Treatment of the Poor

In this module, we’ve been looking at practical theology with a focus on ethics. In the first three weeks, we looked at things like wisdom, virtue, and friendship. While these issues of character are central to ethics, there are also issues of stance that have to do with how we think about big ethical topics. Last week, Matt introduced us to this distinction and laid out some general principles when approaching an issue of stance.

Just as we spent our third lesson looking at an extended example of a topic of character, so in this lesson we’ll be looking at an extended example of a topic of stance. In particular, we’ll be considering the Christian perspective on poverty and our response to it.

Right at the beginning, before we get into anything, I want to make something clear. This lesson will not be about the politics or economics of poverty—we will not be discussing capitalism vs socialism, the separation between church and state, universal healthcare, white privilege, or anything like these. These are important and worthy things to think about, for sure, and we don’t want to diminish that fact. But we can’t talk about everything in one talk, and so in the interest of doing justice to the ethical aspect of poverty, we will be focusing on how we as individual Christian are to respond in our daily lives to the reality of poverty that surrounds us.

We will approach this question from three angles. First, we will outline the Christian motivation for why we should care about the poor. Second, we will unpack how this care relates to the gospel. And third, we will think a bit about how we can put this into practice in our circumstances today.

Why we should care for the poor

One of the most persistent biblical themes is the concern for the poor. This can be seen in Israel’s law, in the wisdom and Psalms, in the prophets, in the teaching of Jesus, and in the letters of the New Testament. Sometimes scripture will explicitly refer to people as poor, and other times it will refer to specific groups of people in need of aid, like the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner (or sojourner). For our purposes we can treat these of all as the same—they are the needy and vulnerable, who have little power to change their circumstances and are almost entirely subject to the whims of others in the community.

The question that concerns us here is why the concern for the poor is so pervasive: why does scripture care so much and how should this factor into our motivations as Christians? Plenty of answers can be given, but I’d like to briefly consider three of them: (1) the image of God, (2) the heart of God, and (3) the mercy of God.

The image of God

The first thing that should motivate us to care for the poor is the image of God. Scripture is clear that all humans are made in the image of God, and that this should motivate us to treat each other properly. In the early chapters of Genesis, for example, our being made in God’s image is given as the basis for the capital punishment of murderers. God says to Noah:

From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. (Gen 9:5–6)

James uses it as motivation for how we speak to one another when he criticizes the hypocrisy of blessing God but cursing those made in his image (Jas 3:9). And Proverbs applies it directly as a motivation for why we should care for the poor and the needy:

Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him. (Prov 14:31)

It is no doubt this sort of thinking that lies behind Jesus’s description of the final judgment in Matthew 25. Speaking to people who all call him Lord, he separates them into two groups. To the righteous he says:

Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 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. (Matt 25:34–36)

The righteous are puzzled at this—“when did we do these things for you?” they ask (vv. 37–39). And Jesus’s response is much like what we saw in Proverbs:

Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)

Likewise, with the wicked, he condemns them for failing to do these things. They respond with as much (if not more) surprise at his words:

“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)

Although these people acknowledge Jesus as Lord with their mouths, their actions betray them. The way we treat someone who has nothing to give us in return is the truest test for how much we value the image of God they embody rather than the things they can do for us. Since we love God and honor him above all else, we should therefore care for the poor.

The heart of God

The second thing that should motivate us to care for the poor is the heart of God. As God’s people we should want to please him, knowing that he desires the best for us and for our community, and he has made it abundantly clear in his word that he cares deeply about the poor and the needy.

In what is possibly the earliest legislation in the Old Testament, God specifically upholds the cause of the poor. For example, he says:

If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. If ever you take your neighbor's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. (Ex 22:25–27)

When someone is poor, they need every last item they own or coin they have in order to make it day to day. God, in his wisdom, put laws like this in place so that poverty wasn’t prolonged by those who could make a difference. God is more interested in the poor person’s ability to live, and perhaps even rise out of their poverty, than he is in the creditor’s bottom line.

Later, Deuteronomy makes caring for the needy an essential aspect of what it means to live in covenant relationship with God. Even if you’ve done everything else perfectly—from abstaining from sexual immorality to trusting in God to making the proper offerings at the temple—you can only say you’re done once you provide for the needy:

When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, giving it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled, then you shall say before the Lord your God, “I have removed the sacred portion out of my house… I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them… I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God.” (Deut 26:12–14)

The Levite, the sojourner (foreigner), the fatherless, and the widow all have in common that they are not able to make a living like the rest of Israel, which is why they are all held up as those groups that God’s people are to specially take care of.

