Choosing Charities

Choosing Charities:
Which ones are corrupt and which ones actually make a difference?

My wife and I made a New Year’s resolution this year. We want to give more money to charity. The problem is that most charities are terrible.

For every dollar you donate to charity less than 5 cents probably end actually helping the needy. The other 90% of the money probably ends up in the pockets of the founders, workers and CEOs. In fact charity CEO’s make an average of $132,739 per year.
This jarring fact is just one reason why you need to do your research before donating. The vast majority of charities simply do not get the money where it is supposed to go.

“Locks of Love” is one example of how corrupt charities can be. After receiving over 100,000 hair donations in 2011, the company was able to produce 317 wigs for cancer patients. The rest of the hair was sold. The company made 6.6 million dollars selling the donated hair. Thanks a lot, Locks of Love.

Many charities are out, not just to make money, but also to push agendas. Many Christian charities focus on building churches and “spreading the word”, rather than actually helping people. Some Islamic charities have been accused of funding terrorism.

Some organizations even refuse to help certain people. The Salvation Army is happy to help straight families, but the Salvation Army Australia spokesperson Andrew Craibe was quoted in 2013 saying that gay parents should be put to death. Put To Death! Because they are gay. It should be noted that it is legal for gays to adopt in Australia.

More about corrupt charities can be found here:
http://listverse.com/2013/10/07/10-horrible-facts-about-charities/

So with wide-spread corruption, is there any charity that you can trust?
or
Why can’t we just get the money directly to the people who need it? This was the question that Paul Niehaus wanted to know when he was attending Harvard University in 2009.

Paul and his friends wanted to know how they could get the money to the people who needed it and also if they could measure their success. They founded a company called “Give Directly”. The company does exactly what it says. It takes your money and gives it directly to people in need (namely poor villages in Uganda and Kenya). 

The villagers end up with 100% of the money in a secure credit account attached to their cell-phones and they can spend it on whatever they need. People could invest the money on a metal roof; new livestock; or a motorcycle to start a taxi service.

“Give Directly” is also focused on studying the results. They look at charity through a scientific lens. Raw data. Evidence. Not only did they find that people spent the money wisely, but their lives were greatly improved for years after receiving the money- the investments paid off. You can look at the results (which are extremely positive) on their own website.

http://www.givedirectly.org/evidence.php

Another great website to check out is Givewell.org. Give Well wants to pinpoint the non-corrupt charities that care about results.

After sifting through 300 charities they found these three to be evidence-backed, thoroughly-vetted, and underfunded: Give Directly, Deworm the World Initiative, and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI).

Their website is http://www.givewell.org/

In closing, I’d like to reiterate the fact that it matters if charities work. It matters that the money you donate is getting to the people that need it. Please do your research before donating to your charity of choice.

Who Wrote The Bible?

Over 90% of American homes have Bibles and the average family owns three of them- but how many people actually understand what The Bible is? What does it say? What doesn’t it say? How did it come into existence? Does it have zombies in it?

What is the Bible?

Many people think the Bible is simple. It’s the exact words that God wants us to know organized into 66 books with 40 authors. But the truth is a little more complex than that.

The Bible is a collection of texts but the texts aren’t always the same from Bible to Bible. The Catholic Bible, for example, has five extra books than the Protestant one. This is because the Protestants edited some things out of the Catholic Bible when they broke away from the Catholic Church.  The Orthodox Church has their own version of the Bible, so do the Jews (and the Ethiopians). There are hundreds of versions and editions and translations. It makes one wonder why a god would have so much trouble getting his message across.

Though many Christians say that the Bible has forty authors, this is kind of silly. Nobody wrote the Bible. It’s a collection of folk-tales, letters, family trees, rules, and even love poems. We know some of the contributors, but most are unknown- and whoever wrote these texts certainly did not know that their work was going to be published in a “Bible” or they probably would have tried a little harder to make things a bit more interesting- there are definitely some boring parts.

Who Decided What Went Into The Bible?    

