The Hope of Biblical Compassion: Charity

In my last article, I made the case that the welfare state is unbiblical.

I built my argument on three premises: that the welfare state 1) is a form of theft, 2) destroys charity, and 3) harms everyone associated with it–funder, deliverer, and recipient. Let’s take another quick look at this.

In 2 Thessalonians 3:10, Paul writes, “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” Is Paul saying that one who is not willing to work is commanded by God not to eat? Surely not. Calvin suggests that

When, however, the Apostle commanded that such persons should not eat, he does not mean that he gave commandment to those persons, but forbade that the Thessalonians should encourage their indolence by supplying them with food.

In other words, we are forbidden from continuously giving food to those unemployed by sloth. These are hard words, but not harsh. In fact, they are just the opposite. In other parts of Scripture, we learn why:

You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. – Psalm 128:2

A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. – Proverbs 10:4

Those who “earn their own living” are blessed, and those who “walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies” are cursed. Food continuously given to people even though they are not working out of sloth is cursing them, not blessing them.

Of course, not everyone fails to work because of sloth. Poor health, injuries, mental illness can all play a role. But here is the thing about putting assistance, be it food, housing, medical care, or cash handouts, into the hands of the government. The government-run welfare state, that is, the people involved with the welfare state, will most often get the distinctions wrong.

Here’s why. Whatever an organization’s stated purpose is, because organizations are composed of humans there is always one underlying purpose for all organizations: to survive. How does this apply to the welfare state?

First, it means that the people who work for the welfare state will seek to increase the number of people who depend on them. Because the more welfare recipients there are, the greater chance welfare state has of survival. More political power, more money, more advocates.

Second, the precautionary principle teaches us that the people who work for the welfare state have a greater chance of survival, i.e., keeping their jobs, maintaining their income stream, etc., if they give assistance to slothful recipients than if they deny service to a truly needy one. For the simple fact that few will notice if they give benefits to people who don’t qualify for them, but a lot of people will notice if they deny benefits to someone who does qualify, particularly if something bad happens to that person.

Finally, since the welfare state is funded by a generally unlimited amount of tax dollars, erring on the side of incurring greater costs by serving the slothful is essentially costless to the people making decisions. After all, they are dealing with other people’s money, and, at least to this point in the history of democratic republics, citizens have been unsuccessful in reigning in the avarice of those who use government to enrich themselves at the expense of others (rent seekers is the economic term). So the default, again, is providing more assistance than is needed and providing it to people who don’t need it.

The slothful, then, are being cursed by the welfare state. But the harm doesn’t stop there. There are those who may genuinely need temporary help, but because of the lack of discernment of the welfare state are transformed into permanent laziness, and thus cursed.

The final group cursed by the welfare state is everyone else. The coercion, backed by the threat of violence, of the welfare state destroys charity. This curses the funders of the welfare state, i.e., taxpayers. It curses the service providers in the welfare state, be they government or private sector workers. And it even curses welfare recipients who qualify biblically for charity.

Our review has now set the stage for examining the alternatives to the welfare state. Because as one reader commented last week, “Agreed, brother – a nicely written article. But then what? What are the solutions?” He has a good point. While attacking the welfare state is necessary, a Christian can’t stop there. We have to offer a biblical alternative. Which is what I hope to do here.

Given the unbiblical nature of the welfare state, what should Christians seek to do? Abolish it. That’s right. We should eliminate government healthcare, food stamps, public housing and housing subsidies, and cash payments to the sick and poor.

Why abolish them? Why shouldn’t Christians be content with doing what we can in offering alternatives to the welfare state for those within our reach?

Because Jesus said:

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

Jesus came to grant liberty to the oppressed and the prisoners. Orthodox Christians would never let the state take charge of the Gospel. Neither should we leave to the state those imprisoned in the welfare state. Especially when we consider the spiritual danger they are in. Remember, people who are not willing to work are cursed. Any many people enmeshed with the welfare state–not just the sick and poor–seek to put government in the place of God.

Some might say it is impractical to abolish the welfare state all at once, that there is no way that it could be replaced. But they forget that we are created in God’s image, which includes having a portion of His creativity. I suggest that the people who put a man on the moon in less than ten years, who have created artificial heats and limbs, and who have figured out how to feed, clothe, and house the world’s 7.5 billion people are quite capable of rapidly replacing government welfare with charity. I’d say a four-year phase-out of the welfare state would be sufficient.

Of course, others would say this is impractical because there is not the political will to do this. And they would be right–for now. But public opinion can shift, and shift rapidly. For instance, same-sex marriage went from a fringe position in 2008–even presidential candidate Barack Obama wouldn’t endorse it–to the law of the land and a prerequisite for any Democrat candidate today.

One of the things we can do to help shift public opinion is move control of the welfare state from Washington DC to the states. There is currently a lot of political support for that; while still difficult, it is within the realm of possibility. Once this change was made, states would be free to experiment with how best to take care of the poor. And some states, Texas perhaps, would be willing to allow more and more of this to take place completely through charity.

Another part of this transition would be significant deregulation of medical care, housing, land use, etc., along with a significant reduction in overall economic regulation.

Why are drugs so expensive today? Because the government has made them that way through requiring companies to spend literally billions of dollars to give drugs approved. Not because the drug approval process makes drugs safer, it simply prevents drug companies from profiting off of drugs the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t like.

Eliminate zoning and housing prices come down for the poor. Eliminate public transit systems along with regulations on Uber, Lyft, and related companies and transportation costs drop for the poor. Eliminate the minimum wage and poor people, especially black teenagers, would suddenly find themselves employed. Enough of these kinds of things and we might find that we have a lot less poor to help than we ever thought possible.

Of course, at the back end of this, we would still have the sick, the injured, the widows, and the truly unwilling poor. What we do about them? Well, the same thing we are doing now, but just a lot more of it.

Take Mobile Loaves and Fishes in Austin. They first began to address homelessness in Austin by distributing free food and taking the Gospel to the homeless. In the process, they became aware that the homeless were missing a lot more than food. Even with the Gospel being provided, the homeless needed a place to daily experience the Gospel of reconciliation with Christ. They needed community.

That is why Mobile Loaves and Fished built the Community First! Village, a “transformative residential program exists to love and serve our neighbors who have been living on the streets, while also empowering the surrounding community into a lifestyle of service with the homeless.” The 200 plus people who live there receive a tremendous amount of grace. They receive the many benefits of community. But they also have to work, and if they don’t work, eventually they don’t eat. Or live there.

Christians and non-Christians can make all this happen. In fact, we have made it happen before. Not perfectly, but Marvin Olasky catalogs how Americans have done this before, then abandoned it, in The Tragedy of American Compassion. All of us, the poor included, will be better off if we trust in Him who created and made us to help us walk in the “religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”