The logic of gift

SAD to say, what’s supposed to be common knowledge and practice now sounds new if not strange. That’s because we have veered so much and so long from our Christian ideals such that our relations with others, and especially in our temporal and economic affairs, have become a nosebleeder.

I’m referring to the concept of the “logic of gift” that peppers that grand encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, “Caritas in veritate” (Charity in the truth), meant to tackle today’s formidable economic and social crisis.

Let’s quote some lines:

- “The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension… (34)

- “We must make it clear, on the one hand, that the logic of gift does not exclude justice… on the other hand, economic, social and political development, if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness as an expression of fraternity.” (34)

- “Commercial relationships and the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift as an expression of fraternity can and must find their place within normal economic activity.” (35)

There are a lot more. You may read the whole encyclical to get a wonderful discussion of this point. What interests us now is how to restore this lost concept as well as how to give it more teeth, more flesh and bones so it can really walk and take its place in our society and stop being a ghost.

Let’s hope that after recovering from our initial stun from this awful discovery, we can move forward and gain momentum in our effort of cultivating this mentality and culture of gift. There are a lot of things to be done in this regard.

For sure, this concept of gift has to be understood well. It cannot be set within the framework of the purely human. That would make gift-giving a shallow and showy act of goodness, full of icing without the cake, rich in packaging with poor item inside.

The logic of gift referred to in the encyclical carries with it nothing less than the full wisdom of God. It involves justice but goes beyond justice. It brings the full weight of prudence to bear on all the steps of decision-making.

It involves nothing less than total self-giving, and necessarily leads us to the cross. It surely has its moments of sweetness and tenderness, but it cannot avoid being exacting, since things have to conform to nothing less than God’s will, and not only to ours.

This is how the logic of gift becomes charity in the truth in motion. As the Holy Father said: “Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived.” We have to disabuse ourselves from the urban legend that gift-giving is all sweet things and roses. It has strict requirements, my dear.

In the current problem facing the US, for example, there’s a lot of debate now about the wisdom of the stimulus-and-bail-out approach adapted by the present government.

The skeptics of the government’s policy argue that the stimulus and the bail-outs have not produced the desired results. Unemployment remains high, the dollar value is plunging—in fact, there is talk that the dollar might lose its world’s reserve currency status.

The touted Keynesian, government-led approach to economic recovery, effective in the years of the Depression, now seems to falter. What could be the reason?

There can be many reasons. But it seems to me that this tremendous infusion of dollars together with some institutional reforms in the economic structure will come to nothing if in the first place the people are not ready to be truly productive.

More than institutional reforms including the combined best features of capitalism and socialism, what seems more needed, and urgently at that, is a radical change of heart of all the economic players involved—which means everyone.

When that heart is hooked only on what is convenient, practical, popular, profitable, in short, greed, while largely ignoring the requirements of solidarity, social justice, etc., it will not be productive. It will soon get into a dead-end.

It can give only an appearance of economic activity and growth, but not real human development that is self-sustaining. It can only have fat but not meat.

The logic of gift has to permeate our economic affairs, setting in motion real charity in the truth, so we can really get on with a development proper to us.