Comparing religious gifting and behaviors

Religion has encouraged and often discouraged certain behaviors in civilization. Many of these behavioral commandments are meant as a means of helping to maintain the integrity of the religion along with helping to foster growth from a societal perspective. For example, in Christian religion, the “commandments” can be viewed as not only religion edicts but also as a roadmap for successful societal orientation. The commandments related to stealing or murdering are not necessarily unique to the Christian religion but are instead necessary for society to survive. Interesting, many religions place a very particular emphasis related to behaviors surrounding jealously. Again, using the example of the Christian religion, three of the ten commandments are heavily related to the concept of jealously. These concepts include forbidding stealing, coveting a neighbors wife, or coveting a neighbors material. Here again, these elements are necessary for the overall survival of society and not necessarily attributable to the particular religion.

Gift giving is a natural extension of the jealousy concepts discussed above. Nearly all major religions emphasize so form of gift giving as a means of self-discipline and the need to help those who are less fortunate. In the Christian religion, the need for gift giving has been seen prior to the birth of Jesus Christ. Here, the bible refers to three wise men who are often depicted as foreigners who brought gives to Jesus shortly after his birth. The wise men brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Interesting, it is this act that provides the first similarity of gift giving between religions. Here, the universal acceptance of gold as a medium of value is unprecedented. Nearly all religion appears to hold gold in high regard as it relates to gift giving. From a person perspective, this often leads me to inquire as to why all the Gods universally accept this item as a gift. Is it that the Gods themselves accept this gift, or is it that many of the religions are man-made, and thus reflect the internal desires of man as oppose to the will of the supposed “God?” Here, it is possible that gift giving is simply used as a means to expand the domain and authority of humans and less to do with the particular god of the religion (Lorenzen, 2018).

This concept piqued my interest from a Christian perspective as gift giving is such as integral element of the religion. For example, those who practice Christianity are often expected to sow seeds or “gifts” to the church. These gifts often include monetary donations designed to help further the ideals and ambitions of the church. Gifts are further encapsulated by the concept of tithing which is the concept of giving God 10% of an individual’s earnings every Sunday. Each of these forms of gift giving is used as means to show the religious practitioners thankfulness for the blessings bestowed on them by God. In addition, many practitioners are also expected to gift their own talents to the church in the form of volunteering. Here, in demand fields such as finance, law, and healthcare are welcomed gifts from individuals to the church as they each help expand the ability of the institution to reach lost souls. Finally, upon death, it is very common for individuals to gift a large portion of their overall savings to the church. This too is often considered an act of selflessness as it provides the church with the financial means to further their operations and expansion. These acts often fall into the therapy, ideological and salvation categories (Sherry, 1983). In certain aspects, those taking the donations can often use them in a very questionable methods that are not becoming of the religion. Here, the Christian religion is particularly prone to charlatans leveraging the religion to only expand their own self-interest. For example, Benny Hinn has used gifts to further his spectacle of curing cancer, curing blindness, and even curing heart disease with a simply touch. It was later discovered that Hinn, used these gifts for a lavish lifestyle that had little to do with the gospel he was preaching. Others such as Creflo Dollar, have used gifts as means to purchase billion-dollar airplanes as a means to “preach the gospel to the world.” Even those such as Joel Osteen, have used millions of dollars of gifts to create large churches, but refused to open their facilities to those who were in need within the community. In many of these circumstances, Christian practitioners gave their gift from a ideological perspective in an effort to expand the tenets of the religion. However, those who received the gifts often used them for a selfish and often unethical manner. This too is very common among ritual gifts in religion (Vaidyanathan, 2011)

Buddhism is another religion that heavily emphasizes gift giving. Here, their opinion of slightly different than that of the Christian religion. In this instance, gift giving is a requirement to achieve enlightenment. The giving of gifts is therefore necessary in order to eliminate greed and ill-will within the individual. As a result, practitioners are often required to give nearly all of their material possessions away. In certain instances, practitioners are required to give away possessions that are not required for survival as a means of reducing their overall attachment to the physical world. This can be very difficult, particularly as many people and religions have a fondness for gold as noted in the paragraphs above. Likewise, giving away possession often runs counter to the much more capitalistic society of today which emphasized the need for goods and services. In this religion, gift giving is seen as a way of abstaining from the natural desires of life and of man to conquer and obtain physical goods. In this religion, it is this pursuit and its subsequent greed that create sin and follow in the world. The constant need for more land, more money, and more power often corrupts the minds of men, which inadvertently causes them to conduct themselves in an inappropriate manner. By giving a majority of their prized possessions away, they can avoid many of these sinful circumstances.