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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My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
So, you are definitely correct, in my view, to note that some of the things local churches do appear to have pragmatic motivations, even as noble as reaching the unreached. I am still uncomfortable with those ideas. Some of these efforts eventually become what seem like purely humantarian ministries; others appear to be such from the very beginning. I raised these concerns in Promise Unfulfilled, chaps 18 and 19.
Rolland McCune
The organized (local) church has no social mandate as an organization.Rolland, I am curious what you think of Gal. 2:10 as a form of a social mandate (albeit primarily within the community of the church) In the context of this passage, the apostle Paul gives his testimony of his salvation and then his calling to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. It was then agreed to by other prominent apostles (James, Peter, John) that they would preach to the Jews and that Paul and Barnabas would continue preaching the gospel and planting churches among the Gentiles, but with one other mandate: that is
“To remember the Poor, the very thing that I was eager to do.” Later on in Gal. 6:10, Paul qualifies how to do good, which would include helping the poor. “
“So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially to those who are the household of faith.”That there is to be a pecking order when helping those in need. First to those who are believers in Christ, then to everyone (others).
Also, if you leave out those outside the church community, how do you interpret the parable of the good Samaritan? It seems as if “Loving Your Neighbor,” especially those we’d rather not love is an essential aspect of Christianity that the church was to emulate, especially if we are to “teach them all that I have commanded You….”
By the way, I get that the over-realized kingdom view as the church’s calling to help the poor and wrong the rights of society has some major flaws. Missionary historian Stephen Neill once quipped that “when everything is mission, than nothing is mission” which seems to be the fruits of an over-realized kingdom mission theology. I find it quite humorous that some of these churches end up with ministries that line up with their pet social causes. I’ve seen saving the environment and climate change, I’ve seen third world debt forgiveness, and I’ve even seen building peace initiatives to counter the “myth of redemptive violence.” This is not just a problem on Christian evangelical left, but it is a problem in the Christian evangelical right as churches organize and take up the culture war and fight against, for example, gay marriage.
I also get that in the Old Testament with Israel’s theocracy and it’s covenanted, land-based, tribal society is quite different than the church communities that Paul was planting in the New Testament. And that it is quite a jump to imply third world debt forgiveness from the Year of Jubilee or the elimination of poverty because Duet. 15:4 states that “there shall be no poor among you.”
My problem with your social action chapters in “A Promise Unfulfilled” is that you seem to make the Kingdom Theology or misinterpretation of O.T. passages as the main reason that evangelical churches slide towards the social gospel. Now an over-realized kingdom or a misinterpretation of O.T. passages certainly is part of the equation. However, in my 21 years of doing urban ministry where I have actually seen several churches and para-church ministries slide into the social gospel, it was their changing views on original sin and total depravity, the atonement, final judgment, authority of Scripture, and etc.. that did them in. It wasn’t because they opened a food pantry for the poor in their neighborhood to fight hunger because they wanted to demonstrate a present reality of the kingdom.
1. The Galatians texts are not sufficiently clear so as to necessitate a “mandate” for the collective church to aid the poor of the general populace; i.e., outside the “household of faith” becomes a personal salt and light concern. And, there are probably scores of commands Jesus gave that the church cannot fulfill; e.g., the expression of Good Samaritan neighbor love would become a personal, individual wisdom issue and not a corporate universal commission.
2. Promise Unfulfilled dealt with the New Evangelicalism’s call for sociopolitical activism based on Carl Henry’s, and others’, realized eschatology and their adamant rejection of dispensationalism. Many others morphed into the social gospel for different reasons, to be sure.
Rolland McCune
A person calls my church. They need $20.00 for baby formula, claiming they were robbed the night before, and won’t get more “cash assistance” from the state until Monday. I answer “I’m sorry. We’re a church. We don’t do that kind of thing. You’ll have to ask one of our members directly.”
They then say “How can I find out who a member is?”
I reply “We’re not allowed to release member lists to non-members.”
