Charity Vs. Justice

Charity Vs. Justice

By: Taryn & Lillianna

Works of Charity

• Charity= social service. Provides direct services
• Charity responds to immediate needs
• Directed as the effect of injustice, its symptom
• Addresses problems that already exist
• Charity is private, individual acts

What Does Justice Mean to You?

What we think:

Justice is doing the right thing no matter what and changing something for the better. A permanent solution.

Game Time!

http://www.superteachertools.us/jeopardyx/jeopardy-review-game.php?gamefile=767529

Charity vs Justice

What Does Charity Mean to You?

Dictionary Definition:

Justice is the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness

Works of Justice

What we think:

Charity is the act of doing something out of the kindness of your heart, to help someone in need. Although it is only a temporary solution it is a big step in the right direction.

• What is the aim of this video?
• Is Toms about charity or justice?

Dictionary Definition:

Charity is the generous actions or donations to aid the poor, ill, or helpless

• Justice= social change. Justice promotes social change in institutions or political structures
• Justice responds to long-term needs
• Justice is directed at the root cause of social problems
• Addresses the underlying structures or causes of these problems

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa is a prime example of someone who was an advocate from charity.

She helped the poor and sick on the streets by feeding them and clothing them.

Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks is a prime example of someone who advocated for justice. By not giving her seat up on the bus she gave the civil rights movement more momentum and as a result, helped bring down racial segregation.

Examples

Charity:

• homeless shelters

• food shelves

• clothing drives emergency services

Justice:

• advocating for the vulnerable

• changes policies and practices to reflect the common good

• political action

Story Time

Two men were fishing in a river. Late in the afternoon they started cooking some of the fish they had caught. Suddenly they heard the cries of a man being swept down the river. Immediately the men jumped into the river, swam out to the men, and were gradually able to pull him a shore. As they were on shore catching their breath, they heard the cries of a woman being swept down the river. They jumped back into the water, made their way out to the women and slowly brought her to shore. Then they heard the cries of a child being swept downstream. One of the men started to swim back into the river, the other held back. "Aren't you going to save the child?" asked the first. "You go get the child," responded the second, "I'm going to go upstream and find out why so many people are falling into the river."

What man represented charity?

What man represented justice?

Charity is happy to spend all day pulling victims out of the river.

Social justice: asks why are so many people falling into the river. Is there a pathway of a bridge in need of repair? Is there someone throwing people into the river? When there is a pattern of people repeatedly falling victim, social justice seeks to discover and remedy the root causes of the problem.

Charity does the important work of meeting needs of suffering people, for food, clothing, housing, medicine, ect. Mostly everyone today approves and praises charity.

Social justice, on the other hand, dares to ask troubling questions: if the earth's resources are meant to meet the needs of all the earths children, why are 20% of the world's population consuming over 80% of the earth's resources, leaving 80% of the world living in misery? Isn't it only just that the privileged few live more simply, so that the masses might simply live.

Our politicians smooth the pathways and bridges of the privileged, to the neglect of the poor. Little wonder then that so many of the poor keep falling into the river. Their falling is not simply an accident. They are not "falling through the cracks." They are falling through are fingers.