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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A couple more early representatives:
The fiction of Charles M. Sheldon (e.g., In His Steps)
Washington Gladden’s speeches/sermons and writings…. e.g., The Church and Modern Life. (I haven’t perused this one, but probably also Applied Christianity: Moral Aspects of Social Questions)
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.
[Aaron Blumer] 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!Well said, Aaron. I will be quoting this one for a while to come.
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.)
Our hands must be open – and our minds must engage the issues you have brought up in this series. To often, it’s an either/or, but not a both/and.
I just finished doing a fast walk-through of a couple of books and my blood pressure rose noticeably (a. because of seriously messed up kingdom theology and b. because of seriously messed up economic theory…. it’s a bit off topic at this stage, but think about it: if everybody above the global median income level gave 90% of their income and stuff away rather than buying things, well over half of the world’s economy would dry up because vast quantities of giving do not employ anybody in productive labor! Trade produces a net reduction in poverty. Giving produces no change in the global level of poverty because as one got less poor another got more poor. Giving is great when responding to short term crises, and great as an expression in inner generosity of spirit, but will never relieve worldwide poverty as trade will—and already has to a vast degree.)
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.
Aaron, have you read Generous Justice by Tim Keller? I’d be interested in your thoughts on that one. If not, I’d advise you to check out http://thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/the_gospel_and_the_poor This article by Keller in Themelios. It is a digest of his views on poverty. One thing that Keller notes, speaking of Edwards, is that Christian concern for the poor is old, not new, and that, historically, Christianity has discussed it apart from questions of eschatology.
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
I definitely agree in principle with your analysis of believers’ social sensitivities toward others. My concern through the decades began with the proposals for Christian sociopolitical activism by the New Evangelical experiment. My question is regarding the implementation of a distinctly Christian, church-age program of social involvement. God’s concerns for the poor, needy, downtrodden and disenfranchised in ancient Israel was to be remedied by the theocratic state with its divinely revealed legal instrument (the Law of Moses) that included a divinely enforced civil religion (Yahweh worship). NT Christianity obviously is not a continuation of OT Mosaism in this regard but in fact mandates a separation of institutional religion from the civil state.
So, how is a church saint to implement his social generocity beyond the borders of the institutional (local) church? There is no such mandate that I can discern for the organised church to be a social watchdog and/or guardian of the civil community at large except through its proclamation ministry. The local church’s social activism appears to be towards its own (Rom 12:13; 1 Tim 5:3-16; Jam 2:15-16; 1 John 3:17) or other believers (Acts 11:27-30; Rom 15:25, 27; 2 Cor 8-9). This then seems to limit the venue for an individual believer’s sociopolitical activism to his personal role in the civil community. Yet today the organised fundamental/evangelical or Bible-believing church is getting, or is constantly urged to get, actively involved in he general culture through its personnel, general and/or missionary budget, and such.
Any thoughts on this?
Rolland D. McCune
Rolland McCune
[RM] There is no such mandate that I can discern for the organised church to be a social watchdog and/or guardian of the civil community at large except through its proclamation ministry. The local church’s social activism appears to be towards its own (Rom 12:13; 1 Tim 5:3-16; Jam 2:15-16; 1 John 3:17) or other believers (Acts 11:27-30; Rom 15:25, 27; 2 Cor 8-9). This then seems to limit the venue for an individual believer’s sociopolitical activism to his personal role in the civil community. Yet today the organised fundamental/evangelical or Bible-believing church is getting, or is constantly urged to get, actively involved in he general culture through its personnel, general and/or missionary budget, and such.Yes… lots of thoughts. But just a couple for now. I believe that even without a firm commitment to dispensationalism (though I personally have one), the differences between the order under Moses and the situation today have huge implications for how we understand texts that describe the response of God’s people to poverty… and from what I’ve seen those differences are not generally well enough accounted for in the popular lit. One book in my pile that I’ve only sampled a bit so far is Neither Poverty nor Riches by Craig L. Blomberg (a volume in the “New Studies in Biblical Theology” series edited by D.A. Carson). I’m interested in seeing if they do a better job of working through that than most of the books I’ve seen so far.
Any thoughts on this?
As for the church, I often hear views that emphasize the difference between individual responsibility in living the Christian lifestyle vs. church responsibility working corporately. Even more often, I hear/read that idea being dismissed (not usually counter-argued, just dismissed) as kind of a too convenient way to get the church off the hook (as though getting off the hook was the goal vs. the goal being to understand what Scripture reveals as the mission of the church!).
Anyway, eventually I hope to explore those questions but I want to work through some other stuff first. If what we normally think of as helping the poor doesn’t really help them anyway, it puts the whole thing in a different light. I suspect that by the time that part is sorted out, even views that see the church as having a global poverty relief responsibility would no longer find taking that work on all that appealing. It doesn’t look anything like In His Steps.
Charlie: thanks for the link. I’m definitely interested in the idea of how poverty relief looked to believers historically and especially if they were looking at it non-eschatologically.
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.
[Aaron Blumer] Trade produces a net reduction in poverty. Giving produces no change in the global level of poverty because as one got less poor another got more poor. Giving is great when responding to short term crises, and great as an expression in inner generosity of spirit, but will never relieve worldwide poverty as trade will—and already has to a vast degree.)That’s why Haiti will always be a quagmire. The attempts at relief fail because nothing improves that fact that they have insignificant resources and means of production. Fixing that will never happen by feeding the hungry. But…we feed the hungry anyway, and try to prevent more nations from turning into a Haiti.
