I’m doing some research for our series at Evangel starting this Sunday called “Generosity Revolution” and I stumbled upon something that I found really interesting. Did you know that there is the “Science of Generosity”? Wow. I never thought of generosity being scientific.
Notre Dame University is doing research on the ‘science’ behind generosity and one of the projects they are looking at is to ask ‘scientifically’ if generosity spreads. I look forward to getting their findings when they are done.
But what I found really interesting was a quote in their brief… “If people never really behaved generously or altruistically toward one another social ties would dissolve and the network around us would disintegrate.”
Maybe we NEED to be generous to coexist. Maybe if we AREN’T generous, we will fail to truly be a community.
If that is true (which I tend to agree), then Proverbs 11:24 MSG totally makes sense to me. “The world of the generous gets larger and larger; the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.” Think about it. Who do you like to hang around? The Givers? Or the Takers?
If you’re like the most of us… when “takers” come around the corner… we all become astronomers (we start aimlessly looking into the sky like we actually appear to know what we are looking for). We avoid them. We know what’s coming. We don’t say, “Boy, I wish I was more like them.” If anything, it’s the opposite.
But the “Givers”… ah… we could spend all day with them. These are the people who are surrounded by so many MORE people. A circle of Givers and Takers alike. And over the years I’ve noticed something… Givers have a FAR larger reach in community as well as respect and influence than the Takers.
So maybe Notre Dame is onto something that has been recognized by the rest of us for thousands of years without the science to back it up. That a key to a healthy community, or family, or in our case a church is not bearing with each other, but rather building each other up.
Maybe Generosity is actually in our Genes.
At least that’s how I unscientifically see it,
C
