Blog 13: Altruism and Religion

One of the hardest things that I have had to balance throughout my social work education is the values of my "religion" versus the values of social work. I grew up in a family were republican and Christian went hand in hand, and no one ever told me that they didn't mean the same thing. I spent most of my high school and early college years thinking that to be a "good little Christian", I had to uphold all the conservative republican beliefs.

However, the more I actually study and pursue Christianity and the more I have learned about social work values, I don't find them to be all that different for me even though they fall more on the liberal side of the scale. The value that I hold on to most in social work is the dignity and worth of every single person. That is one of the main aspect of the Gospel I believe in, that even though we as people mess up and do horribly evil things (yes, all of us, not just the "bad people"), we are worth something that a God would chose to lay down His life for us. (And even if you don't believe that to be true, the idea of it is so inspiring to be loved that much for doing nothing) So I find those values to line up, and I aspire to loving people well for who they are, not what they can be.

I have also struggled a lot with reconciling this loving God that I believe in, with all the brokenness and inequality in this world. But today I was reading this in my Bible, "whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors Him." (Proverbs 14:31) This made me think about being generous and altruism in general. This is one of the core ways that I can both serve my God and serve my community. I can generously give my time and money to people who need it. When I remembered that we talked about how Dr. Singer recommends giving 10% of income to the less fortunate, I just felt everything line up completely, because my Bible suggests the same percentage of tithing.

In this week of thankfulness, I am so very thankful that my values on a personal level have matched with my professional values.

Observation: I saw a news article that mentioned that Food Banks saw an increase in the number of people who came which was said to have been caused by the decrease in amount of money given in SNAP.