Christianity, morality, and Mark Zuckerberg's enormous generosity

When I found out that Mark Zuckerberg would give away 99 percent of his wealth, the first thing I thought about was France's mourning ceremony for the victims of the recent Paris attacks.

Let me explain.

The mourning ceremony included music, and the first song was "Quand on n'a que l'amour" ("When Love Is All You Have") by the timeless French troubadour Jacques Brel. It is one of the most moving songs I know. Seriously, listen to it in its original version. Even if you don't speak French, Brel's voice will grab you by the throat. It is a paean to reckless love, love in the face of all adversity, a love that defeats everything:

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Many of my countrymen reacted with detached irony to the selection of this song for the mourning ceremony. Isn't the song too mawkish for the occasion? And isn't there a cognitive dissonance in playing this pacifist song as the French government is conducting airstrikes on Raqqa and rounding up Islamists by the hundreds under emergency laws?

But I couldn't help but be struck: To anyone who knows history, there is an abiding mystery here. What is it that moves a country, any country, but especially a deeply secular country, to respond to a savage, traitorous attack with an official expression of love, even if that expression is belied by fact?

Historically, the answer is clear. The conceptual grammar that makes love a thinkable response to treachery would have been impossible without the historical role of Christianity. No other worldview places love at the center of its conceptual universe, concerned as it is with the story of a God whose love took him to the Cross, a love which is the very nature of the Creator, and which therefore becomes the meaning of life.

I am not saying that other cultures have no notion of love, or are immoral. Ancient Pagan society extolled justice, excellence, "pietas," which meant both religious piety and a general faithfulness in dealing with others, and even, in some of its greatest philosophical traditions, detachment from worldly goods and "philanthropia," care for one's community. Buddhism and Confucianism similarly extol impressive virtue. But it nonetheless remains that, as a matter of historical fact, only Christianity as a worldview placed love, love even at the point of unreasonableness — love even in response to a terrorist attack — at the center of its conceptual grammar, as the meaning of life and the yardstick by which all other acts and thoughts must be judged. And such a conceptual grammar — as the response of pagan writers to Christianity shows — would be simply unthinkable in any conceivable world, no matter its other virtues, where Christianity had not emerged.

All of which brings me to Zuckerberg's 99 percent gift. What is it that pushes a man who is clearly secular, or at least who has not made any public remark about religion that anyone has noticed, and whose every public pronouncement about ethical matters has been based on the vague and insipid utilitarianism of our business overclass, to give away 99 percent of his fortune? Well, here goes: Even if Zuckerberg has never read a line in the New Testament, never heard any of the countless stories of saints who gave all their money to the poor, this action remains one which is only thinkable in a cultural context that has been historically shaped by Christianity.

Which, as I say, presents Christians with both a puzzle and a challenge.

The puzzle is that sometimes, to a Christian, the modern, secular, progressive, and humanistic social ethic we are surrounded by all too often looks like Wile E. Coyote running on air because he hasn't noticed he's off the cliff. How is it that this recognizably Christian conceptual and moral grammar persists without its metaphysical and spiritual underpinnings?

Sometimes secular people are better at being Christian than Christians. François Hollande, the secular socialist, much-married and much-mistressed, presided over an official ceremony that responded to a terrorist attack with a hymn of love. I have no doubt that, in previous centuries (with the possible exception of Saint Louis), His Most Christian Majesty the King of France would have had a very different official reaction, and that he would have suffered no public rebuke for responding to obvious treachery with merely a call for the naked justice of the sword, without even a public proclamation of the centrality of love.

Zuckerberg's gift is in the context of the movement started by Bill Gates to get billionaires to give up more of their money. Now, Bill Gates has cited his Catholic faith as an inspiration for his decision to devote the second half of his life to philanthropy, but while many billionaires in Gates' club probably have religious motives, many others undoubtedly have purely secular motives, and I can't think of a comparable example of Christian generosity.

This is the promise and the challenge of Christianity in the West. On the one hand, it seems that because so much of our moral and conceptual grammar is shared with the secular world, more fruitful dialogue is possible. On the other, the reality seems to be more that the secular world feels that not only has Christianity been tried and failed, the modern doesn't need it, since (apparently) it can articulate a conceptual grammar of love with no metaphysical underpinnings. At least, in the Pagan world, Christianity was so different that it couldn't help but make an impression. And this, in turn, makes the challenge much more pointed for Christians. It's not just about trying to find the right language, it is about finding ways to demonstrate in deed how Christian love is unlike other kinds of love. And that's a lot harder. Ninety-nine percent harder, maybe.