Poverty: Why Should We Care?
Should Christians work to relieve the suffering of poverty? Near the end of the 19th century, proponents of the social gospel proposed a new answer to that question.1 Part of their answer wasn’t new at all—the idea that Christians should help the poor and bring the gospel to them. But the social gospel effectively claimed that relieving suffering in the world is the gospel.
Naturally, Christians who understood their Bibles ran in the opposite direction, aiming to bring the true gospel into sharp contrast with this new distortion. But in the process, many eventually embraced an attitude of total indifference to the poor and, worse, became habitually hostile toward any organized Christian effort to fight poverty.
In recent years things have gotten messier yet. In their haste to reject unbiblical reactions to the social gospel, many evangelicals (and some fundamentalists) seem to be over-correcting (“anti-anti-social-gospelism”?). They are rejecting the central error of the social gospel while accepting other components of the social liberalism that bred it.2
This series aims to help readers recognize and properly reject not only the social gospel but also other errors that have become ubiquitous assumptions of our times.
So far, we’ve briefly considered three questions:
- What is poverty? (relative versus absolute poverty)
- Why are the poor poor? (a survey of the causes of poverty)
- Why shouldn’t the poor be poor? (why believers should fight poverty)
It’s about God
Christians should seek to relieve poverty because (1) God designed mankind to be productive and because (2) God has called believers to love their neighbors as themselves (see Part 3). But a third reason appears as a theme running throughout Scripture—a reason linked directly to God’s character. Here’s a sample (emphasis added).
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. 18 He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. 19 Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (NKJV, Deut. 10:17–19)
He who oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker, But he who honors Him has mercy on the needy. (Prov. 14:31)
You shall not pervert justice due the stranger or the fatherless, nor take a widow’s garment as a pledge. 18 But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this thing. 19 “When you reap your harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. 20 When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. 21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. 22 And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this thing. (Deut. 24:17–22)
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. (2 Cor. 8:9)
The message of these passages is powerful. Believers must be generous people because their God possesses the attributes of goodness and love. In the words of David Martin Lloyd-Jones, “the goodness of God is that perfection of God which prompts Him to deal bounteously and in a kindly way with all His creatures.” God’s love is closely related. Again, Lloyd-Jones says it well: “love is that attribute in God by which He is eternally moved to communicate Himself to others.”3 Christians are bearers of God’s name and own the solemn duty and privilege of expressing God’s abundantly generous, out-reaching character by our response to needy people.
Implications
This principle makes me squirm. What Christian doesn’t rejoice that God is lavishly, almost recklessly, generous? But His generous nature doesn’t call me to merely behave generously; it demands that my affections mirror His—that I actually be generous, that I desire to give what I have to others.4 The act of giving is the easy part!
Though the goals of productivity and love of neighbor demand true, long-term effectiveness in our poverty-relief efforts, the calling to be generous in our affections means a Christian should never find himself confronted with a needy fellow man, feel reluctance to help, then rationalize the reluctance on the grounds that giving is unlikely to truly help in the long run. Rather, the sequence ought to be that we are people of generous character first, encounter a need, desire to give, then wrestle with the question of what will truly help.
The call to mirror God’s generous character also has powerful implications for the problems of greed and materialism. The Deuteronomy passages in particular indicate that being generous is therapeutic: “you shall remember…therefore, I command you to do” and “therefore, love the stranger.” A generous spirit counters the problems of greed and what we loosely call “materialism” because, in reality, these are problems of the affections. If generosity isn’t exactly the opposite of greed, it is certainly incompatible with it. And though the act of giving can be as materialistic as the act of hoarding, loving—in the sense of reaching out to “communicate ourselves” to another eternal soul—is profoundly anti-materialistic.
The social gospel errs in redefining or ignoring holiness, sin, wrath and redemption. Social liberalism errs also in asserting that we should fight poverty in order to right the “wrong” of economic inequality. Popular sentimentalized and sloganized social liberalism errs in insisting that helping the poor is simply a matter of wealth transfer. But Scripture reveals that the causes of (and solutions to) poverty are complex and rooted in human sinfulness. Scripture also reveals that the reasons for Christian involvement in poverty relief are rooted in the will and character of God.
Many important questions remain. What do “greed, materialism and consumerism” have to do with the poverty problem? What did Jesus really teach about wealth and poverty? What kind of continuing threat does the social gospel pose? How does our understanding of the kingdom of God relate to our views on poverty and social justice? What’s the role of the church in poverty relief vs. the role of the believing individual? Lord willing, we’ll explore these and others as the series continues.
