Thinking Biblically About Helping the POOR

The average North American enjoys a standard of living at present that has been unimaginable for most of history. Yet, 40 percent of the world’s inhabitants eke out an existence on less than two dollars per day. As North American Christians, our wealth presents us with an enormous responsibility, for throughout Scripture, God’s people are commanded to show compassion to the poor. This episode presents some foundational principles for building a biblical worldview about poverty and how to alleviate it.

Why did Jesus come to earth?  Jesus answered this question, “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.” (Luke 4:18-19). In the same chapter, Jesus summarized his ministry, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose (4:43). The mission of Jesus was and is to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God, saying, “I have taken back Adam’s kingdom from its slavery to Satan, Sin, and Death and I am using my power to fix everything that sin has ruined.” 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 health, beauty, and freedom.

In Col 1:20, Paul describes what Jesus’ mission accomplishes: For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven. Jesus died to reconcile—that is to put into right relationship—all that he created. Our mission as Christ followers is rooted in Christ’s mission of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom in word and in deed. As the Isaiah 61 prophecy had foretold, Jesus particularly delighted in spreading the good news among the hurting, the weak, and the poor. Hence, God’s people have been commanded to follow their King’s footsteps into places of brokenness. For his own glory, God has chosen to reveal his kingdom in the places where the world, in all its pride would least expect it—among the foolish, the weak, the outcasts, the lowly, the despised. And, historically, caring for the poor took center stage for expanding the kingdom of Christ. Covenant College Economic Development Professors, Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert explain,

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 illnesses and plagues. Rather than fleeing these urban cesspools, the early church found its niche there.  Stark explains that the concept of self-sacrificial love of others, because of God’s love for them sharply contrasted with the Roman view of mercy as weakness. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violence and ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. To cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services.

As Christianity spread over the world, caring for the poor and destitute was central to the spread of the gospel. But something tragic happened in America in the 1930’s—which has been called, The Great Reversal. Bible-believing Christians began to identify caring for the poor and oppressed as “the social gospel” in contrast to the true gospel. Christians who cared for the poor were deemed “liberals.” A sacred/secular split emerged, with the liberals failing to grasp man’s fallen sinful nature and need of God’s grace, while focusing more on justice and social change. Thus, the term, “social gospel” came to accurately describe the unbelief of those who denied miracles, the resurrection, and the necessity of the atonement, and the need for individuals to repent and trust Christ. Meanwhile, historically orthodox Christians stopped leading the way in ministry to the poor.

Praise God that the rising generation of believers is committed to recovering the church’s call to mercy ministry. The Bible-believing church is taking John’s admonition more seriously, By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth (1 Jn 3:16-18).  To think about the causes of poverty let’s consider God’s design for human flourishing.

GOD’S DESIGN FOR MANKIND TO FLOURISH ECONIMICALLY

Adam and Eve are designed to be God’s image bearers reflecting his nature as a worker and moral ruler. As workers, the first humans were to follow God’s example and develop the potential God built into the physical world, whether it was making spoons, tables, or carts. As moral rulers who had the law of God written on their hearts, they were to exercise dominion in a way that pleased God as culture developed and diversified. Human flourishing in God’s design was the result of shalom in the 4 relationships of life: 1) Walking in harmony with God’s righteousness, they would have respected private ownership (theft being forbidden by the 8th commandment), honest business practices (lying being forbidden in the 9th commandment), 2) Experiencing pre-fall wholeness--internal peace with themselves—no sense of inferiority, insecurity, or competitiveness, or envy. Sinful selfishness has not exerted itself—and their call to vocation was the call to use their talents, innovation, and resources to make products to serve others. 3) Experiencing pre-fall harmony in their horizontal relationships with each other; their hearts were not governed by greed, selfishness, cheating each other, or jealousy. 4) There was harmony in the created order. There was no poverty that had resulted from natural calamity like, earthquakes, floods, or volcanoes erupting. The flourishing of the pre-fall garden existed because man was in harmony with the four key relationships of life: his relationship with God, himself, others, and creation.

