A New Standard of Giving . . . New?

I had a great aunt who in 1901 sailed as a young single woman for Africa, headed for 70 years of missionary work – in health care, as she was a nurse.  There she met and married Emil, a young man who felt called of God to bring Christianity to that continent, who (while Marie kept the home fires burning, literally, and cared for their children and operated a clinic) would leave home for months at a time seeking out villages who had never heard of Jesus.

Their own children, once they were old enough for school, spent their formative years in missionary boarding schools, and in fact Marie and Emil didn’t attend any of their weddings, that being expensive (they had little money) and they were busy serving people, and offering salvation.   Marie and Emil left everything because they were convinced that their “higher calling” was to God, and indeed missionaries made great personal sacrifices because they believed that people would be lost eternally if they the missionaries did not warn them.

I see a similarity here to Singer’s argument that we who have so much should give up (nearly) everything we have in order to save as many people as possible -- not from spiritual death, but physical death.  Emil and Marie valued other people’s children as much as their own – because their worldview told them that people were lost without God.  And because God had called (commanded) them to give up everything to act on that belief.   Their motivation was twofold:  emotional (thinking about people lost forever, in hell, moved them to act, to save them from such a horrible fate) and rational/volitional (given what they believed about God and eternity, it made sense that they do everything possible to tell people about God’s love.  What is even a great sacrifice in this short life compared to eternal joys to come in the hereafter?)

Singer has made a careful, convincing, logical, argument about the need out there.   And that we who have much can give a whole lot more than we do without much of a personal sacrifice.  Logically speaking, how can I justify any expenditure beyond my most basic needs?  If my round of golf means one more person dies . . .   Logically, I’m had, aren’t I?  

But what of the emotional motivation needed?  Here is the harder part.   How do you feel badly about millions of people? Have can I care enough to do something – a lot, or anything -- about millions of needy?   Emil and Marie had the advantage of having the need constantly in front of them.  People dying all around you, in body or in spirit, would provide the emotion needed, although compassion fatigue is a hazard of any helping profession.  As for me, I have stories about poverty, and photographs . . . but doesn’t one become numb to the enormity of the need, even if it’s "only" on TV?

Wiser, more compassionate ones:  enlighten me!