Why Is Wanting To Help The Poor So Controversial?

A guest post from Pastor Benjamin Cremer

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Hello my friends,

Happy first day of October!

I really appreciate all your thoughtful responses to my last two newsletters. Your heartfelt and thoughtful replies always lead me to think more deeply and become more hopeful. Thank you.

For this week, I want to think with you about one of the topics I always get great amounts of pushback on whenever I preach or write about, which is our use of wealth and helping the poor as Christians. Especially politically.

But before we do, here are a few books that I would recommend on this topic.

Resources To Consider

-If you are looking to better understand, poverty in the United States, as I was, I highly recommend “Poverty, by America” by Matthew Desmond

-Privilege is a social consequence of our unwillingness to reckon with and turn from sin. But properly stewarded, it can help us see and participate in God's inbreaking kingdom. Scripture repeatedly affirms that privilege is real and declares that, rather than exploiting it for selfish gain or feeling immobilized by it, Christians have a responsibility to leverage it. Subversive Witness asks us to grapple with privilege, indifference, and systemic sin in new ways by using biblical examples to reveal the complex nature of privilege and Christians' responsibility in stewarding it well.

Dominique DuBois Gilliard highlights several people in the Bible who understood this kingdom call.
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-Also, this book has also challenged a lot of what I believe about the free market, big business, and the role of government in our country: "The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

-If you'd like to read a great history on how early Evangelicals radically helped the poor in our own country, I highly recommend reading the great book called, "Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage: A Tradition And Trajectory Of Integrating Piety And Justice" by Donald Dayton

Alright, onto today's content.
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Why Is Wanting To Help The Poor So Controversial?

One of the most convicting books of the Bible for me on the topic of helping the poor is the Gospel of Luke. Not only does it begin with Mary's prophetic song about Jesus (the Magnificat), where she sings about God working through him saying, "He has brought down rulers from their thrones and has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and has sent the rich away empty!" (Luke 1:46-55)

Luke also presents Christ's first public sermon in Luke 4:18-19, in which he says: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”‭ By quoting the prophet Isaiah here, Jesus is setting the stage for the rest of his ministry. He says that this is “fulfilled in your midst,” and then he goes and does these things in the rest of his ministry.

I just can't imagine anyone making it through that gospel and not come away with a conviction about how we followers of Christ need to oppose political and economic practices that harm the poor and most vulnerable and advocate more helpful policies and practices.
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In the context of the 1st century and even in Isaiah’s time, poverty and debt servitude was one of the most pressing social issues. Many scholars suggest that debt bondage is the oldest forms of human oppression second only to slavery.
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It is something we still have in our world (and our country) today. Student loans, medical debt, and payday lending are just a few examples in our culture that keep people perpetually in debt.
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As we see in all the prophets, good news for the poor wasn't just a New Testament ideal and it included economic and political reform.

Here are just a few examples:
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Isaiah 10:1-2: "Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the orphans."
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Jeremiah 22:3 “God proclaims: Do what is just and right; rescue the oppressed from the power of the oppressor. Don’t exploit or mistreat the refugee, the orphan, and the widow.”
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Deuteronomy 15:1-2: “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the LORD’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed.”
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Leviticus 25: in this chapter, God goes into great detail of how the year of jubilee is to be observed, which includes prohibiting charging interests on loans, debt forgiveness, returning of property to those who had lost it due to financial difficulties, and the list goes on.
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This is the “year of jubilee” Jesus is talking about in Luke 4:19. Also called “the year of the lord’s favor.”
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In all, wealth and how we are called to use it to prioritize the most vulnerable, both collectively and individually, is the most discussed topic in the Bible and of Christ’s ministry. There are over 2,000 verses that speak to this issue.
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​Note: Notice how these aren’t the “Biblical values” that are being demanded to shape national policies? We should be asking "why?" much more than we are.​
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Yet the pushback I will often receive when I preach/write on this topic is always along the lines of this:
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“Jesus was talking about ‘spiritual’ poverty, not actual poverty!”

"If you just give people handouts, you make them lazy and entitled."
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“Paul said “if a man will not work, he shall not eat!” (2 Thessalonians 3:10)

Jesus said “the poor would always be with you!”(Mark 14:7)

“It's not the governments job to help the poor, it's the church's job!”
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As one who used to feel that exact same way about this topic reflected in this kind of pushback, here is what I discovered during my reading of scripture that changed my mind.
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We all approach the Bible with certain lenses. The important thing is to know what those lenses are. In this topic especially, I was interpreting both the Bible and our culture through the lenses of capitalism, the free market, and rugged individualism.
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Rather than allowing the Bible to critique these lenses, I just took them as unquestioned truths that obviously the Bible affirmed. This is deeply unhelpful as capitalism, rugged individualism, and the free market didn’t even exist in the Biblical world. No one would have been talking about these things. Moreover, if these lenses are not allowed to be critiqued, then what does that say about what it is that we are actually worshiping?

