A preacher once said "if you haven't been to the presence of God, you certainly can't bring others to the presence of God" in literal terms it means that you can't give what you never had, I can see a person working in a mall who's always looking tired, harsh and frustrated and as a customer I just insult the person and also return back same energy but when I am also opportune to work in such place, I would get to understand how and why the attendant is always worked up, so when next I go there as a customer I can relate to the stress and frustration such person is going through.
In essence the picture I am trying to paint out here is if you haven't gone through the lens or corridor of poverty before, if you haven't gone to school knowing fully well that you would be chased out of school that day because of unpaid school fees, if you haven't skipped meals purposely because there was nothing to eat, if you had never had to manage repeating clothes every Christmas just because your parents can't afford to jeopardize paying your next term school fees over Christmas clothes, if you hadn't brushed with salt in your house for days just because there was no money for a toothpaste, if you haven't been through such similar pain you can't relate to even want to render help to others.
There was a time in my life where I was advised to prospone my education for a bit because my parent couldn't afford to train us all in school and I had to allow my younger ones go first but I Insisted on still going with the backup that I would train myself in school, I juggled between jobs just to raise the money to write my second WAEC not to talk more of university expenses, so having looked backed at what I went through I have told myself that I would be the reason why people would have the opportunity to also go to school one day in the future, people who have lost hope, people who have been written off by the society, people who have dreams and ambition but struggle to achieve, I want to be the reason why they have hope to live again.
I believe charity should be left for those who are led to help, because when you start making charity to be an eye service thing then the rewards that naturally follows giving would no longer be there, sometimes we even give because we felt it so heavy in our heart to do so and just as you know "Givers never lack" but you see this Giver that give for public validation or clout or popularity or for social media, these kind of people's reward has already been given by the applauds of men and it ends there, some other times you can help someone and they use that help to plot evil against you and this can be possible when you just give without precision or instructions.
So my take on this is Noo, charity shouldn't be made compulsory but rather it should be encouraged, when someone is forced to give there is then no essence of giving again, with these few notably points of mine, I hope I haven't confused you but rather convinced you that the main idea of charity is voluntary, willingly and as the spirit leads rather than compulsory and pretending all over the place, hoping to see more of you next time 😘.
All images used here belongs to me.