After loving the Lord, Himself, with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, the Christian’s second responsibility is to love our neighbor as ourselves. When asked what this command meant for our everyday living, Jesus told the outrageous story of a man walking down the dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho, being attacked, robbed, and left for dead but how the good Samaritan, at risk to his own safety, stopped, bandaged his wounds, transported him on his own donkey to an inn where he spent the rest of the day caring for him. The next day he left a considerable sum of money with the inn keeper to continue to care for the wounded man, saying, “if this is not enough, I will cover the extra costs when I return.” Commenting on this passage, author/pastor Tim Keller writes:
“Jesus commands us to provide shelter, finances, medical care, and friendship to people who lack them. We have nothing less than an order from our Lord in the most categorical of terms, ‘Go and do likewise.’ Our paradigm is the Samaritan who risked his safety, destroyed his schedule, and became dirty and bloody through personal involvement with a needy person of another race and social class. Are we as Christians obeying this command personally? Are we as a church obeying it corporately?” (Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road). This episode seeks to look at poverty through a biblical lens, understanding it’s causes, misguided attempts to solve it, and especially what fulfilling our responsibility to care for the poor looks like.
GOD’S DESIGN FOR MANKIND TO FLOURISH ECONIMICALLY
As we saw in the first episode in this series, God’s design to provide humans with the sustenance they need to flourish was not just a lush garden full of fruit trees; it was a plan for them to “subdue” the earth. The command “to subdue” implies that, although all that God made is good, it is, to some degree, underdeveloped. God left creation with deep untapped potential for cultivation that humans are to unlock through our labor. Tim Keller elaborates:
We are not to relate to the world as park rangers, whose job is not to change their space but preserve things as they are. Nor are we to “pave over the garden” of the created world to make a parking lot. No, we are to be gardeners who take an active stance towards their charge. They do not leave the land as it is. They rearrange it to make it more fruitful, to draw the potentialities for growth and development out of the soil. They dig up the ground and rearrange it with a goal in mind: to rearrange the raw material of the garden so that it produces food, flowers, and beauty. And that is the pattern for all work. It is rearranging the raw materials of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people, in particular, thrive and flourish (Every Good Endeavor).
The development of creation’s potential is built upon and requires shalom—the OT word for harmony and flourishing in relationships. God’s design for economic flourishing as described above in Genesis 1 requires harmony in the four basic relationships of life:
- Right relationship with GOD—My mission is to exercise dominion over all of life for him, out of love for him.
- Right relationship with SELF—My worth and dignity are eternally assigned to me by God who made me his image bearer and equipped me with the abilities to do the good works he planned for me to do from eternity.
- Right relationship with OTHERS—My responsibility is summed up in the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
- Right relationship with CREATION—I am to be its steward developing the potential God placed in it for God’s glory.
THE CAUSE OF ECONOMIC POVERTY
In his book, Walking With the Poor, Bryant Myers describes the fundamental nature of poverty, “Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable. Poverty is the absence of shalom in all its meanings.” 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. Let’s dig deeper.
Adam and Eve were designed to be God’s image bearers, reflecting his nature as a worker and moral ruler. 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 was the result of shalom in the four relationships of life: 1) Walking in harmony with God’s righteousness, they would have respected private ownership (theft forbidden by the 8th commandment), honest business practices (lying forbidden by the 9th commandment). 2) Experiencing pre-fall wholeness--internal peace with themselves—no sense of inferiority, insecurity, 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. Let’s use this lens to consider the holistic, biblical approach to alleviating poverty in our cities—restoration.
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. The urban poor need help overcoming their poverty of being.
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)
- 75% of black children are raised without fathers.
- For blacks, out-of-wedlock births have gone from 25 percent in 1965 to 73% in 2020. (Black Fathers Matter, Larry Elder).
Black Lives Matter has stated publicly that it is committed to destroying the gender differences that are foundational to the nuclear family. But it takes a creation view of male, female, and the family to bring this restoration to our cities.
C. Overcoming spiritual poverty. A recent L.A. County Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration study found that of the homeless (Cited by John Bakas
Dean, Saint Sophia Cathedral).
- 38% are alcoholics.
- 26% are addicted to drugs and other substances.
- 25% suffer from Mental illness.