I have acted in a way contrary to Christian charity. The expectation of the culture and Scripture is “Christians ought to help.” I have let a procedural distinction prevent me from helping, rather than cutting the red tape for the needy person who doubtless would not understand that distinction.
Let the conversation, though, continue…
They say “Aren’t you a member?”
I say “Oh, OK. Good point. I’ll help you.”
I then do the Christian thing and give them $20.00.
The problem is that I get 10 calls like this per week. All credible. So I’m losing 1/4 of my pay to helping the needy each week. I can’t afford it. The fact is that since I am a pastor, and the most visible Christian within our particular assembly, a disproportionate percentage of the benevolence requests come directly to me, rather than being evenly distributed by chance throughout the congregation. So I meet with the board, set up a fund to reimburse me for my aid to the poor. And the effect is that I’m still doing church-level benevolence — but as a pastoral reimbursement.
Now, let us imagine that the 10 calls per week also represent substantial investment of time in evaluating the reality of the claims, delivering the assistance, etc. So, once again, I approach the church board, and ask for help. Now, in order to fulfill the book of Acts’ model, the deacons take on this burden from me, so that I can give myself to prayer and the ministry of the Word. Now, I’m really doing a benevolence ministry, just out of practicalities.
Rolland, I argue that in a culture where the needy call the church asking for help, we cannot practically fulfill the demand of Scripture that we give to the needy and turn those requests away.
I suggest that your distinction, while almost certainly technically and Biblically correct, has less real-world relevance than you might think. The only way to implement it is if all Christians everywhere were so lavish in their giving that people stopped thinking of the church as the place to call for help, and started contacting individual believers down the street from them.
I assume that we could think of other examples in which a mandate given to the individual believer actually, practically, requires a heavy investment of time/money by the church to assist believers in this happening. I have one friend who believes and argues convincingly, for instance, that the Great Commission is given to individuals. But nobody would argue that churches cannot do evangelism as a corporate enterprise. Even my friend wouldn’t argue that.
To take an individual believer’s responsibility and “institutionalize it” into the church has clear risks. We wouldn’t do it with private prayer or personal devotional activity. And one lady’s backyard Bible study for neighborhood children need not become an official ministry of my church in order for us to approve of her work. But in cases where believers are commanded to interact uniformly with the world in a particular manner, per Scripture, the church can (and perhaps will) become involved in it.
And, there are probably scores of commands Jesus gave that the church cannot fulfill; e.g., the expression of Good Samaritan neighbor love would become a personal, individual wisdom issue and not a corporate universal commission.Can the individual response of a believer to the commands off Jesus be divorced from the corporate context of His body? Rom. 6:1-23 1 Cor 12:24-26, Gal. 5:13-6:10.
If the characteristics of the followers of Jesus are X, Y & Z, then the church will demonstrate those characteristics. A specific “collective mandate” regarding meeting the needs of the poor is not necessary for the church proper if compassion for the poor is an individual characteristic of a disciple. In other words, i don’t need a command to go to the poor, it’s biblical.
To me the question is not whether Christians, and therefore the church show compassion for the poor, the question is whether the church should install programmatic features or official ministries that funnel church members, their energy and resources into formal “justice ministries.” And that answer is probably found in autonomous discretion of each body.
I am a more than a little jumpy at the idea that churches at home and abroad “have to act in ways that might seem unusual to us [unbiblical?] due to cultural considerations our culture imposes on us” to carry out its mission practically.” That would be very frustrating I would think.
Rolland McCune
Rolland McCune
[Rolland McCune] Mike…Again, I will give a short answer; Aaron’s series will doubtlessly uncover these kinds of questions. I would only suggest that there surely is a way to collect private funds which you could dole out according to pre-arranged, biblical, prudent rubrics without going through the missionary budget or deacon’s fund. These $$ probably would not be “tax deductible,” but why should that retard the Samaritan principle of neighbor love? The practical Haldeman/Ehrlichman question pops up often: “will it play in Peoria?” or, in Goodells, or anywhere?So, I’m going to collect funds through another entire operation — not “tax deductible” (by which I guess you intend them not to be funnelled through the church at all) — for purposes of benevolence? I suppose I could go beyond what you’re saying and establish an entirely different non-profit for donations to help those from outside the church, allowing them to be tax-deductible. But is this not merely a simple ruse? A lawyer could easily pierce the corporate veil and reveal that our new entity to help the needy is just an arm of our church.
