“Charity Begins at Home…” or the Misadventures of Greater Lebanon

“Charity begins at home” is an apt saying for describing the missteps of Greater Lebanon – missteps that Georges Naccache captured in one cutting, lucid line: “Two negations do not make a nation.” That sentence exposes the tragic shortcomings of the first generation of Lebanese, confronted with a Greater Lebanon still struggling to assert itself.

Rooted in St. Augustine’s thought, “charity begins at home” simply means that one must meet one’s needs and obligations before seeking to help others.

The concept is sometimes distorted to justify individualist behavior, a lack of generosity, or putting personal interests ahead of a collective cause. In fact, it stems from the theology of St. Augustine (4th century) and from his notion of ordo caritatis – the order of charity. St. Augustine held that charity, or divine love, must follow a logical hierarchy: one must love God first, then love oneself in a healthy, “ordered” way, for the salvation of one’s soul, before being able to love one’s neighbor.

Drawing on Augustine, the Latin formula caritas bene ordinata incipit a se ipso later emerged in highly pragmatic fashion, from the writings of medieval jurists. Commentators invoked the maxim particularly to settle disputes between neighbors over water.

The classic case was as follows: a landowner with a spring on his property was not required to irrigate his neighbors’ fields if doing so risked leaving his own land without water. The law thus justified giving priority to one’s own vital interests.

Over the centuries, the maxim gradually moved beyond courtrooms and theological treatises and into everyday speech. By the 16th century, it had become a popular proverb used to remind people that it is natural to think of their own material and moral security before that of others.

The Lebanese Tragedy

This principle applies perfectly to Lebanon’s history. At first glance, the proverb might seem to sum up the tragedy of a system in which each community in Lebanon has historically put its own survival and security ahead of that of the central state.

But another reading is possible – and it is through this reading that Lebanon’s true tragedy comes into focus. It shows how, by favoring other causes over that of Greater Lebanon as conceived and envisioned by its founders – causes such as Palestine, Arab unity, Greater Syria, or pan-Islamism – Lebanon strayed from the principle of “well-ordered charity,” which should have meant putting “first and foremost” the well-ordered development of its own nation-state.

This reading, in fact, captures the turning point in Lebanon’s modern history. It points to the proverb’s second side: that the opposite excess – embracing universal or regional causes before consolidating one’s own foundations – drove the country to ruin.

By choosing to turn Lebanon into a “sounding board” for the Middle East conflicts mentioned above, much of the political class and the population missed out on healthy internal growth.

This “departure” from the principle of well-ordered charity is best captured by the concept of “sacrificial altruism syndrome.” In theology as in logic, one cannot give what one does not have. Lebanon, a young and fragile state emerging from 1920 and 1943, had not yet consolidated its institutions or forged a unified national identity. So, by investing heavily in transnational causes from the 1950s and 1960s onward – Nasserism, followed by armed support for the Palestinian cause through the 1969 Cairo Agreement – Lebanon acted like a weak organism attempting the impossible: carrying the burden of others. That choice shattered the fragile compromise of the National Pact and triggered the civil war in 1975.

The Dilution of the National “Self”

For “well-ordered charity” to be possible, there first had to be a clearly defined and accepted “self” – something Lebanon’s elites had failed to build, or even to want. By favoring the ideal of Greater Syria, championed by the SSNP, or that of Arab unity, part of the Lebanese population continued to regard Lebanon as an artificial entity, a mere province meant to be absorbed into a larger whole. Conversely, by favoring theocratic agendas or regional axes – such as the pro-Iranian axis – other factions moved the center of decision-making outside the country’s borders and alienated their own fellow citizens.

The result: Lebanon was managed to love itself as a sovereign nation-state. Its detractors have long portrayed Lebanese patriotism as a form of betrayal of the “greater causes,” while branding its champions as “isolationists.”

Well-ordered growth would have required giving absolute priority to developing Lebanese infrastructure, unified civic education, securing the country’s border, and strengthening the local economy. By importing other people’s wars onto its own soil, Lebanon squandered its wealth, drove its elites into exile, and tore apart its social fabric. The country became a playground for regional powers, which have waged proxy wars on its territory for decades – confirming that when one fails to tend to one’s own house first, the neighbors come into to loot it or take it over.

Herein lies the whole Lebanese paradox: the country’s history swings endlessly between an inward-looking communal selfishness – retreating into one’s sect at the expense of the state – and an outward-looking ideological altruism – favoring regional causes at the expense of the homeland. Either way, the project of a modern, strong, and prosperous Lebanese state was sacrificed.