IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: We've moved our blog to ARC-News-blog.blogspot.com.
So starting with with our 23 Oct. 2021 issue, we will post our new blog articles of our e-newsletter to the www.Agape-Restoration-Society.org/ARC-News website. You have likely noticed that for the last several months, we've been including more and more news items about caring for disabled and elderly people, the right to life of both unborn babies, the infirm, and the elderly, as well as about the right to freedom of religious expression in socialist-materialist societies worldwide.
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Where does the concept of "philanthropy" come from? Where did we get the idea of erecting hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly and infirm? Today we might think that these institutions were created by billionaires who made their money off railroads, steel mills or the stock market, or perhaps the government dreamed them up. But the historical fact is that these institutions for the public well-being were created during the one-thousand-year-long Byzantine Christian Empire. Only later did these ideas take root in Western Europe, and from there to the rest of the world.
When the people of Israel were carried away into Babylonian captivity because they had forsaken the Lord, many of them thought they should form their own closed cultural group to preserve their ethnic identity, having as little to do as possible with Babylon. But the prophet Jeremiah told them - "Seek the welfare of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its welfare you shall have welfare. ...For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope for your future. You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. I will be found of you, says the Lord, and I will return you from captivity". (Jer. 29:7, 11-14)
Thus the idea of seeking the welfare or well-being of society at large seeped from the Jewish nation to surrounding nations such as Babylon, Greece and Rome, but those nations limited such social programs to "their own kind," not sharing their wealth with other tribes and peoples. It took Christ's Great Commission to "Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations" before this idea of sharing one's well-being with others - even one's enemies - could take root.
For the first three hundred years Christians were "in captivity" of frequent persecutions, but still reached out in love to those around them. Why? Because Christ Himself was and is the great Philanthropos, the "Lover of Mankind." This divine love for mankind enables us to perform genuine philanthropy:
"The philanthropy of man is theologically grounded in the philanthropy of God. Although God is completely unknown in His nature, He becomes known through His revelation to mankind and in history as philanthropic and merciful. The philanthropy of God is apparent, among other signs, in the nature of man, in his destiny, and in his place in creation. Only man is created 'according to the image and likeness of God' (Gen. 1:26). Only he exists as a person who comes into communion with God. Only man has as his destiny an eternal progress, through a process of inner purification and sanctification, towards the attainment of the divine likeness." (Miltiadis Vantsos and Marina Kiroudi, "An Orthodox View of Philanthropy and Church Diaconia," Christian Bioethics, 13:251–268, 2007, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, p. 253)
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