I am a more than a little jumpy at the idea that churches at home and abroad “have to act in ways that might seem unusual to us [unbiblical?] due to cultural considerations our culture imposes on us” to carry out its mission practically.” That would be very frustrating I would think.
I still stumble over the practicalities here. We have a single benevolence fund. It is supported by designated giving for that purpose only. We give emphasis to those who are “of the household of faith” first. You would desire, then, an entirely seperate fund for believer and unbeliever?
I also would note that those in the “household of faith” and those not in it can sometimes be a fuzzy boundary. One of our most common calls for benevolence are from people who were associated with our church as children or teens, and left as they entered adulthood. My personal position would suggest that the vast majority of these are unbelievers, not merely backslidden. But the fact that they turn back to us, now, tempts me to do the 90&9 thing and grant them provisional sheep status in my mind for a little while so I can determine what’s going on .
I get what you’re saying, though. I understand your concern about going beyond the strictly defined church mandates.
You’ve got me thinking.
I know that there are many for whom this would only be an excuse to keep their hands closed to others. So I would strongly urge that those who adopt this position should heavily emphasize personal benevolence by believers.
So why schools, but not local benevolence programs? I suppose I could ask similar questions about Christian camps whose activities extend beyond the purely spiritual, or about church bookstores.
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
Rolland McCune
[Mike] 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.I understand. I can’t speak for Dr.M, but I’ve never really been a big fan of the “government is doing this because the church failed to do it” reasoning (well, OK, not “never”… but it’s been decades since I entertained that idea). I’m also not a big fan of the whole “faith based” linking of government to charities that Pres. G W Bush promoted.
I do agree with the logic that says “local is better,” though. It’s just that I’m not yet convinced the mission of the church has much to do with this, though what I’m doing the last couple months (and still in progress) is taking a fresh look at it all. I haven’t re-examined the ecclesiology yet. But my bias is toward a much narrower focus for “the church acting as the church.” Not that it can’t be involved in ministries of compassion, but it’s important how we sort out why they should be involved and how much (the latter tends to be answered in part by the former I think)
[Roger, I think] Here is a quick question. Why is it wrong to use social things in the local church when it is tied to the Gospel when we do it anyway in other areas? Or more pointedly, Why is it OK for a church with a school to build a 5 million dollar gymn but not to build a 2 million dollar one but then spend 3 million on say transitional housing where the residents that participate in the transitional housing be required to be in church? In our circles, the former would be fine, but the latter would give pause.I’ll take quick stab at this one. I think the question is a good one but not really answerable without asking more basic questions first. That is, “why not?” is not a good place to start. A better place is, “What has God told the church it’s mission in the world is?” And then go from there to consider the why’s and why not’s.
The subject of what business a church has building a school is another topic, really, but suffice it to say that churches that do that tend to have a rationale that is pretty closely connected to their understanding of what the church’s mission is… and those would “give pause” on the housing project tend to do so because they have trouble seeing how it connects to the purpose of the church in the world.
By the same token, there are church’s a plenty that would jump at the housing project and hesitate a great deal on the school… also because of their understanding of the mission of the church in the world.
(FWIW, I think it’s better for schools to be independent of churches as board operated non profits)
But there’s a second layer even where understandings of mission are similar, and that has to do with beliefs about how mission is best accomplished. So sometimes even very similar views of mission have very dissimilar views of how to use resources.
[micah] Can the individual response of a believer to the commands of Jesus be divorced from the corporate context of His body?In a way, yes.