Poverty’s cause is not a shortage of money, but the result of complex components to human brokenness that only Christians have the resources to restore. A 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. Christians alone realize that God did not begin the world with a government or even a church. He started it with a wedding. The gift of sex after the wedding provides warmth for the marriage like cozy embers or blazing passion in the fireplace at home. But take that gift outside the home and it becomes a destructive forest fire. Until Christians get this message to teens in our cities, it is hard to envision change taking place in the fatherlessness rate, which is at the root of urban poverty.
D. Overcoming a poverty of stewardship. The biblical alleviation of poverty requires helping every human discover and develop his or her potential, gifts and talents becoming economically self-sufficient. Several years ago, a small group of Christian Congressional staffers who wanted to do something about the problems they saw with education in Washington, D.C. began to meet each week in the basement of the Capitol building to pray and seek God’s will. They decided to open an academically rigorous, Christian school in the city in the heart of Southeast Washington, D.C. Cornerstone now has 180 students K-12, 30 teachers and staff. 96% are Black or African American, 2% Hispanic, 2% White.
HOW SHOULD CHRISTIANS PROPERLY CARE FOR THE POOR?
A. Recognize that the Bible does not support socialism. In contrast to the selfish capitalism of the West, socialism 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, NO. Here’s why.
- The property was voluntarily, freely sold, not forcibly confiscated which is what socialism does.
- 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.
- The state is nowhere in sight. No government is confiscating property and collectivizing industry. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production and control of the distribution of goods.
- 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 men were added to the ranks of Christian 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.
B. Be AGITATED, GRIEVED, MOVED by the way poverty assaults the dignity of every poor image-bearer of God. We cannot be Christ-like and be apathetic. We cannot be Jesus-followers and be passive about the plight of the poor. Cherishing every human being is required of anyone who claims to love God—because there is a direct link between loving God and loving his image bearers.
- Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you? Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me (Matt 25:44-45).
- If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen (I Jn 4:20).
- With our tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God…. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. (Ja 3:9-10).
- Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him (Prov 14:31).
C. Lower our standard of living so we can give generously to the poor. Jesus explained economic justice in Luke 12:48, Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. Americans are enslaved to consumerism:
- The average America home contains 300,000 items.
- The average American house has almost tripled in size over the past 50 years.
- Of the world’s children, 3.1 percent live in America but Americans purchase 40 percent of the toys sold worldwide.
- On average, American women have 30 outfits (that figure was 9 in 1930).
- There are more television sets than people in the average American home.
- Americans spend 11.2% of total consumer spending on non-necessary goods like jewelry, alcohol, recreation, gambling, etc. compared to 4% in 1959.
D. Support holistic mercy ministry to the poor, especially in our cities. 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. Rather than fleeing urban cesspools, the early church found a niche there. The Christian concept of self-sacrificial love for others, emanating from God’s love for them was a revolutionary concept to the pagan mind, which viewed the extension of mercy as an emotional act to be avoided by rational people. Hence paganism provided no ethical foundations to justify caring for the sick and the destitute. Sociologist Rodney Stark notes,
“To cities filled with 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, and to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services.’”
E. Consider how you might be generous to workers who serve you. First, we need to pay them well, not negotiate the lowest possible payment for their labors. Second, we can be generous as we tip food service workers, airport luggage handlers, those processing grocery orders or mulch orders from Home Depot, with cash and make a point to always add a high amount of tip to our VISA card.
- Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor (Prov 14:21).
- Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed (Prov 19:17).
F. Support wise government policies that help the poor. Many Christians argue strenuously that the state has no biblical warrant for helping the needy. But there are strong biblical reasons to disagree. Israel was a theocracy, which means that it is a pattern to us of both what Christ’s church should do and what government in some cases should do. I believe that civil laws that prohibited landowners from draining every bit of profit from their crops cannot be ignored.
- And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God. (Lev 23:22).
- When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterward. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this. (Dt 24:19-22)
No matter whether your view is that this text applies somehow to the state today (possibly supporting a graduated income tax) or to the church, God’s tone is intense. Caring for the poor MATTERS to Him. We can’t claim to follow Jesus without considering how we can limit our consumption of goods we don’t need to give more to help those who bear God’s image.