Notes
1 Primary sources include Walter Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis and Theology for the Social Gospel. The work of Harry Emerson Fosdick (e.g., Hope of the World) is also representative.
2 A couple of recent evangelical examples: Tim Keller and “Social Justice,” Evangelical Left Leader. Though he isn’t saying all the same things as these others, I would also put David Platt’s book Radical in this category.
3 Both quotations are from Great Doctrines of the Bible, vol. 1, p.74.
4 Maybe the spiritual gift of giving (Rom. 12:8) includes being wired this way by default. My default wiring is to want to keep my stuff.
Aaron Blumer Bio
Aaron Blumer, SharperIron’s second publisher, is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in a small town in western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored Grace Baptist Church for thirteen years. He is employed in customer service for UnitedHealth Group and teaches high school rhetoric (and sometimes logic and government) at Baldwin Christian School.
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[Joel S] With the urban poor, the Christians who have relationships with them (usually poor or lower-middle class) are ones who can get in their business and some level of accountability, but do not have the skill resources to actually help them. However, those who have the skills set and resources (more upper middle class and rich)to actually help them do not have the relationships and accountability which they need. That is why you need a group of people, rather than just one-to-one individual.I think this is a solid point. But I think we also need to recognize that the question of “group vs. individual” is a different question from “church vs. individual” or “church vs. group.” That is, granting that coordinated effort is required is not the same as establishing that the church ought to the coordinating body.
[Joel S] The question that comes to mind is: is helping the poor individually prescriptive or descriptive in the New Testament? I find it quite inconsistent that we can celebrate holidays that are not described in the New Testament but draw a line in the sand when it comes to helping the poor as a body of believers “doing good to all, especially the household of faith.” I know Dr. Bauder deals with this, but I still found it inconsistent.I’m not sure the two compare very meaningfully. That is, we’re talking about holidays that happen once or twice a year vs. a significant long term shift in the church’s resources 7x24x365… in a climate where Christian thought is heavily tilted toward social gospel influence and messed up kingdom theologies. So the stakes are not nearly as high in the case of observing a holiday or two.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Kent McCune]I read the PDF, and I noticed that it included no Scripture reference giving a mandate to the church as an institutional body. In fact, it took commands to individual believers and expanded them to the local church:
Charlie – There was a good discussion on this very question between Doran, Bixby, and others a few years back on Chris Anderson’s blog. I don’t have time to find the exact thread, but it occurred during the time of Katrina when Bixby’s church was heavily involved in mercy ministry there. Doran gave a very good rationale for why his church has a school, mainly centered in the discipleship mandate of the Great Commission. He also wrote an article available here, http://www.dbts.edu/pdf/shortarticles/Local_Church_and_Christian_Educat….
[Doran Article] Education was compulsory through 12th grade, so believers were required to subject their children to an education that, by its rejection of God, would potentially undermine biblical truth. Families saw this as a genuine threat to their responsibility to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4). Therefore, congregations moved to establish schools that would openly acknowledge God’s place as Maker and Master over creation.Note how “families” becomes “congregations” in the last sentence. The clear implication is that congregations can assume at an organizational level a responsibility dispersed among its members.
Also, Doran doesn’t say that Christian schools are necessary to the Great Commission, for such an assertion would entail foolish conclusions, such as that every local church that doesn’t have a Christian school is failing its Great Commission mandate. Rather, he says that a Christian school can be helpful to the church in several ways that tie back to its mandate and purposes.
After reading that, I fail to see how anyone who agrees with Doran could prohibit church-run benevolence agencies. We know that individual Christians are called to be benevolent. (In fact, Galatians 2:10 strongly suggests that at least intra-Christian benevolence is a crucial aspect of the apostolic ministry.) We know that well-executed benevolence programs assist the church in discipling members and reaching the lost. So, since believers are called to benevolence and since it is helpful to the church’s overall mission, we should not prohibit churches from establishing church-led organizations that promote it.
