One day, a woman approached Jesus, broke open a box of expensive ointment, and rubbed it on his feet. Jesus was then challenged by his followers about this appalling waste of money. Surely, they said, the ointment should have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor?

Jesus said, "The poor you will have with you always."

Unfeeling?

All four Gospel writers record this story or a variant of it, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have different treatments of it. One evangelist has decided that answer to the disciples' question must be No (for whatever reason is not made clear), so he puts the question in the mouth of the betrayer of Jesus.

Perhaps what Jesus was saying was this: There are things that we must do before we start trying to relieve the sufferings of others. One is to be sure who is running the show -- us or God. The woman was quite clear who was running the show as far as she was concerned: it was God. The disciples, based on the actions of many of them at various times, seem not to have been so sure.

If we try to help others before we've determined who is in charge of our own lives, we're putting the cart before the horse. It's only by working the last three Steps or their equivalent that we can discover what is our own secret agenda and what is truly the will of God. Until we are completely clear that God is God and that our agenda must be God's and God's alone, we're going to be attempting to relieve the problems of the world, not because we are the world and the world is us, but in order to feel good about ourselves. And wanting to feel good about ourselves was what brought us all into Program in the first place.