The 5-meter targets

"Charity begins at home." The phrase has been around so long, most don't stop to think of the implications. In this day when we have more political and social activism than ever, we also seem to have an accelerating breakdown of family and social bonds. We throw ourselves into causes, then have no energy left for those who live in our homes and our neighborhoods.

This isn't a new development; merely an advanced one. C.S. Lewis wrote an insightful satire called the Screwtape Letters, in which he examines spiritual warfare strategy from a diabolical point of view. In one letter, the elder demon writes to the novice tempter:

Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice then becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary...

You can hardly hope, all at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy, but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the Will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us.

Thus, people earn great praise leading this movement or that, all the while ignoring their children, leaving their spouses emotionally neglected, and never knowing their neighbors. The Apostle Paul appropriately noted a person's immediate relationships when setting qualifications for an "overseer" or "deacon." It only makes sense: if someone can't hit a 5-meter target, their aim isn't likely to improve farther out. That's why adultery used to be cause for serious social rebuke: if you can't keep an oath of love to the one closest to you, how can others place trust in your love and loyalty? (Today we're taught not to make such observations, which is why we're so surprised by 'inexplicable' behavior in society.) Before anyone thinks I'm being smug, however, I'll point out the ultimate truth is none of us have the ability to show self-sacrificial love, at home or anywhere else, on our own.