Called to Attack Poverty in Our Cities

What do you think of this statement: If Bible-believing Christians today were as engaged with helping the poor and destitute in our cities as the early church was, far fewer rising young adults would be deconverting from Christianity to embrace ideologies that better fight economic injustice? I believe that there is an abundance of research on the deconversion of young adults from the Christian faith to prove this assertion true. But do the ideologies that claim to help the poor, homeless, and destitute that they are sucked into actually benefit the poor?

This episode puts the biblical lens of the cause and alleviation of poverty, that we examined last week, over the poverty of our cities, seeking to examine what the church’s commitment to the poor of our cities should look like. We then identify five serious flaws in the progressive view of social justice, an ideology which is captivating many young adults leading them to abandon Christianity. Finally, we examine how only the church can bring about the restoration required to solve the problems of our urban poor but raise the question, “Will middle class Christians care enough to do it?”  

What young adult do you know who does not want to be a part of a group that Is actively pursuing justice for the poor, financial support for single moms, practical help for the addicted, the homeless, and the victims of heartbreaking gun violence? Could it be that American Christianity is losing young adults because we have lost the true biblical understanding of why Jesus came? Jesus’ earthly ministry began in a synagogue in Nazareth. Let’s examine how Jesus, Himself, understood His mission:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” …And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:17-21). Author Brian Fikkert describes the scene:

“A shiver must have gone down the spine of the worshippers that day. Isaiah had prophesied that a King was coming who would usher in a kingdom unlike anything the world had ever seen. Could it be that Isaiah’s prophecies were really about to come true…Was it really possible that justice, peace, and righteousness were about to be established forever? Would this King really bring healing to the parched soil, the feeble hands, the shaky knees, the fearful hearts, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the mute, the broken-hearted, the captives, and sinful souls, and proclaim the year of jubilee for the poor (Isaiah 35:1-6; 53:5; 61:1-2)? Jesus’ answer to all these questions was a resounding ‘yes,’ declaring, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’ (When Helping Hurts).

In the same chapter of Luke, Jesus further explained his mission in a way that perfectly parallels these words from Isaiah 61. “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” As you hear me often say on this podcast, the gospel is NOT the gospel of personal private salvation—it is the gospel of the kingdom. The kingdom is the renewal of the whole world through the entrance of supernatural forces. As things are brought back under Christ’s rule and authority, they are restored to wholeness—to health, beauty, freedom, and rightness. There is a “NOW” and a “NOT YET” to the kingdom. The complete manifestation of the kingdom will not occur until there is a new heaven and a new earth. Nevertheless, two thousand years ago, Jesus clearly stated that there is a “now” to the kingdom, stating, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The “nowness” of Jesus’ kingdom was largely forgotten by the Bible-believing American churches in the twentieth century whose imbalanced eschatology led them to see Christ’s kingdom as almost entirely FUTURE--spiritualizing the mission of Jesus. Brain Fikkert identifies this view:

“We have asked thousands of evangelical Christians this most basic question—why did Jesus come to earth? —and fewer than 1 percent of respondents say anything even remotely close to the answer, Jesus, Himself gave. Instead, the vast majority of people say something like, ‘Jesus came to die on the cross to save us from our sins so that we can go to heaven.’ While this answer is true, saving souls is only a subset of the comprehensive healing of the entire cosmos that Jesus’ kingdom brings and that was the centerpiece of his message….God was pleased through him to RECONCILE TO HIMSELF ALL THINGS, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Col 1:19-20). Jesus died for our souls, but he also died to reconcile—i.e., to put into right relationship—all that he created. We reflect this bigger truth when we sing the Christmas carol, “He comes to make His blessings known far as the curse is found.” The curse is cosmic in scope, bringing decay, brokenness, and death to every speck of the universe. But as King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus is making all things new. This is the good news of the kingdom (Ibid).

Jesus proclaimed this news—that the Messianic King has come to make all things new—in both word and deed. When John the Baptist momentarily doubted Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, Jesus said, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them’ (Luke 7:22). How useless it would have been if Jesus had only used words and not deeds to declare the kingdom. Imagine if the story about Jesus passing by the blind man in Luke 18 read like this. “Hearing the blind man call out, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me,’ Jesus said, ‘I am the Messiah of Isaiah 61. I could heal you today of your blindness but I only care about your soul. Believe in Me,’ and then walked away.” Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom in both word and deed, and so must Christ-followers.