Let's briefly think about each one of these pushbacks:

“Jesus was talking about ‘spiritual’ poverty, not actual poverty!”​
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If Jesus was just talking about “spiritual poverty,” then he wouldn’t have flipped literal tables of literal money changers who were literally exploiting literal poor people, dismantling an entire week of business on one of the most lucrative times of the year for the money changers. (Matthew 21:12-13,Mark 11:15-18) This doesn’t sound very capitalist.
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He also wouldn’t have said “it’s harder for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven…” if he was speaking about this in a “spiritual sense.” Otherwise the “spiritually rich” wouldn’t have a hard time at all entering the gates of heaven. The spiritual poor would.
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"If you just give people handouts, you make them lazy and entitled."

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If Jesus was a rugged individualist, he seems to ignore it by not quizzing the crowd of +5,000, making sure they all were working to “earn their keep,” making sure they were actually needy before he just gave them food to eat. Just because they were “hungry,” didn't make them deserving of such a “hand out,” right? You don’t want to risk making someone “lazy” or "entitled." They needed to learn how to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps after all. Jesus doesn't seem to be concerned with such things when he helped people in all the ways he did.

“Paul said “if a man will not work, he shall not eat!” (2 Thessalonians 3:10)​
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If we are going to take Paul speaking to a particular church in a particular situation, speaking about the work of God’s love and the “bread” that comes from it out of context and ignore all the other times he encourages generosity, especially to the most vulnerable, we can’t really claim to be taking the whole Bible all that seriously. Just the parts we like.
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Jesus said “the poor would always be with you!”(Mark 14:7)​
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if we are using Christ’s words about “always having the poor with you” as an excuse to not help the poor, we are embodying the same attitude in Judas that Jesus is combatting in that verse. As he often does, Jesus is responding with scripture. You can see the rest of the quote in Deuteronomy 15:11: “Poor persons will never disappear from the earth. That’s why I’m giving you this command: you must open your hand generously to your neighbors, to the needy among you, and to the poor who live with you in your land.” Judas is taking an either/or approach: "you can either use that expensive perfume on Christ's feet or help the poor." Jesus is condemning that way of thinking and saying it is a both/and.

“It's not the governments job to help the poor, it's the church's job!”

Again, this is simply not true. The entire Bible reveals God wanting to partner with humanity in every way to care for creation and lift up the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. This includes those who hold any form of power, even political. Why would we Christians not want every human made institution to better participate together in helping the poor and most vulnerable in light of this? Yes, we should always maintain a healthy skepticism when it comes to human institutions, but does this mean that we should just do nothing? Or worse, advocate that only the church is allowed to help the poor?
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The truth is, if our Christianity is somehow offended by the idea of everyone having food, shelter, drinkable water, and a livable wage, not only does this paint a deeply uncaring picture of our faith, but it also reveals that capitalism, the free market, and rugged individualism informs our beliefs more than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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We must allow scripture to challenge our lenses rather than allow our lenses to shape our skew our reading of scripture. For us, American Christians, this includes the lenses of capitalism, rugged, individualism, and the free market that we have allowed to become so central to our theology and Christian practice.
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The prophets were not afraid to confront the king to implement just and generous laws that favor the poor.
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God was clear to give an entire nation mandates and laws that did the same.
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Jesus began his public ministry by preaching this same core mission of “bringing good news to the poor” then embodied that mission his entire ministry.
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The early church, especially the first three centuries, made this a core part of their identity. Not in spite of the gospel message, but precisely because of it:

"All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need." -Acts 4:32-34
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All this to say, I know human institutions will also have their problems and corruptions, but does that mean we should never try and use them for good? Why would we Christians not want to see every human institution from the church, the government, to businesses, to us individuals center the needs of the poor and most vulnerable? Didn't Jesus say that when he returns he will say to us, “whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me?" (Mt 25:40) Shouldn't we then help the poor in whatever we do?
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My prayer is that we Christians are not be seen resisting these efforts, but embodying them in our theology, our politics, and our social witness.
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We have been called to “bring good news to the poor.” May we define that in expansive and generous ways rather than ridged and narrow terms.

Now I'd like to hear from you.

Have you heard this kind of pushback before? What are your thougts on this topic? I'd like to hear about them if you care to share.

If you do not have a church home right now and you are looking for a place to worship, even if it's just online, you are always welcome at Cathedral of the Rockies. I serve as the pastor at our Amity Campus.

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Thank you all for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every week.

I truly appreciate you all,

Ben

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