What attitude should Christians assume toward charity?

"The holy art of 'giving for Jesus' sake' ought to be much more strongly developed among us Christians. Never forget that all state relief for the poor is a blot on the honor of your Savior. "
-- Abraham Kuyper, The Problem of Poverty, First Christian Social Congress in the Netherlands, 9 November 1891 [78].

We as Christians must place the strongest possible emphasis on the majesty of God’s authority and on the absolute validity of his ordinances, so that, even as we condemn the rotting social structure of our day, we will never try to erect any structure except one that rests on foundations laid by God. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 64]

God’s Word teaches that we have all been created from one blood and joined in a single covenant through God. Both the solidarity of our guilt and the mystery of the reconciliation on Golgotha are absolutely incompatible with individualism and point instead to a struggle within the interconnected wholeness of our human society. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 65]

The tremendous love springing up from God within you displays its radiance not in the fact that you allow poor Lazarus to quiet his hunger with the crumbs that fall from your overburdened table. All such charity is more like an insult to the manly heart that beats in the bosom of the poor man. Rather, the love within you displays its radiance in this: Just as rich and poor sit down with each other at the communion table, so also you feel for the poor man as for a member of the body, which is all that you are as well. To the poor man, a loyal handshake is often sweeter than a bountiful largess. A friendly word, not spoken haughtily, is the gentlest balm for one who weeps over his wounds. Divine compassion, sympathy, and suffering with us and for us–that was the mystery of Golgotha. You, too, must suffer with your suffering brothers. Only then will the holy music of consolation vibrate in your speech. Then, driven by this sympathy of compassion, you will naturally conform your action to your speech. For deeds of love are indispensable. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 77]

A charity which knows only how to give money, is not yet Christian love. You will be free of guilt only when you also give your time, your energy, and your resourcefulness to help end such abuses for good, and when you allow nothing that lies hidden in the storehouse of your Christian religion to remain unused against the cancer that is destroying the vitality of our society in such alarming ways…You do not honor God’s Word if, in these circumstances, you ever forget how the Christ, (just as his prophets before him and his apostles after him) invariably took sides against those who were powerful and living in luxury, and for the suffering and oppressed. Even more appalling is the spiritual need of our generation. When, in the midst of our social misery, I observe the demoralization that follows on the heels of material need, and hear a raucous voice which, instead of calling on the Father in heaven for salvation, curses God, mocks his Word, insults the cross of Golgotha, and tramples on whatever witness was still in the conscience–all in order to inflame everything wild and brutish in the human heart–then I stand before an abyss of spiritual misery that arouses my human compassion almost more than does the most biting poverty. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 62-63]

If rescue is yet to appear for our violently disturbed society, then our fast-dying century must recognize Christ as its Savior. I close, therefore, with a prayer…may it never be possible to say of the Christians…that through our fault, through the lukewarmness of our Christian faith, whether in higher or lower classes, the rescue of our society was hindered and the blessing of the God of our fathers forfeited. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 79]