THE CAUSE OF ECONOMIC POVERTY

Due to the comprehensive nature of the fall, every human being is poor in the sense of not experiencing the flourishing of these four relationships in the way God intended. Every human being is suffering from a poverty of spiritual intimacy with God, a poverty of internal wholeness and emotional health within himself, a poverty of community, and a poverty of stewardship. Corbett and Fikkert illustrate how this combination of deficits, leads to financial poverty in the case of Mary, who lived in a slum in East Africa. They write,

As a female in a male dominated society, Mary is subjected to polygamy, to regular verbal and physical abuse from her husband to fewer years of schooling than males, and to an entire cultural system that tells her that she is inferior. As a result, Mary has a poverty of being and lacks the confidence to look for a job, leading her into material poverty. Desperately Mary decides to be self-employed but needs a loan to get her business started. Unfortunately, her poverty of community rears its ugly head as the local loan shark exploits Mary, demanding a rate of 300% on her loan of $25.00, contributing to Mary’s material poverty…Mary starts a business of selling homemade charcoal in the local market just like hundreds of others like her. The market is glutted with charcoal sellers, which keeps the prices very low. But it never even occurs to Mary to sell something else because she does not understand that she has been given the creativity and capacity to have dominion over creation. In other words, her poverty of stewardship locks her into an unprofitable business, further contributing to her material poverty…Mary goes to the witch doctor for help (a manifestation of her spiritual poverty). The healer tells Mary that her difficult life is a result of angry ancestral spirits that need to be appeased through the sacrificing of a bull….which further contributes to her material poverty.

This correct understanding of the causes of poverty explain why it is so difficult to eliminate, and why God’s plan for churches, who have a holistic view of life, to care for the poor makes so much sense. Let’s look at two mistaken understandings of the cause of poverty, whose solutions are actually harmful to the poor.

MISTAKEN VIEWS OF POVERTY’S CAUSE HARM TO THE POOR

A. Poverty is the Fault of Unjust INCOME INEQUALITY

One approach to alleviating poverty is to claim that income inequality is UNJUST. Therefore, it must be eliminated to defeat poverty. You might hear this argument as, “In America, the richest 1% have 40% of all the wealth. This kind of inequality is unjust.” The wealth gap between the upper class and everyone else is almost always framed in terms of inequality and fairness.

1. This apparent injustice is based upon the VERY mistaken 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. 

What if there is a way to make the pie double or triple or quadruple in size? God’s design for cultivating the garden so that humans flourish is for mankind to have the economic and political freedom so that humans can work with material resources, an understanding of human needs, creativity, legal protections (such as private ownership and patents), information, and technology to transform natural resources into products that make life better for everyone. God has gifted and called humans to develop the potential of creation. Often humans do this by transforming things that have little economic value into resources and technologies that have great economic value. Light, for instance, has been turned into lasers. Wind turned into electricity. And sand is transformed into fiber optic cables and computer chips. Humans innovate. The late Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, didn’t steal iPhones from homeless people. He invented them, and by being free to create and sell them, Steve Jobs created new wealth. Economic and political freedom enabled Steve Jobs to grow rich; but that same FREEDOM is what led millions of others 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.

2. Economic INEQUALITY is often the mark of a TRULY FREE society, one that respects the right of every individual to make his own decisions about his gifts, and the career he will follow. Because everyone is created in God’s image, everyone should be treated equally before the law. But that doesn’t mean we are identical or that our efforts produce identical outcomes. Some choose jobs they love that barely pay the bills. Others choose to pursue careers that are risky or boring but lucrative. Others prefer regular work hours that pay less but are stable. A free society allows us to make these different choices. Having the economic and political freedom to choose the career that you WANT to choose is an enormous benefit, because it gives you a greater sense of purpose and satisfaction, and even makes life more enjoyable. If you do find what you’re good at and work really hard to create value for others, you might even achieve new records, create exceptionally beautiful things, greatly enrich others’ lives, or make a lot of money.

The only way to level economic outcomes would be to deprive people of this freedom. And whenever that’s been tried, it hasn’t worked. Rather than make everyone equally prosperous, governments who try to force economic equality only succeed in making everyone more equal in their poverty and misery.

3. Focusing on wealth gaps distracts from the real problem of poverty. The problem is NOT that some people are too wealthy. To make poverty synonymous with income inequality has always failed. The histories of the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and Venezuela make this fact indisputable. The problem is NOT that SOME are too RICH but that with so much abundance in the world, MANY are still too POOR.