It should come as no surprise, then, when we turn to the prophets, that one of their key criticisms of Israel is that they had corrupted their relationship with God by forgetting the poor and the needy. To give just one example, the book of Isaiah starts with a scathing criticism of Israel, who are referred to as “a people laden with iniquity” (1:4). They have so corrupted themselves that the religious practices God had put in place for the purpose of worshipping him have instead become a burden to him (1:14). “When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” (1:15) The solution to all of this, God says, is the following:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. (1:16–17)

Notice that special mention is given to the orphan and the widow, among all the other more general things they’re called to, like doing good and seeking justice.

God’s deep care for the poor and the needy is also seen in the biblical portrait of righteousness. Psalm 112 basically gives us the biblical definition of righteousness. It tells us that the righteous person fears God and delights in his commandments (v. 1), that they are not afraid of bad news because of their trust in God (v. 7), that they are gracious (v. 4), generous (v. 5), and merciful (v. 4). And it ends by telling us about their deep care for the poor:

He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor;

    his righteousness endures forever;

    his horn is exalted in honor.

The wicked man sees it and is angry;

    he gnashes his teeth and melts away;

    the desire of the wicked will perish! (Ps 112:9–10)

It’s no coincidence that the person who fears God and delights in his commandments is the same person who gives generously to the poor. The righteous person shares God’s deep care for the poor and the needy. By contrast, the wicked person doesn’t understand this, and tries not to think about the poor if they can help it. As Proverbs says:

A righteous man knows the rights of the poor; a wicked man does not understand such knowledge. (Prov 29:7)

All of this goes to show that God cares deeply about the well-being of the poor and the needy, and expects us to share in his cares. We cannot say that we want to live with God among his people and at the same time ignore those who are vulnerable and less able to help themselves. As James says:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (Jas 1:27)

The mercy of God

The third and final thing that should motivate us to care for the poor is the mercy of God. Jesus summarizes this point well:

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:32–36)

It might surprise us to see Jesus end his point with the exhortation to be merciful, since he doesn’t seem to have been speaking about mercy at all up until that point. Why not say, “be loving, even as your Father is loving” or “be perfect, even as your Father is perfect”? The trouble here, I think, is that we don’t have a rich enough picture of mercy. It is common to hear that mercy is not getting what you deserve whereas grace is getting what you don’t deserve, but these “definitions” focus more-or-less exclusively on mercy and grace in the context of salvation. When the biblical authors speak about mercy they have something much more general and nuanced in mind—it includes this mercy of salvation, for sure, but it also goes beyond this. Knowing the biblical definition can help us follow the connections that the biblical authors draw between how God treats us in salvation and how we treat others in our daily interactions.

In both Hebrew and Greek, there are a few different but related words that get translated as “mercy” in modern English translations. Despite this, these words are all clustered around the ideas or compassion, love, faithfulness, and pity (in a positive sense). This gives us a general sense of what sort of thing biblical mercy is, and the examples that Jesus uses in the above passage can help us get a bit more specific. The three examples of mercy he gives are (1) loving those who hate us (our enemies), (2) doing good to those who don’t do good to us, and (3) lending to those who won’t or can’t pay us back. Putting this all together, we can say that biblical mercy is about giving of ourselves for the sake of someone who won’t repay us.

This definition works for each of the examples given by Jesus, and it also applies in the specific case of our salvation: we can’t make things right with God nor can we repay him for forgiving us, and yet he forgives us anyway. Jesus calls us to show mercy to others in our daily lives because of this great mercy that God has shown us. God has changed who we are by his mercy towards us, and called us as children of mercy to show mercy in every way we can. “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

And notice that Jesus’s examples don’t limit mercy to something specific, like forgiveness. Even though the mercy that God shows us is primarily spiritual, we are called to show mercy in every way we can, including forgiveness but also including looking after the material needs of others and anything else we can muster. The application of this to the poor and needy is fairly straightforward: materially-speaking, they are the least able to repay us for what we give them, and therefore one of the best opportunities for practicing mercy. In a very literal sense, they help us put our money where our mouth is. A little later in Luke’s gospel, we see Jesus say pretty much exactly this:

When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:12–14)

We see a similar understanding to all of this in the Old Testament. Zechariah connects mercy with care for the poor:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart. (Zech 9:9–10)

And in Deuteronomy, Moses connects the concern Israel are to for with the poor and needy with the helpless state they were in when enslaved in Egypt:

[The Lord your God] executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. (Ex 10:18–19)

The poor and the gospel

So, the image of God, the heart of God, and the mercy of God should all spur us on to care deeply for the poor. We cannot say we honor God if we ignore those who bear his image; we cannot say we seek to please God if we do nothing for the poor; and we cannot call ourselves children of mercy if we don’t live that mercy out in our dealings with the needy.

