, and settlement in, Canada. The scheme could work on a purely financial basis but in reality donors inevitably seem to end up with quite profound connection with their new neighbours - so much so that they are often seen as extended family. It seems that generosity and connection are part of the same human instinct.
This should hardly come as a surprise given what we know of the nature of God through the person of Jesus Christ. God’s generosity towards his creation was so great that he took the form of mankind in order to connect with and save us from ourselves.
The price he paid was so very high but throughout all of his time on earth, his ministry was all about connection. He constantly sought to reach out to make connection with the forgotten, the forsaken, the neglected and the despised, pouring out his grace in abundance. When others would turn away, he would reach out and touch the leper, the prostitute and the rejected of society. Finally he gave of himself in an act of generosity so terrible that we can never, ever be grateful enough.
God tells us that we are made in his own image. Nothing we can do will ever come close to Jesus’s great act of generosity and, although our own giving can only ever be a pale imitation, it seems that we are also hard wired to reach out and to create connection with other human beings, and to give something of ourselves to others. And that, in doing so, we are also ultimately connecting with our God. For as Jesus told his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matt 25:45).
Check out Eileen Dunn’s TED talk at https://www.ted.com/speakers/elizabeth_dunn
Kate Nicholas’s best-selling memoir Sea Changed (shortlisted as Christian Biography of the Year 2017) and her latest book Sea Changed: A Companion Guide – Living a Transformed Life are available at Christian bookstores and Waterstones throughout the UK and online at eden.co.uk and Amazon worldwide. Her recent TV series Living a Transformed Life can be viewed on demand on www.tbnuk.org or at www.katenicholas.co.uk .