B. Poverty Is Caused by LACK OF MATERIAL RESOURCES

Although there is a place for material support as relief—i.e. the urgent and temporary provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering from natural or man-made crisis like hurricanes, tsunamis, or government overthrows, long term poverty is not caused by the lack of material resources

In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson launched “The War on Poverty in America.” In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Yet according to the Census Bureau, there has been no net progress in reducing poverty since then. The poverty rate has undulated slowly, falling by two to three percentage points during good economic times and rising by a similar amount when the economy slows. It has remained steady at between 12 and 15 % despite, the fact that anti-poverty or welfare spending during that period has simply exploded. These facts point to the reality that there is a difference between caring for the poor and caring for the poor effectively!

Marvin Olasky (of World Magazine notoriety) conducted an exhaustive study of America’s welfare system and published his results in 1992, in a work entitled, The Tragedy of American Compassion. Olasky showed that the large, increasingly bureaucratic, secular, impersonal institutions not only failed to eliminate poverty, they, often, increased poverty by exacerbating its root causes. He argued that for efforts to alleviate poverty to be truly helpful these 3 elements are required:

• It must challenge and equip people to participate actively in permanently solving their own problems.
• It must recognize that poverty is fundamentally, not a financial problem.
• Help must be personal and administered in such a way that that inherent dignity of all people is recognized. For humans to truly flourish, personal dignity and relational integrity must be addressed and restored.

Larry Elder, Executive Director of the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys, also points out that the unintended consequence of government subsidies exacerbates the problem of poverty. He argues, “The number one issue facing black America is the large number of black kids who are raised without fathers.” He then quotes President Barack Obama, “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, and 20X more likely to end up in prison.”  Elder asks, “Why are 70% of black kids raised today without fathers? I argue that there is a connection between this 70% number and our approach to welfare. Our welfare policies have incentivized women to marry the government and incentivized men to abdicate their moral and spiritual responsibilities as fathers.

Those engaged in the public, government sector to help alleviate poverty and its consequences, especially in our cities, deserve every bit of support we can give them. Praise God for the way they care for those made in God’s image who are not being cared for by anyone else. While the biblical worldview requires us to think about the consequences of various policies and recognize that poverty is rooted in other issues, like PTSD, addictions, and bipolar disorders, we must remain grateful for those on the front-line caring for human beings broken by this sinful world.

THE CALLING OF THE CHURCH—A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HELPING THE POOR

The first chapter of the Christian Women’s Job Corps was founded in Nashville in 1995 by the Southern Baptist Convention. Their various programs work with women’s personal and spiritual needs challenging them to participate in their own recovery process. CWJC doesn’t offer handouts. Their motto is “A HAND UP, not A HAND OUT.” Through GED participation, life and jobs skills classes, mentoring and Bible study CWJC cares for employed but poor women with the goal of helping to transform “body, mind, heart, and spirit.” To be accepted into their program, women must pass a drug and alcohol test or currently be in recovery. They must attend Bible classes and they must meet with a mentor weekly. Throughout the duration of their involvement, which typically lasts 1-2 years, they can only miss class three times without a legitimate excuse.

In summary the way to help the poor in the long run is development. It is rooted in the creation belief that God has placed resources in every part of his world and in every one of his image bearers that need to be discovered and developed. Returning to the observations of authors Corbett and Fikkert,

Development is a process of ongoing change that moves all the people involved….closer to being in right relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of creation. In particular, as the materially poor develop, they are better able to fulfill their calling of glorifying God by working and supporting themselves and their families with the fruits of their work. Development is not done TO people or FOR people, but WITH people. The key dynamic in development is promoting an empowering process in which all the people involved become more of what God created them to be (When Helping Hurts).

For Further Prayerful Thought: 

1. What are some of the thoughts that come to your mind as you think about what our responsibility is to the poor, since we live at such a high standard of living?
2. Why is defining poverty as income inequality wrong? Why is it destructive?
3. Since the church is best equipped to take a holistic approach to helping the poor overcome poverty, does that mean Christians should support no government help for the poor? Defend your answer.