[Rolland McCune] Aaron:Sorry to leap in the middle of your thing with Aaron. I just want to raise the point that if this is true, we Christians who lean to the conservative politically should consider stopping complaining about “government welfare programs”. It has a good Old Testament basis, and the church doesn’t have a mandate to help the poor (if you’re correct).
I definitely agree in principle with your analysis of believers’ social sensitivities toward others. My concern through the decades began with the proposals for Christian sociopolitical activism by the New Evangelical experiment. My question is regarding the implementation of a distinctly Christian, church-age program of social involvement. God’s concerns for the poor, needy, downtrodden and disenfranchised in ancient Israel was to be remedied by the theocratic state with its divinely revealed legal instrument (the Law of Moses) that included a divinely enforced civil religion (Yahweh worship). NT Christianity obviously is not a continuation of OT Mosaism in this regard but in fact mandates a separation of institutional religion from the civil state.
So, how is a church saint to implement his social generocity beyond the borders of the institutional (local) church? There is no such mandate that I can discern for the organised church to be a social watchdog and/or guardian of the civil community at large except through its proclamation ministry. The local church’s social activism appears to be towards its own (Rom 12:13; 1 Tim 5:3-16; Jam 2:15-16; 1 John 3:17) or other believers (Acts 11:27-30; Rom 15:25, 27; 2 Cor 8-9). This then seems to limit the venue for an individual believer’s sociopolitical activism to his personal role in the civil community. Yet today the organised fundamental/evangelical or Bible-believing church is getting, or is constantly urged to get, actively involved in he general culture through its personnel, general and/or missionary budget, and such.
Any thoughts on this?
Rolland D. McCune
I also ask for clarification. When you say the church has no such mandate, do you mean the “organized local body of believers as an institution” or “the believers”, or something else entirely?
So what I’m trying to say is that we should be generous people who are eager to help, but wise people who realize that what really helps may be counterintuitive (and people who recognize that inequality is not, in itself, wrong). One reason is the dependency you mentioned. Scripture upholds a work economy not a sharing economy/giving economy. Some of the literature openly aims to bring in a new order (often termed a “kingdom of God” order) in which everyone gives vast amounts of their income. The problem with this is that if their new order actually happens, there will be rapidly decreasing income to give (because production and trade are decreasing). But from a Christian point of view, the problem with this order is that it is not work based (or, as I’ve been saying it, productivity based)—because people live off of what others arbitrarily give them rather than by trading their labor for what they receive.
Mike, this is why American conservatives are still right to be down on social welfare programs. On the surface they seem to resemble the OT arrangement, but in reality they do not. In the Mosaic economy, the poor—as a group—had to work the fields and vineyards to glean what was left behind. This was the systemic “program.” Individuals would give to a. the Levites, who redistributed to the poor on a case by case basis and also b. directly to needy people as an act of generosity. But the Law was designed to avoid dependency and encourage productivity of some kind… a strong labor-reward relationship.
Our welfare programs have not really worked that way! (And our tax code works the opposite way: redistribution toward you is automatic solely on the criterion that you are not making enough money and with no regard to whether you are producing).
But I agree with your argument that the concept of government led and funded welfare programs in a setting where there is no theocracy makes sense. The problem has been one of a. properly valuing productivity/work and b. intelligently designing programs to discourage long term dependence.
On a positive note, I am seeing more writers recognize the latter in the books I’m reading also—some in surprising places. That’s encouraging to me.
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.
[Aaron Blumer] Mike, this is why American conservatives are still right to be down on social welfare programs. On the surface they seem to resemble the OT arrangement, but in reality they do not. In the Mosaic economy, the poor—as a group—had to work the fields and vineyards to glean what was left behind. This was the systemic “program.” Individuals would give to a. the Levites, who redistributed to the poor on a case by case basis and also b. directly to needy people as an act of generosity. But the Law was designed to avoid dependency and encourage productivity of some kind… a strong labor-reward relationship.Aaron, my point was primarily made in response to Rolland McCune’s post. Many times…seriously, many many times, I have heard Fundamentalist preachers say that government welfare is wrong and before the FDR era, such things were handled by the church. They usually add that it can be better handled by the church, closer to the people in question, more able to right-size the aid and evaluate the willingness to work. They seem to advocate a return to those days — and that if social welfare programs were gone, taxes would be lower, and giving to churches would increase so they could do these charitable deeds. It appears that he would disagree with their suggestion.
Our welfare programs have not really worked that way! (And our tax code works the opposite way: redistribution toward you is automatic solely on the criterion that you are not making enough money and with no regard to whether you are producing).
Rolland McCune
Roger Carlson, Pastor Berean Baptist Church
Rolland McCune
I was not clear with my question. I am saying let the facility be available to the local church. But I am also saying use it as an outreach. IMO, we are already doing this with schools and VBS programs (people in my community see VBS as a babysitting service, we see it as Gospel opportunities). So if we targeted a need in a community and tied to the Gospel, I don’t see it as anything more than an expanded roll. Just like missionaries having an orphanage tied to the Gospel in a local church setting, maybe a church could have a facility where they are meeting a need, but requiring church attendance as part of the program. Initially, I was uncomfotable with this idea, but as I started thinking about some of the things we do as local churches, why not do something that will help the community and give direct contact with the lost in order to make disciples? I see a danger here, but the danger is removed when the Gospel is kept front and center. Please tell me where I am going wrong.
Thank you!
Roger Carlson, Pastor Berean Baptist Church
Discussion