The Old Testament prophets understood this, the Apostles understood this, and the church throughout the ages has understood this. “Christians have a long history of being involved in social issues”, says Tim Chester, and we see this as we look at what has been taught throughout the ages. In the second century the early church father Irenaeus said the following:

Those who have received freedom set aside all their possessions for the Lord’s purposes, giving joyfully and freely and not just the least valuable of their possessions.

And still in the eighteenth century, theologian Jonathan Edwards asked rhetorically:

Where have we any command in the Bible laid down in stronger terms, and in a more peremptory manner, than the command of giving to the poor?

The takeaway from all of this, I think, is that caring for the poor is an essential component of the Christian life, and we should think about it with the same seriousness as we think about sexual morality or evangelism. Put another way, caring for the poor is not an optional extra for Christians, but a defining characteristic of Christian life.

Now, at this point we need to take a step back and figure out exactly what that means, because there’s danger in two directions here. Recall that when we discussed the virtues, we said that every moral virtue lies in the middle between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. We called this the “doctrine of the mean”. The same caution should apply for how we unpack what it means to say that caring for the poor is an essential component of the Christian life. If we make care for the poor too central, then we run the risk of displacing the essential truths of the gospel and forgetting the importance of proclaiming the gospel. But if we don’t make care for the poor central enough, then we run the risk of proclaiming a gospel that doesn’t properly represent the God who gave it.

Three rival visions

To frame the issue in a clearer way, our question is this: what is the gospel and how closely is it related to the care for the poor? The doctrine of the mean says that there will be three ways of understanding the gospel: one which over-emphasizes its closeness to care for the poor, one which under-emphasizes it, and one which strikes the right balance. In fact, it would be better to say that the first two ways don’t actually understand the gospel at all, but replaced it with a false one. The mark of the true gospel is that it can accommodate everything scripture teaches—any gospel that forces us to choose some rather than others must be false.

On the one side there is what we might call the “social action gospel”. This holds up those parts of scripture that speak of redemption of the poor and the oppressed, and teaches that Jesus came first and foremost to bring this redemption. The other parts of scripture, about sin, judgement, and atonement, are removed or at least downplayed—they’re still true, but not part of the gospel per se. So, someone living out this social action gospel will seek to alleviate the plight of the poor, but will often forget the importance of evangelism. Tim Keller describes such a vision of the gospel that arose in the previous century:

One of the founders of the Social Gospel movement was Walter Rauschenbusch, a German Baptist minister whose first pastorate was on the edge of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen in the 1880s. His firsthand acquaintance with the terrible poverty of his neighborhood led him to question traditional evangelism, which took pains to save people’s souls but did nothing about the social systems locking them into poverty. Rauschenbusch began to minister to “both soul and body,” but in tandem with this shift in method came a shift in theology. He rejected traditional doctrines of Scripture and atonement. He taught that Jesus did not need to satisfy the justice of God, and therefore he died only to be an example of unselfishness. In the mind of many orthodox Christians, therefore, “doing justice” is inextricably linked with the loss of sound doctrine and spiritual dynamism.

It’s quite likely that we’ve met Christians today that seem to follow this social action gospel. Because of this, we may even have developed the same worry that Keller mentions, that any understanding of the gospel that focuses on “doing justice” will inevitably lead to the degradation of good theology.

Seeking to avoid this error of excess some flee to the opposite side, to what we might call the “process of salvation gospel”. This holds up those parts of scripture that speak of atonement and justification by faith, saying that the gospel is the good news that if we believe in Jesus then we will be saved from our sins and future judgment. In support of such an understanding, we might point to like John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” According to this gospel, the other parts of scripture, about caring for the poor and needy, are important but not part of the gospel. In practice, people living out this gospel place great importance on personal salvation and morality, as well as evangelism to others, but give little time or thought to the plight of the poor.

