Why Should Christians Want to Help the Poor?
The Commands of Scripture
Why should Christians want to help the poor? The Bible gives us two kinds of reasons.
First, there are the general commands of Scripture.
Jesus said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). If we love someone who is poor, we will want to help that poor person. Jesus also said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). If we want to let the “light” of our conduct shine before others, we certainly should give help to those in need. In fact, the apostle Paul says that God has called us to live lives that are characterized by “good works”: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). Certainly one of the good works that God wants us to do is helping those who are in need.
Second, we should want to help the poor because there are numerous specific commands in Scripture that tell us to do so.1 Here are some of them:
Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. (Gal. 2:10)
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? (1 John 3:17)
If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of the towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. (Deut. 15:7–8)
Christian Ethics
Wayne Grudem
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For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, “You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor*, in your land.” (Deut. 15:11)
Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him. (Ps. 41:1)
Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him. (Prov. 14:31)
In some nations of the world, laws and entrenched special interests can be “structural” forces that make it impossible for individual people to rise out of poverty. The laws and the court systems function so that the powerful elites keep all the power and retain all the wealth for themselves. Somehow these powerful groups must be persuaded (or compelled by law) to give up some of their power and privilege, and their tight hold on the wealth of the nation. (But note that this must be done because the laws have been unjust and criminal actions by the powerful have gone unpunished. It is not to be done simply because some people are rich and others are poor, but because some people have acted in immoral and illegal ways that have oppressed the poor and defenseless.)
In such cases, God’s words through Isaiah are appropriate:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke? (Isa. 58:6)
If genuine solutions to structural causes of poverty can be implemented, this will provide for poor people in many nations a means by which the “bonds of wickedness” and the “yoke” of oppression will be broken, and in that way the Lord himself will be glorified. If the Bible commands us to love and care for individual poor people that cross our paths, should not our love for them lead us to be even more eager to seek to change oppressive laws and policies in an entire nation when we have the opportunity, and thereby to help many thousands and or even millions of poor people all at once?
Love for the poor as fellow human beings created in the image of God should pour from our hearts when we realize the tragic situation faced by many in poverty. Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert point out that, while North Americans tend to think of poverty in terms of “a lack of material things such as food, money, clean water, medicine, housing, etc.,” this is not how the poor themselves evaluate their situation:
While poor people mention having a lack of material things, they tend to describe their condition in far more psychological and social terms than our North American audiences. Poor people typically talk in terms of shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness.2
Low-income people daily face a struggle to survive that creates feelings of helplessness, anxiety, suffocation, and desperation that are simply unparalleled in the lives of the rest of humanity.3
When we understand these aspects of poverty, including a “lack of freedom to be able to make meaningful choices—to have an ability to affect one’s situation,”4 our hearts should be genuinely moved to try to seek solutions to these problems.
Immediate Short-Term Relief: Direct Aid to Individual Poor People and Communities.
a) Help from Individuals and Christian Organizations:
James warns us that words alone are not enough to help the poor, but actions are also necessary:
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:15–17)
A similar theme is found in John’s first epistle:
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? (1 John 3:17)
This was certainly the pattern followed by the early church, for “there was not a needy person among them” (Acts 4:34).
Therefore, it is right for Christians regularly to give food, shelter, and other necessities to those who are poor and cannot afford these things. Many charitable organizations, churches, and governments around the world regularly help poor individuals and communities in this way, often very effectively. Examples of such work include programs to dig wells, provide medical and dental clinics, and build schools, as well as support for evangelism and Bible teaching in several nations.
Microfinance projects have also been successful in helping individuals in many countries, and we can be thankful for thousands of other development projects that have brought access to clean water and sanitation systems, improved crop yields, promoted educational advancement, and made progress toward the eradication of diseases in many nations.
Many Christian organizations have accumulated years of experience and wisdom for helping individual poor people and communities. In addition, several Christian authors have provided excellent Christian perspectives on helping the poor.5
b) Help from Government Welfare Programs:
I have sometimes heard Christians propose that civil governments should not be involved in helping the poor, because there is a pattern of churches doing that in the New Testament. My response is that, yes, churches did help the poor, especially poor Christians, at the time of the New Testament, and they have done so throughout history, but there is no teaching of Scripture that prohibits civil governments from doing this as well. In a number of countries today, evangelical Christians constitute only a few tenths of 1 percent of the population, and it simply would not be possible for such tiny groups of people to care for all the poor people in those nations.
From a biblical perspective on government, it seems to me that if a government official is “God’s servant for your good” (Rom. 13:4), then surely we could agree that a government aid program is doing “good” for people when it prevents them from starving or from dying because of lack of clothing or shelter—and it would certainly not be “good” for a society to allow such tragedies to happen.
Therefore, I think there is some need for government-supported welfare programs to help cases of urgent need (for example, to provide a “safety net” to keep people from going hungry or without clothing or shelter). In addition, I think it is appropriate for government to use tax money to provide enough funding so that everyone is able to gain enough skills and education to earn a living. Therefore, I think it is right for both governments and churches to contribute to helping the poor with regard to food, clothing, shelter, and some level of education.6 Those convictions are based on the purpose of government to promote the general well-being of the society.7
c) Short-Term Help Is Not Enough:
But in spite of these various kinds of short-term direct aid to individuals and communities, longer-term solutions are still needed. At the individual level, one long-term solution would be providing job training and job opportunities to the poor, so that eventually they can support themselves and no longer be among the poor. Christian churches could be especially effective in this task.
Notes:
- A very helpful discussion of biblical teachings about the need to care for the poor is found in Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself (Chicago: Moody, 2009), 31–49. See also Craig L. Blomberg, Neither Poverty nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Material Possessions (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999).
- Corbett and Fikkert, When Helping Hurts, 52–53.
- Ibid., 70.
- Ibid., 71, quoting economist Amartya Sen.
- Corbett and Fikkert, When Helping Hurts, explains how to help the whole person while humbly learning and respecting local wisdom. Darrow L. Miller and Stan Guthrie, Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures (Seattle: YWAM, 1998), gives an extensive and insightful explanation of a Christian worldview particularly as it affects economic questions. Another insightful book, based on experiences in many poor countries, is Udo Middelmann, Christianity versus Fatalistic Religions in the War against Poverty (Colorado Springs: Paternoster, 2007). Middelmann rightly claims that any long-term solution to poverty must include a cultural transformation to key elements of a Christian worldview, including a positive view of growth in economic productivity and a hopeful perspective.on the possibilities for change in one’s life situation. After years of experience, he writes, “Most proposals for aid show a tragic ignorance of the basic economics of poverty and wealth as well as an unawareness of the influence of antihuman cultural and religious practices. In fact, the latter factors are often deliberately ignored” (p. 194).
- A local government official once said to me privately, “Wayne, if it weren’t for the work of churches directly helping people in our area, we would never be able to keep up with the needs that are there.”
- Certainly helping with such needs would fall under one of the main purposes of government as defined in the beginning of the U.S. Constitution: “to promote the general welfare.” See http://constitutionus.com.
This article is adapted from Christian Ethics: Living a Life That Is Pleasing to God by Wayne Grudem.
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