“It is strange indeed to place the poor at the center of a strategy for expanding a kingdom, but history indicates that this unconventional strategy has actually been quite successful. Sociologist Rodney Stark documents that the early church’s engagement with suffering people was crucial to its explosive growth. Cities in the Roman empire were characterized by poor sanitation, contaminated water, high population densities, open sewers, filthy streets, unbelievable stench, rampant crime, collapsing buildings, and frequent illness and plagues. (Ibid).

“Rather than fleeing urban cesspools, the early church found a niche there. Stark explains that the Christian concept of self-sacrificial love for others, emanating from God’s love for them was a revolutionary concept to the pagan mind. As Christianity expanded across the world, the urban poor were on center stage. This rich heritage of Christ’s church has always been to lead the way in ministries of mercy to the cities of the world. Though many Christians deserve the black eye they got for refusing to stand up to slavery and Jim Crow, it is also true that Christians like William Wilberforce in Britain and Harriett Beecher Stowe in America were largely responsible for ending chattel slavery. Christians are still leading the way in mercy ministry today. In Africa and Latin America, where explosive growth of Christianity is taking place, mercy ministry to the urban poor is center stage. But, shockingly at the start of the 20th century, Bible-believing Christianity in America temporarily reversed this rich history of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom in both word AND DEED: Corbett and Fikkert explain:

“This all changed at the start of the twentieth century as evangelicals battled theological liberals over the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Evangelicals (those committed to the infallibility of Scripture) interpreted the rising social gospel movement, which seemed to equate all humanitarian efforts with bringing in Christ’s kingdom, as part of the overall theological drift of the nation. As evangelicals tried to distance themselves from the social gospel movement, they ended up in large-scale retreat from the front lines of poverty alleviation. This shift away from the poor was so dramatic that church historians refer to the 1900-1930 era as the “Great Reversal” in the evangelical approach to social problems.

Interestingly, this Great Reversal preceded the welfare state in America.” Both FDR’s New Deal policies of the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty in the 1960s took place after the Bible-believing churches in America retreated from poverty alleviation and began to promote a half gospel that focused on the soul being saved instead of the intrusion of the kingdom of God into earth to begin to restore everything ruined by sin. There is, praise God, among the rising generation of Christians a welcome return to a fuller understanding of the necessity of proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom both in word and in deeds of mercy. Yet, much damage has been done. When the Gospel Coalition asked Biola Professor Thaddeus Williams to address young adults who were considering rejecting Christianity, he began, “Have you ever felt like many Christian churches today don’t care about injustice the way they should, like they are on the wrong side of history? Maybe you even feel like that has become a deal breaker for you, that your passion for a more just world could be more deeply gratified if you simply cut ties with the church” (Before Your Lose Your Faith, Edited by Ivan Mesa). With the large-scaled abandonment of its calling to the urban poor over the past 100 years in America, the church has opened the door to false ideologies that are taking captive those with an idealistic passion for social justice. But such ideologies have major flaws. Let’s consider five.

DESTRUCTIVE APPROACHES TO ALLEVIATING POVERTY

A. “Economic Equality” ideology. We often hear, “In America, the richest 1% have 40% of all the wealth. This kind of inequality is unjust.” However, this apparent injustice is based upon the FALSE idea that the total amount of wealth in a society is FIXED, like the size of an apple pie. If someone gets a bigger slice, that means someone else will only get a smaller slice. If there is only so much to go around, the richer Tom is the poorer Harry is. No one should have more than his fair share. However, that is NOT how economies work. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, didn’t make homeless people poorer by stealing their iPhones; he invented them—he created new wealth. This Economic Equality ideology has been used since the time of Karl Marx to deceive the naïve into thinking that giving economic control to the government (namely THEM) would lead to justice, when in fact it has always led to the shrinkage of the economic pie and to oppressive governments like that of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Hugo Chavez.

B. Relying upon government spending for welfare programs. I am not arguing for zero government involvement. The question of how the government should help I leave to those wiser than I. But we must recognize the serious limitations and failures of government efforts to alleviate poverty.

• Over the past 50 years, US taxpayers have invested $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs, yet according to the Census Bureau, there has been no net progress in reducing poverty. The poverty rate has remained the same, fluctuating between 12% in good times and 15% in down times.
• Black Pastor John Perkins, the son of a sharecropper, points out that many well-intended people have actually done considerable harm to poor people, by trying to help them the wrong way. He writes, “The federal government made this mistake for decades. Well-intentioned welfare programs penalized work, undermined families, and created dependency.” This view seems to be confirmed by a Los Angeles Times survey that asked poor women whether poor women “often” get pregnant to get additional welfare benefits. 64 percent said yes. Reliance upon government created harmful dependency instead of solving the problem.