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Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
in a climate where Christian thought is heavily tilted toward social gospel influence and messed up kingdom theologies. So the stakes are not nearly as high in the case of observing a holiday or two.Individuals vs. church in helping the poor is not the deeper issue for whether Christian thought is heavily tilted towards social gospel influence or messed up kingdom theologies. Church history before the liberalism and the social gospel began taking hold in the late 19th century proves otherwise. From the second century through the middle 19th century, there are numerous examples of individual churches (as well as individuals) that fed the poor or helped the needy and did not get mired up in liberalism. They made sure that the gospel was central. However, it was primarily liberal theology…the denial of the fundamentals of the faith that led to the social gospel, not some individual vs. church strategy of helping the poor. By the way, I write some about this in the current issue of the Baptist Bulletin.
http://baptistbulletin.org/?p=15836
The danger does not come from churches providing a community-wide food pantry for the poor or helping single mothers find employment. Rather, the hazard sets in when we let our theological guard down by not aggressively applying the doctrines of our faith to the social crises of our day. If churches are to create compassionate social ministries in their communities, they must have a robust theology actively functioning as boundary lines. If not, the social gospel will eventually do away with the good news that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”I do not deny that an over-realized kingdom theology or even a church-wide emphasis on helping the needy may be a characteristic of a church that holds or leans towards the social gospel. But my experience (which should account for something since I have regularly interacted with many hundreds of evangelical urban ministries throughout North America) has shown that it is the softening or even denial of original sin and total depravity, of penal-substitutionary atonement, and our view of final judgment and other essential doctrines that cause the social gospel slide.
[Charlie]Charlie – You should read the Anderson blog discussion. They discussed your objections.[Kent McCune]I read the PDF, and I noticed that it included no Scripture reference giving a mandate to the church as an institutional body. In fact, it took commands to individual believers and expanded them to the local church:
Charlie – There was a good discussion on this very question between Doran, Bixby, and others a few years back on Chris Anderson’s blog. I don’t have time to find the exact thread, but it occurred during the time of Katrina when Bixby’s church was heavily involved in mercy ministry there. Doran gave a very good rationale for why his church has a school, mainly centered in the discipleship mandate of the Great Commission. He also wrote an article available here, http://www.dbts.edu/pdf/shortarticles/Local_Church_and_Christian_Educat….[Doran Article] Education was compulsory through 12th grade, so believers were required to subject their children to an education that, by its rejection of God, would potentially undermine biblical truth. Families saw this as a genuine threat to their responsibility to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4). Therefore, congregations moved to establish schools that would openly acknowledge God’s place as Maker and Master over creation.Note how “families” becomes “congregations” in the last sentence. The clear implication is that congregations can assume at an organizational level a responsibility dispersed among its members.
Also, Doran doesn’t say that Christian schools are necessary to the Great Commission, for such an assertion would entail foolish conclusions, such as that every local church that doesn’t have a Christian school is failing its Great Commission mandate. Rather, he says that a Christian school can be helpful to the church in several ways that tie back to its mandate and purposes.
After reading that, I fail to see how anyone who agrees with Doran could prohibit church-run benevolence agencies. We know that individual Christians are called to be benevolent. (In fact, Galatians 2:10 strongly suggests that at least intra-Christian benevolence is a crucial aspect of the apostolic ministry.) We know that well-executed benevolence programs assist the church in discipling members and reaching the lost. So, since believers are called to benevolence and since it is helpful to the church’s overall mission, we should not prohibit churches from establishing church-led organizations that promote it.
Kent McCune I Peter 4:11
[Joel] Individuals vs. church in helping the poor is not the deeper issue for whether Christian thought is heavily tilted towards social gospel influence or messed up kingdom theologies. Church history before the liberalism and the social gospel began taking hold in the late 19th century proves otherwise. From the second century through the middle 19th century, there are numerous examples of individual churches (as well as individuals) that fed the poor or helped the needy and did not get mired up in liberalism. They made sure that the gospel was central. However, it was primarily liberal theology…the denial of the fundamentals of the faith that led to the social gospel, not some individual vs. church strategy of helping the poor. By the way, I write some about this in the current issue of the Baptist Bulletin.We’re planning to post the BB article soon. Any day now.
I wouldn’t say that “individual vs. church” is the deeper issue either. But it is a factor. I’m actually on a journey in all this and haven’t worked my down to a fresh look at the church vs. individual quesiton… so what I’m expressing here is just where I lean so far. I suspect that framing the issue in terms of “individual vs. church” is probably not very helpful ultimately. One reason is that it improperly describes the options. The choices are something more like…
- Individual acting independently on case by case basis
- Churches acting independently on case by case basis
- Churches acting systematically/programmatically
- Para-church/secular humanitarian groups acting programmatically
- Churches acting in concert w/parachurch organizations
Then you have an array of choices involving the philosophy of “what works.”
I’m sure there are ways to summarize the options, but I haven’t personally thunk it out that far yet. I’m sure others have. I’d like to sort of work through it somewhat independently while reading around enough to not be completely stumbling in the dark. (Whether that produces better results in the end is pretty debatable but it’s more fun!…. but a better reason for that approach is that it—hopefully—allows a fresh look at the biblical data to weigh more heavily in the process)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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