One of the most significant political and social developments of the last century in America has been the enormous expansion of government aid provided to the poor and needy. Early on in American history, the federal government for the most part restricted its role to what the Constitution explicitly said it could do. However, beginning with the New Deal of the 1930s, the federal government took on a new role of providing assistance to the poor on a massive scale. This has increased exponentially since then, as government programs provide welfare, social security, and medicare and medicaid. What should be the Christian view of this development?
The Welfare State and the Christian
Many Christians are enthusiastic about the rise of the welfare state and enthusiastically support its continued expansion. They point to Scripture’s consistent demands that we take care of the poor and oppressed as providing direct support for the expansion of government welfare. And if a Christian does not support the federal government continuing to expand efforts to provide assistance to the poor, they accuse that Christian of not really caring about the poor and needy.
It is certainly the case that providing justice for the poor and oppressed, caring for them, and demonstrating generosity towards them is a very important theme throughout Scripture. And in the Old Testament Torah, God does not just exhort individuals to generosity. He also establishes society-wide practices that will provide assistance to the poor, such as not gleaning the edges of fields (Lev 23:22) and the return of property and freeing of slaves in the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25).
However, it is vitally important to recognize (this cannot be stressed enough) that the correct parallel Christians should draw is not between Old Testament Israel and America; the correct parallel they should draw is between Old Testament Israel and the Church. The Old Testament Torah gives God’s people guidance about how they should care for the poor, and this guidance is instructive for how the Church should do so, but we should not try to apply these teachings directly to America. If we are Christians, we must find our primary political and national identity in the Church, not in a nation state we happen to be living under.
But if we are Christians who live in America, isn’t it legitimate for us to use the American government to do good things like caring for the poor? No, it is not. The basic thing that Scripture has to say about the governments of this world is that they have been delegitimized by the establishment of God’s Kingdom, and that includes the U.S. government. By their very nature, nation states establish and perpetuate themselves through violence, which is antithetical to the nature of God’s Kingdom. By their very nature, they are in rebellion against the Lordship of Christ. To use the violent, coercive power of the state to achieve our goals, even if they are good goals, is contrary to the nature of God’s Kingdom and thus is not an option for Christians.
A Christian ethic of love for all people means that the use of force and coercion is highly dubious, and should be used, if at all, only in the most extreme circumstances. Thus, Christians cannot justify having the state forcibly take money away from other people and give it to the poor. Doing so is ethically equivalent to hiring a gang of thugs to rob a bank and give the money to the poor. What is incredible is that even many Christians who claim to be people of “peace” and “nonviolence” are enthusiastically in favor of this, and think that they are being “loving” by doing so.
The ends do not justify the means. If they did, then we should all become bank robbers so that we will have lots of money to give to the poor. Obviously, this would be contrary to the way of life the Gospel calls us to. The Gospel calls us to follow Jesus on the way of the cross and to show love to all people, including rich oppressors, without compromise. In all His teachings about caring for the poor, not once did Jesus ever suggest that He wanted the Church to take over the Roman Empire and use its violent, coercive power to help the poor. Being disciples of a crucified Lord means that we must always rely on persuasion, not coercion, even if coercion seems to be more “effective.”
It might seem like I am saying that Christians should always vote in such a way as to oppose government welfare programs. But that is not necessarily what I am saying. It is dubious for Christians to vote at all. If we do decide to vote, we must see this not as establishing goodness or justice in any real sense, but simply as nudging the state to be slightly less in rebellion to Jesus’s Lordship than it currently is. And this might include voting to have the state spend less money on, say, national defense, and more money on providing for the poor.
If Christians do vote in such a way, this is how they must regard it: Let’s say a gang of thugs has taken over the neighborhood in which you live. They require everyone who lives there to pay them “protection money.” Then, they send out a survey asking how you think they should spend this money. Even though you do not recognize their authority as legitimate or think that they should have taken the money in the first place, you could say, “Well, now that you have the money, if you really want my opinion, I guess I would rather you give some of it to the poor rather than spending more money on weapons.” Christians can consider voting to have the state spend less money on national defense and more money on providing for the poor in the same way. It may be, relatively speaking, a “good” thing to do, but we should not think that by doing so we are building God’s Kingdom or showing genuine love to the poor.
Welfare and Virtue
God calls Christians to develop a Christlike character and to show love to all people, especially to the poor and oppressed. The government providing welfare to the poor may seem like it has the same end result as Christian generosity to the needy. But, from a Christian ethical perspective, helping the poor through these means is morally impoverished and dubious.
When I provide money, goods, or other assistance directly to someone in need, it is a free choice. I could do anything I want with my money, but I choose to live simply and to give my excess wealth to someone else. This requires that I develop the virtue of generosity and show genuine love to my neighbor. As I choose to act generously, I show my love for God by my willingness to choose to be obedient to Him, and the more I do so, the more my character will become virtuous and Christlike.
Contrast this with providing for the poor through government welfare. No free choice is made. The money is taken by force. In fact, since it is taken automatically out of every paycheck, the fact that this money is being taken for the purposes of providing for the poor may not even enter my mind. The money is then distributed to the poor through a faceless, impersonal bureaucracy. None of this requires me to be virtuous, to actually show love to people, or even to think about them at all. From a Christian perspective, there is really nothing morally good about it. As Dorothy Sayers puts it, “If the burden hitherto borne by charity is transferred to the shoulders of the taxpayer. . . people will no longer pay because they want to–eagerly and for love–but because they must, reluctantly and under pain of fine or imprisonment. The result, roughly speaking, is financially the same: the only difference is the elimination of the two detested virtues of love and gratitude.”[1]Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1995), page 146.
“But what does it matter,” someone might object, “if, from the receiving end, the end result is the same? They get the money either way.” But the end result is not really the same. There is a big difference between getting money from a faceless, impersonal bureaucracy and having a personal encounter with someone who genuinely loves you, cares for you, and is showing generosity to you purely out of the goodness of their heart.
The Church can provide real help to the poor and needy in a way that the state never can. It doesn’t take Christian theology to tell us that trying to use a violent, corrupt, power-hungry, inefficient, wasteful institution like the government to care for the poor is not a terribly good idea. Unlike the state, the Church is able to be there for people in their lives and communities, to show them genuine love, and to provide holistic care for them, financially, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. Rather than just giving a handout, Christians can pray for the people we assist and show them that we care. And they will know that we care, because we are helping them as a free choice, not because it is our job or because it is the law.
All of this requires, of course, that Christians actually develop the virtues of generosity and love. It requires that we take seriously Jesus’s teachings about the spiritual dangers of wealth. It requires that we are willing to live lives of simplicity so that we will have the resources to help people in need. And it requires that we prioritize doing this and take the time to do so. If the Church were doing its job properly with regard to caring for the poor, then people would not feel the need to call upon the state to do so.
There was a time when welfare, social security, education, and health care were all services provided by the Church. In the modern period, the Church has increasingly outsourced these services to the state and retreated to the task of being a “religious” institution. Then we wonder why so many modern people consider the Church to be irrelevant. We have made ourselves irrelevant by retreating from the task of being the Church to a shrunken, impoverished “religious” task. Christians who think they are “being Christian” by having the state, rather than the Church, provide for the poor are only contributing to this unfortunate development. If we really care about the poor, and if we really care about the mission of the Church, we must focus anew on having the Church provide welfare for those in need and reject the deluded idea that the state should, or even could, fill this role of the Church.
Notes
| ↑1 | Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1995), page 146. |
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