C. Critical Race Theory Ideology of fomenting class envy There is systemic racial injustice and Christians do need to root out such injustice. But it is not caused by birth into a particular class and is not solved by stoking the fires of class envy as CRT does. One tenet of CRT is especially problematic: Excusing law-breaking instead of punishing it. The plight of the poor is always blamed on the rich. Thus angry antifa vigilantes and Black Lives Matter looters have every right to steal and destroy the property of business owners. The “oppressed” according to Marxism and Cultural Marxism, have the right to overthrow the law. Those deemed part of the oppressed class, immigrants who have come into America illegally, have the right to oppress and oppose the imposition of law’s passed by Congress, by ICE.  

D. Free-market Capitalism is Demonized. Naïve Christians ignore the historical reality that free markets and political freedom always go together. It is true that free market capitalism allows the rich to get richer. Economic and political freedom enabled Steve Jobs to grow rich; but that same FREEDOM is what led millions of others to get richer. The pie grew. Steve Jobs getting richer didn’t make everyone else poorer. In fact, the wealth he added to the pie provided jobs and economic value to millions of people in the US and around the world.

In sharp contrast to a free market with provisions for the poor are coercive economic systems like socialism and Marxism, which require totalitarian political control to function. Mao persuaded naïve teens to believe in utopian ideals like, “from each according to his ability, and to each according to his need,” gave them machine guns, and sent them to murder business and landowners so their business could be collectivized. Not even Jihadist Islam has been as responsible for the number of atrocities and murders conducted in the name of Marxism.

E. Socialism is Misrepresented. In contrast to the so called “selfish” capitalism of the West, socialism often brings mental pictures of picturesque Scandinavian villages, farmers’ markets, smiling people working together for a common cause, an idyllic Camelot where everyone has his needs met, lives in harmony, and prospers. Doesn’t Acts 4, where the Christians shared everything in common, sold their land and placed the proceeds at the Apostles feet show biblical support for socialism? Actually, NOT AT ALL. Here’s why.

• The property was voluntarily, freely sold, not forcibly confiscated, which is what socialism does. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production and control of the distribution of goods.
• The economic sharing of wealth was not done on the basis of class warfare, as socialism is. There is no hint that private ownership is deemed immoral.
• Acts 4 is an example of voluntary generosity to meet a temporary crisis, not a state-run economy. Jerusalem’s population swelled by 100,000 as Jews returned to Jerusalem to celebrate The Day of Pentecost. Over 5000 were added to the ranks of men alone in a few short days. The only source of teaching about this new life was in Jerusalem. So, thousands decided to extend their stay in Jerusalem—putting an enormous burden on their hometown brothers and sisters in Christ to provide hospitality for them.
• In short, this is the story of hometown emergency generosity, not a pattern for an economic system. They were able to meet that need because of capitalism’s private ownership component.

BIBLICAL APPROACH TO ALLEVIATING POVERTY IN OUR CITIES—RESTORATION

It begins with understanding the true cause of poverty. Human flourishing in God’s design was to be the result of shalom in the 4 relationships of life: 1) walking in harmony with God and his righteousness, 2) experiencing wholeness--internal peace with themselves—no sense of inferiority, 3) experiencing pre-fall harmony in their relationships with each other; 4) experiencing harmony with the created order—no natural calamity like, earthquakes, floods, or volcanoes erupting. Poverty is caused by Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God. Their relationship with God is broken leading to spiritual poverty. The health of their inner soul is shattered leading to a poverty of being. Sin caused the fracturing of human relationships with each other—a poverty of relationships. And sin caused a curse to fall on the ground causing work to be harder leading to a poverty of stewardship. Let’s examine alleviating poverty by overcoming these four categories of poverty:

A. Overcoming the poverty of being. Only God knows how profoundly slavery and racism have crushed black men and women’s dignity. I wonder how many centuries it may take to undo such evil attacks on the self-esteem of those who bear the image of God. I’m told by those engaged in city ministry that this shattered self-esteem is linked to many outward symptoms of this brokenness:

• a teen boy’s desire to prove himself a man through his sexual prowess.
• a teen girl looking for love in the arms of a male who just wants sex.
• a teen girl who wants to feel needed by getting pregnant and having a baby who needs her and, to some degree, loves her back.
• a boy committing violence to win the respect of the others in his gang.

