Q: Is it wrong not to help someone because it means you’ll have to sacrifice?

A: If you help another and sacrifice something in the process, you will feel good about it if it makes a positive difference at that time and into the future.

On the other hand, if your sacrifice doesn’t make a difference, you will not feel good about it.

For instance, say I have a friend, and on the last week of every month he comes to me asking for help. He needs $20 because he is out of groceries and has no money until payday. This happens time and time again, with the $20 never getting repaid. Am I really helping him, and is my sacrifice making a difference, or am I enabling him to be irresponsible with his finances and encouraging him to live beyond his means?

In this case my sacrifice of $20 is not helping create a better condition; it is just maintaining a bad one.

On the other hand, if I told him I would never give him money again, but I would teach him the basics of budgeting and pay for him to go to a money management course, my sacrifice would make a positive difference.

The right or wrong of a sacrifice is whether it will permanently improve a condition in a person’s life or assist in maintaining a bad condition in a person’s life.

The Rev. Duke Tufty

Unity Temple on the Plaza in Kansas City

A: The Rev. Pat Rush, pastor, Visitation Catholic Church, Kansas City: We generally consider the Ten Commandments as the benchmark for right and wrong, and there is no commandment that requires us to help others at a sacrificial cost to ourselves.

Jesus, however, goes beyond the commandments, telling us to love our neighbor as ourselves and teaching that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. The first letter of John tells us that we are reborn as God’s children and are called to become like him. We become like God by practicing divine virtues such as compassion, mercy, justice and—above all—love, virtues that lead us to sacrifice for others.

Driving Interstate 70 from Colorado recently, I saw a sign that warned against picking up hitchhikers because of the proximity of a prison. Certainly we must sometimes weigh the risks of helping others against our safety and other concerns. But to live as God’s children is to make sacrifices for others, such as giving time or money or donating blood or even a kidney to another in need.

Although we revere the soldier who throws himself on a grenade to protect his colleagues, few of us will literally lay down our lives for another. But all who follow Christ are called to be Good Samaritans over and over again as we grow to resemble the God whose children we are.

The Rev. Pat Rush

Visitation Catholic Church, Kansas City