There are commands that are clearly addressed to the body and commands that are not. For example, Jesus said to pay taxes. Do we believe the church should pay taxes?
I often hear people express the idea that there is no difference between believers acting individually and “the church” acting, but there is. An analogy (imperfect as all analogies are) might be the difference between all the members of a ball team attending the funeral of a coach who died vs. “the team” attending the funeral. The difference may seem subtle, but it becomes important when deciding how team resources will be used… and what the team does when other team members die. The team’s purpose is to win ball games not to attend funerals. So the players may or may not attend either the former coach’s funeral or a fellow player’s funeral. It would be a bit weird for the team to add “funeral attendance” to it’s purpose statement or require everybody on the team to attend one.
It probably happens, but it’s kind of strange and some on the team would probably rightly object.
So questions of purpose apply to “the church acting as the church” differently than they do to individuals. There is overlap of course, but church purposes are best identified by looking at texts that are about the church and its purposes. Certainly they are not identical to family purposes/responsibilities, for example, and individual purposes/responsibilities.
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.
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.
When I have time, I will share how the church plant that I am part of deals with this because they are partnering with our ministry UTM (which is a para-church) allowing our ministry to take the lead when it comes to helping the poor in our community in a way that adorns the gospel so that they can really concentrate on their mission to make disciples………….
[Charlie] I don’t know of any place where the institutional church has a mandate to educate children, especially in math, science, etc. Almost all agree that the command is given to families, who delegate that responsibility as they see fit. Yet, conservative Christians of widely varying polities have embraced church-run Christian schools, entities that are ever so slightly organizationally distinct from the churches that run them. I have never heard a Fundamental Baptist say that those schools are illegitimate. In fact, I have sometimes heard the opposite, that all “para-church” organizations must be under the direct supervision of the church to be legitimate.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….
So why schools, but not local benevolence programs? I suppose I could ask similar questions about Christian camps whose activities extend beyond the purely spiritual, or about church bookstores.
Kent McCune I Peter 4:11
There are commands that are clearly addressed to the body and commands that are not. For example, Jesus said to pay taxes. Do we believe the church should pay taxes?Churches do pay payroll taxes, taxes on purchased goods and certain municipality taxes & fees, i.e. water runoff fees, vehicle taxes. Further, wasn’t Jesus’ larger point more along the lines of “follow your governmental regulations and the laws of the land.” So churches do so by becoming non-profit organizations. Would there be another command you can think of that should not be demonstrated in a corporate context?
Roland…
Micah…I don’t follow your thinking as to how commands regarding individual obedience thereby automatically or simultaneously necessitates the corporate (local) church’s participation, thus obviating the need for a “specific corpotate mandate.”The church proper does not need a mandate because the body will act according to the characteristics of its members. The characteristics of Christians include love, compassion and tenderness for the poor. What I mean by “programmatic features” is essentially a formal ministry in a local body created from a collective burden to minister. Therefore they express this burden, which began as an individual response, by collectively sharing resources.
What i am sensing that may be the disconnect in our discussion is in how we approach the term “command.” In you guys’ line of reasoning, there seems to be a measure of simply following commands as if issued by a drill sergeant…”if Jesus didn’t tell the church to do it, the church doesn’t do it. That command is applicable only to individuals.” This appears quite formulaic and subject to a very wooden hermeneutic in ecclesiology.
I believe we, individuals, respond to His commands, not as a list of rules or guidelines, but as a way of life. That is, our sanctification, a process best described as organic rather than systematic, is reflective of our response to Jesus’ teaching. Yet this teaching that we adhere to individually is delivered primarily in a corporate context full of gathered individuals. Those maturing individuals will reflect the characteristics of sanctification, and will by nature act both singularly and in manners of plurality. The leaders of the assembly are charged with directing the resources of the body and guiding those pluralized activities. But they will happen because a good tree will produce good fruit. So a group of Christians who have individual compassion on others, will in some manner show corporate compassion.
Discussion