charity as a practice was meant to work through a church community. The idea is to not be stingy with your immediate, fellow Christians in need (the Biblical term is almost always "brothers," meaning Christians. Not "people," meaning anyone a libtard can point at).

One of the things that helped the reputation of Christianity immensely was that they helped pagans as well as Christians. The difference is that this happened on a local level. The proverbial crack addict wouldn't be getting charity, at least not without mending his ways. Centralized charity works without crucial local knowledge and therefore creates such problems.