This past week I took the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge (that’s me in the photo). If you don’t know what that is, you’re in the minority, at this point. But I don’t want to assume anything. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a fundraising viral publicity awareness social media thing. Now do you understand? No? Let me try again: people are dumping buckets of ice water on their heads to raise awareness and money for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) research. In some instances people dump ice to avoid giving a financial donation – ice or pay. In others, you dump ice AND make a donation, which is the route I took.

Social Media is the avenue by which this Challenge went “viral”, the online term for something that explodes exponentially. When millions of people watch or participate in something in a very short period of time, it is said to have gone viral. In this case the Challenge went viral because when someone challenges you to do it, and you choose to accept, you, in turn challenge others. In my case, our own John Killgallon challenged me and four others. When I accepted the challenge and poured a bucket of ice water on my head, I in turn, challenged five more, and on and on it goes. The Challenge has swept up many big name celebrities in its spread, and it has raised a lot of money for the ALS Foundation; $23 million and counting so far.

What has been amazing to me is the backlash against the Challenge. I have seen articles from folks who think the Challenge is stupid and ineffective, that it is simply an opportunity for people to get attention, that it wastes water, that it takes away from other deserving charities, and that it’s simply become annoying at this point for those who keep seeing their friends post videos of themselves taking the Challenge. I have to admit that I don’t quite get the complaining. Charities strive to get their message out there, and do everything they can to raise money and awareness. Think about the various ribbon campaigns that were replaced by the rubber bracelet campaigns. Think about the walks for everything and the silly things that booster and school kids try to sell us. Some charities have been so successful that their fundraising efforts have become iconic; think Girl Scout Cookies and the MDA Telethon.

So what’s the real beef with the Challenge? I think it mainly boils down to people’s need to complain about something and a

measure of jealousy. The ALS Foundation has raised an amount of money so far above what is normal for their efforts, and it hasn’t cost them a single penny in development, mailers, dinners, speakers fees, bracelets, etc. For the last two weeks or so millions of people have gone on Facebook and Twitter with the letters “ALS” on their lips, and then gone online with their donations; millions of people who otherwise wouldn’t have made a donation to ALS research, and some of whom didn’t even know what ALS was ahead of time. No matter how you want to look at it, I call that a huge success and something to be celebrated.

Let’s be honest. Many people have trouble opening their checkbooks. The critics who suggest that people just give money and stop all the ice bucket nonsense are naïve. If it were that simple every charity and every church would have all that it needs and then some, just by asking. And yes, for some people they may have a limited budget and so their donation to ALS research means some other group won’t get their gift. For others, however, it becomes an additional gift and act of stewardship. Frankly, I like the idea of impulse giving. In some ways we’ve become too careful as a society about how we share what we have. We want to over-research a charity, or look for some assurance that our gift is not squandered. And that’s meet and right most of the time. Sometimes, however, it’s good to simply see a need and take care of it. It’s powerful to live on a spiritual plane where someone asks for help and we give it.

To be sure there are situations where our giving needs forethought. The Toxic Charity (I’m aware that the author of the book by the same name has spoken here) movement has raised good questions, but also done damage of its own at the same time. Sometimes we need to just give. It may be true that some giving is self-serving because it makes us feel good, but not giving can be just as self-serving because it makes us feel good that we’re making a smarter choice or are helping someone by not helping them. What it all boils down to is the tension that we have to live in between helping and not helping, between giving and not giving. Jesus’ example is one of reckless giving. It’s that whole losing your life thing. And if he is willing to give so much for the likes of us, who are we to withhold if from others? He taught a number of parables in this vein that make us squirm uncomfortably every time we read them.

All this is to say that I hope people will get off the Ice Bucket complaining wagon. People are learning about an illness that is devastating and underfunded. People are giving to something new, and doing it cheerfully. Maybe this whole viral episode will turn out to be good training for future mass philanthropy. One can hope. When there is a way that we can help, we help. When there is a need, we give. If we can have fun doing it, all the better. Jesus speaks clearly at times, free of the confusion of parables and actions that we have to interpret. On this matter Jesus said, “Give to everyone who asks you…” (Luke 6:30). That’s pretty clear. …and although they didn’t have ice back then, I don’t think he’d mind if you dumped some on your head first.

Tom+

To learn more about ALS or to make a donation to the Georgia chapter of the ALS Foundation, visit their website.

Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.