In the early days of the Christian Churches, every church had different stories and different texts. There were arguments over which disciple was the best and whether Jesus was a god or a man or some kind of halfsie. 

In 325 AD Emperor Constantine decided that it would be in his best interest to convert to Christianity (that new fangled religion) because of its new popularity among the people. He then ordered all the Christian bishops to come together and decide if Jesus was a god or a man or some kind of halfsie and they voted halfsie.

Much of what went into The Bible and what ended up on the cutting room floor was decided in this way, over the centuries. There were votes made by bishops. Some stuff got in, some stuff didn’t. 


One of the more controversial books in the Bible is the book of Revelation. It seemed really violent and crazy and some Bishops didn’t want it or the Old Testament to be associated with their “peace-loving” god. Some Bishops even argued that the god in the Old Testament (the god of the Jews) was not the same god as the Christian god- but when they counted up the votes the Old Testament and the book of Revelation proved popular enough to be put into the “Good Book”.  

The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor

So what types of stories didn’t make it into the Bible? There’s “The Book on Enoch” explains how Satan and his cronies rebel against God. There’s the Alphabet of Sirach, which tells of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. The Book of Jubilees” explains that 

the sons of Adam & Eve had to marry their sisters, even though the Bible has strict rules about incest. The “Testament of Solomon” is a first-person account of how King Solomon commanded demons with a magical ring, like Sauron in LOTR. Though modern Christians might not know these stories, they were once very popular. Jesus and his disciples certainly would have heard of and probably believed these stories.

And what about the New Testament? The “Gospel of James” tells us that Mary was a virgin her whole life (while The Bible tells us that Jesus had brothers and sisters). There’s “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas” where Jesus is still a kid and some other kid bumps into him and Jesus uses his god-powers to kill the kid that bumped into him. The “Gospel of Judas” tells how Jesus asked Judas to help him to be crucified and get to heaven. The “Gospel of Nicodemus” tells of Jesus’ descent into hell. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew where Jesus tames dragons. In the “Acts of Peter”, Peter flies around like Superman to prove God’s power. The “Apocalypse of Peter” which tells us that God will actually save the sinners from Hell during the end times. All together there are over 600 holy texts left out of The Bible.

In many cases it’s not even about what the bishops believed was true, in most cases it was about editing- making sure the New Testament was focused on Jesus, and not all the other stories. In other cases it’s about censorship. The bishops wanted to make some texts forbidden. They didn’t want people reading about all the crappy things that Jesus did as a kid. They didn’t want people to know that God was going to save all the sinners from Hell. They also wanted to silence smaller Christian groups as the Gnostics who wrote “The Gospel of Mary” which explains how Mary Magdalene was a very smart and outspoken woman (obviously not something that gels with the rest of the Bible). Instead they chose to paint her as a prostitute. The story of Thecla in “The Acts of Paul and Thecla” is another example of a Christian woman that was seen as “too feminist” for the Bible. 

These stories shouldn’t be laughed off. Many of these stories still exist in Jewish oral traditions called "Midrash" or Catholic Traditions, such as the Stations of the Cross. None of the gospels mention a donkey or an ox in the nativity scene, but they are sold in nativity sets because of their inclusion in “The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew”.  Many Christians know that Peter was Crucified upside down, but you won’t find it in The Bible. There are things that may have been edited out of the Biblical Gospels for being controversial such as Jesus’ possible homoerotic relationship that can be found in the Secret Gospel of Mark.

Does the Bible have Zombies?

Why, yes it does. Not only Jesus rose from the grave, but he had a whole zombie army with him. Consider Matthew 27: 51-53

"At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people."

 

Lessons To Be Learned

The large majority of Christians claim that the Bible is “God’s Word” but they don’t know what is in it and what isn’t in it. Many things people believe about hell and Satan isn’t actually in the Bible. Many things in the Bible, Christians aren’t even aware of. In such a literate world with so many Bibles out there, it’s amazing how few people actually know anything about its contents.