The Church of 'Give Me Your Money

The Church of ‘Give Me Your Money!’

The picture on the television shows a couple of emaciated black children, looking understandably sad, brushing flies from their faces. The haunting voice is that of a woman. She speaks slowly, almost painfully, enunciating her words in a unique fashion with faltering voice and brimming over with emotion. It’s enough to break your heart and rip open your bank account – until you discover she’s an actress, reading from a manuscript. I wouldn’t have known that had I not been doing some research on audio books and came across that same haunting voice.

Another picture shows a bunch of fellows working on house repairs. There’s an innocuous commentary on their personalities in the background. Turns out to be the grim reaper looking them all over, saying it doesn’t matter – he’ll get one of them, and all of them sooner or later. Then comes the zinger – the script on the screen says – ‘Make Death Wait’. And the point of the message is? Donate to the Heart and Stroke Foundation!

Well I could go on and on, but these two examples pretty well make my point. Do you see how they relate to one another? They have the same message – ‘GIVE ME YOUR MONEY!’

And we do. The dollars just keep rolling in.

I don’t understand. How have we become members of the church of ‘Give Me Your Money’?  And what do we get for what we give? Well, in the case of the starving child, we get a picture of the child who is presumably the one we support – oh and a newsletter. That’s it! It’s all cut off from there – well that is unless we want to support another of the thousand or so other babies that were born during the time we were writing our check. Well let’s follow the money. Firstly, the actress has to be paid. Then there’s the cost of TV production and time, administration costs etc. What’s left for the child?

And the grim reaper doesn’t come cheap either. There are three or four actors involved in that little skit. What is left for the heart attack or stroke sufferer?

Well it’s a pretty good gig for these deacons of the church of ‘Give Me Your Money’. They have a never ending supply of starving children to beg for, so their place is secure – provided nobody figures out how to reduce the number of starving children. And the Heart and Stroke people don’t have any worries either. People are popping off in record numbers.

It seems to me, from up here on the top shelf that we are getting suckered into providing the NGO’s with an unlimited and ongoing income source to buy band aides for preventable, or at least curable problems. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner we tell these bloodsuckers to go get their own money and stay out of our pockets until they come up with an idea of how to solve root problems, the better.

The ‘Give Me Your Money’ people will soon get the idea that they must provide value for the gifts they receive or dig in their own pockets. Until they do that, my pockets are zippered up.

Those are my thoughts. More to come next week.

Just sayin’.