The Tragedy of Evangelical Compassion: The Welfare State

What do we do when we realize the welfare state isn’t working? 

Well, for a lot of Evangelicals, the trick is actually getting to that point. Many appear content with government welfare programs as a means of assisting the poor; some even seem to think that we are sinning by not spending enough money on them. 

The welfare state potentially encompasses a lot of different government programs and concepts, but most of us would think of cash payments to the poor, free medical care, subsidies for housing, and food stamps. Why should Christians be upset about these things?

Well, for starters, they are a form of theft. 

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” God is the owner of all property, but he delegated ownership to humans by making us stewards of creation. Reflecting the Trinity and God’s covenant w/ man, all property ownership is both individual and collective: individuals, families, and institutions, like government.

However, this doesn’t give the government carte blanche to take property (in whatever form, including money)  from one person and give it to another, which is what it does with welfare. In most instances, such action is called theft and violates the Eighth Commandment. While the Bible does allow for taxation, God very clearly speaks out against taxes taken for the wrong purpose:

He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. – 1 Samuel 8:14-15

So here is one Biblical problem with the welfare state; a significant portion of the money taken from citizens is not given to the poor, it is given to the officers and servants of the government. This would include not just hundreds of thousands of federal, state, and local government workers but also similar or greater numbers of “service providers” who receive money directly from the government.

The problem of using taxes for welfare, however, runs deeper than the enrichment of bureaucrats and government contractors. It also violates why God gave us government in the first place, which I would suggest is something like this:

The purpose of government is to justly uphold life, liberty, and truth in order to bring increase and peace to the Kingdom of God.

How do I get to that definition?

In addition to looking to Scripture ourselves, one good place to look is the founding document of our nation, the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration was adopted by men, most of whom were Christians, who were generally more biblically literate than we are today, including the Declaration’s author, the deist Thomas Jefferson:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men …

In other words, governments are instituted among Men to secure Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. And what else is the pursuit of Happiness other than the pursuit of Truth, i.e., God.

Isaiah and Jesus (in Luke) also give us a glimpse into this when they proclaim the role of Christ our King, who came with God’s government on his shoulders:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn. Isaiah 61:1–2 ESV

Our civil government, like the government of God, is designed to bring all people, who were all conceived in the womb as captives, into liberty. Yet the welfare state doesn’t do this. Instead, it is designed to keep people in captivity and slavery; both those who pay for it and those who receive its payments.

One way the welfare state does this is by destroying and replacing charity. In the Tragedy of American Compassion, Marvin Olasky documents the imperfect but charitable and successful efforts of Americans back as far as Plymouth Rock to care for the needy.

The model of early American generosity toward those in greatest need stressed personal aid in times of disease[,] emphasized hospitality, particularly the opening of homes to those suffering destitution because of disaster[, and] insisted of “decent living” on the part of those who were helped. … Congregationalists and Presbyterian sermons regularly noted that faith without works of compassion were dead.

Indeed, this is the kind of compassion we also see in the early New Testament church:

“There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” – Acts 4:34-35

This, however, is not the kind of compassion we see in the welfare state, whether it be the liberal or “compassionate conservative” version.

Instead, the American welfare state today consists of the government forcibly taking trillions of dollars from Americans, gleaning billions of those dollars to pay its officers and servants, then shipping the rest off to the recipients through generally impersonal and ineffective means. There is no compassion involved, no personal contact of giver and recipient, no spiritual encouragement to live a decent life. And nobody is selling their property and houses–unless it is because they can’t afford the onerous taxes being forced on them.

One might be tempted, despite the lack of Biblical warrant, to give the welfare state a pass if it worked. But the result is just the opposite–the welfare state has proven to be a complete failure.

As I point out in my book, Race in America: Liberalism’s Attack on Race and the Church, black economic and social progress rapidly accelerated in the post-WWII years despite the problems with desegregation in the South. But then a funny thing happened. When American adopted the civil rights laws and the Great Society in the early 1960s, black progress started reversing:

One key factor in the halt of black economic progress is a growing subculture among blacks of families with no husband present. While the overall black population in American has increased by 131 percent since 1959, the number of black families without a husband and father has increased by 223 percent. Among this group the poverty rate is almost 36 percent. Today, about three-quarters of all black children are born out of wedlock. The consequences of this are painful to see: black male unemployment from 16-24 is 18.7 percent—double that of white males of the same age. Even worse, almost 59 percent of this group is not working—many having given up the pursuit of employment altogether.

It gets worse:

The consequences of the welfare state are often fatal for blacks. The FBI reported that 4,906 blacks were murdered by other blacks in 2010 and 2011, more than the number of black Americans lynched by whites from 1882 to 1968. Jerome Hudson writes, “In 2012, white males were 38 percent of the population and committed 4,582 murders. That same year, black males were just 6.6 percent of the population but committed a staggering 5,531 murders.” He continues, “DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, black people committed 52% of homicides. In 2013, black criminals committed 38% of the murders. Whites accounted for just 31 percent.”

And none of this account for the daily disproportionate murder of black babies in abortion clinics. In New York City, for example, more black babies are killed by abortion than born alive. 

In the church, even the evangelical and reformed church, we hear very little outrage about the role of big government and the welfare state in the conditions of blacks, other minorities, and the poor in general. Instead, big government is often supported as a solution to these problems. 

Big government solutions are needed, we are often told, because these problems are caused by white privilege and racism. And we need big government to forcibly undue the harm caused by unrepentant whites.

Thus is the name of racial reconciliation, the church helps to consign millions of blacks and other poor to a lifetime of poverty and oppression–or to death. And many of the rest of us as well, as the state takes the place of God.

And, please, don’t get me started on the corporate welfare state. 

Lord willing, sometime soon I’ll offer a positive vision focused on charity to contrast with the dark and gloomy perspective here.