The wounds to the self-esteem of those in our cities, especially blacks are so severe and so deeply rooted, it is doubtful their inner confidence and sense of worth can ever be restored apart from the power of Christ’s Spirit indwelling them day by day building confidence that they have enormous value as God’s image bearers, and pouring into them that love of Christ—so that they know how long and deep, and wide and high is the love of God for them. But black fathers can go a long way in helping restore their kid’s sense of worth. In the brutal world of middle school, an English teacher saw just that. She tells her story:

I teach middle school students, and I see many girls literally fight tooth and nail because someone told some lie about them or called them a name. So, I was surprised at the wisdom that one of my little 6th graders shared with me as she worked on her project during lunch. “You know, I don’t need to wear those short skirts and I don’t need to fight with girls because of the lies they say. I know who I am.” I asked her to explain, and she went on to say her daddy had raised her to know she was beautiful and valued by Christ. If she was loved by her daddy and God, then why would she need to prove her worth by fighting or prove her beauty through the clothes she wore? What you wouldn’t know from just reading this story is that her daddy was at the time incarcerated. But though he was not physically present, he was still active in her life, even calling in for parent teacher conferences. The values he instilled in her had an obvious impact on her. 

B. Overcoming a poverty of family relationships. In my view the single most significant cause of poverty in our cities is father absence. Barack Obama says,

• Children who grow up without fathers are 5X more likely to live in poverty and commit crime,
• 9X more likely to drop out of school
• 20X more likely to end up in prison. (Barack Obama)

Larry Elder observes that,

• 75% of black children are raised without fathers 
• For blacks, out-of-wedlock births have gone from 25 percent in 1965 to 73% (Black Fathers Matter, Larry Elder).

The middle-classed church needs to get behind city pastors who show men how to pour their love and affirmation into the hearts of their wives and kids.

C. Overcoming spiritual poverty. Poverty’s cause is not a shortage of money. It is the result of complex components to human brokenness that only Christians have the resources to restore. Furthermore, the root cause of poverty, fatherlessness, can’t be addressed apart from confronting the 73% of out- of-wedlock birth rate. This high percentage can’t be separated from the spiritual issue of teen pregnancy and having sex before marriage, which is an issue of sexual morality. Christians alone realize that God did not begin the world with a government or even a church. He started it with a wedding. That is also, how it will end. Until Christians get more serious about taking the gift of marriage before sex to the teens of our cities, it is hard to envision much change taking place among the city poor.

D. Overcoming a poverty of stewardship. Alleviating poverty brings more than just the goal to relieve current suffering; it is to carefully rebuild a person until he is self-sufficient. That is what makes the story of Robert Lavelle, Christian banker and real estate broker in one of America’s most forgotten places, the inner city, so exciting. Here is his story:

“People tell me, ‘You're crazy, man.’ says Lavelle, but I have to do it.” He is referring to his savings and loan and real estate operations in Pittsburgh's Hill District, an area where wrecking ball, drug dealer, and welfare check are a way of life. Many of Lavelle's bank loans go to people who would be unable to obtain credit elsewhere. Though federal regulators and others have urged him to move to a “better” location, Lavelle refuses.

Dwelling House Savings and Loan goes further than providing financial loans, however, for Lavelle takes a personal interest in his clients. If they fall behind in payments, he visits their homes to help them figure out budgets and challenges them to set an example of financial responsibility for their children. This appeal to self-respect and accountability is the key to helping needy people, he says. It is the only way to break the cycle of their poverty. Handouts enslaved people. Teaching them how to manage and extend their resources helps to set them free.

Lavell doesn't have much faith in government programs. “Government is limited in what it can do,” he says. “It primarily just perpetuates itself. But when we provide the means for the poor and minorities, the economics of their neighborhoods change from dope, numbers prostitution, pimping, and loan sharking to home ownership, good city services, police, and garbage collection, quality schools viable businesses and jobs.”

Lavelle, who lives within walking distance of his office, is quick to tell his clients about spiritual freedom as well, but his faith is most evident by what he does, not by what he says. “For me.” he says, “being a Christian is a matter of obedience and that means helping people in need as the Holy Spirit leads. Lavelle explains his little platoon of upside-down banking business in terms of the Good Samaritan: the people in the inner city are lying by the roadside wounded by economic hardship; they don't even know how to help themselves. Meanwhile, he says there are a lot of good church people passing by on the other side. “Someone needs to stop and take a risk,” he says, “and who better to do that than a banker?”

I want to close with just one more thought. Even when it is true that poverty or suffering is self-inflicted, no Christian can shut his heart to the anguish and hardship of being poor. Honest Christians know “I am only where I am by the sheer unmerited mercy of God.” As those who daily drink from a fountain of grace poured out to us by God a life poured out in deeds of mercy for the poor is the only possible fitting response. So, may we each contemplate this question, “What are you doing about the misery of the poor in the cities of our land?”