The fact of the matter is that both of these are false gospels. Both hold onto some truths taught in scripture while too aggressively downplaying others. One upholds the material needs of the poor above all else, the other focuses on their spiritual needs to the detriment of their other needs. One points us to the plight of the poor now, the other focuses on the redemption of the poor that is still to come. One envisions Jesus as merely a moral example to follow, the other trusts in Jesus only as a sacrifice for sin. In his earthly ministry Jesus did identify with the downtrodden and emphasize that the gospel was being preached to the poor (e.g. Luke 7:22), but he also made clear that sin is our deepest problem (e.g. Mark 2:1–12). In his teaching Jesus did say that through him God has made it possible for sinners to find eternal life, but he also didn’t confuse the message of the gospel with the consequences it has for the world.

This brings us to the question: if neither of these are the true gospel, then what is? How do we avoid the pitfalls of these two extremes, and take hold of the biblical gospel?

To start, we could look at the Hebrew and Greek backgrounds for the term. The Hebrew background is important because it frames the Jewish expectations of the Messiah, and the Greek background is important because this is the language that the gospel was often preached and discussed in.

The Hebrew understanding of the gospel arose in the time of Israel’s exile. The prophets looked forward to the day when Israel’s exile in foreign lands would end, and God would once again reign over his people, and even over the entire world. For example, consider this picture of the future given in Isaiah:

How beautiful upon the mountains

    are the feet of him who brings good news,

who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,

    who publishes salvation,

    who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Is 52:7)

The Greek understanding of the gospel is similar to this, although of course without the context of Jewish history. As NT Wright explains:

In the Greek world… [gospel] is a regular technical term, referring to the announcement of a great victory, or to the birth or accession of an emperor… The coming of a new ruler meant the promise of peace, a new start for the world…

Both of these agree, then, that the gospel is a royal decree about a new world order being established through the reign of a new ruler.

And we see this confirmed by the ways that Jesus and the Apostles speak about the gospel throughout the New Testament. The gospel is the royal announcement that Jesus is God’s promised king who has defeated sin and death, now reigns over everything, and one day will judge the world. This is why the gospel is about a person rather than a group or a process (Rom 1:3; 15:20; 2 Tim 2:8); it’s why the gospel is something that can be obeyed (Rom 10:16; 2 Thess 1:8; 1 Pet 4:17); it’s why it includes the fact that Jesus will return to judge the world (Rom 2:16); and it’s why it includes historical facts about Jesus’s death and resurrection (1 Cor 15:1ff).

Consider, for example, how Paul speaks about the gospel at the start of his letter to the Romans:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord… (Rom 1:1–4)

For Paul, the gospel is not about the poor or how we get saved, but about Jesus. David had been promised that one of his descendants would reign supreme, and Jesus has been shown to be this promised descendant by his resurrection from the dead. The gospel is about Jesus’s defeat of our enemy—not that he has destroyed some mere earthly superpower, but that he has disarmed sin and death themselves. Because of this he now reigns as Lord over everything and everyone. He is the king of kings, the lord of lords.

Once we understand that the true gospel is this royal announcement, we can see how it opens up the possibility for upholding both the material and spiritual needs of people. A royal announcement like this brings with it an implicit invitation. Jesus has kicked off a new world order—he’s right now the king—and we have to decide whether we’re on board with this or not. For a while, he’ll allow those who reject him to continue living in his kingdom, but one day he’s going to judge the world. In the meantime we’re all invited to trust in him as king, to live under his rule now, and look forward to the day when we will follow him into a new life free from sin and death.

To use a phrase we’ve used elsewhere, Jesus’s kingdom is now and not yet. The two false gospels we considered earlier are effectively failures to hold both of these together: the social action gospel focuses too much on the now and forgets the not-yet, while the process of salvation gospel focuses too much on the not-yet and forgets the now. The true gospel forces us to hold the two together in unity, and calls us to live in light of both at once.

One day, when Jesus makes all things new, his kingdom will be free from poverty (Rev 7:13–17). But as people living in his kingdom today, we need to recognize that right now poverty is still a reality. Thus, if we trust in Jesus as our king today, then we can’t ignore the needs of the poor. Our king has spoken, he has told us to care for the poor, and if we don’t take this seriously then our faith in him means nothing. “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” said James (2:17). And Jesus warned that, “not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 7:21) We don’t have faith in a process, but in a king, so we need to try to live with him as our king if we want that to mean anything.

But also, one day, when Jesus makes all things new, those who are not part of his kingdom will never be part of his kingdom. As people living in his kingdom today, we need to recognize that right now the offer is still open. Our king has spoken:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt 28:18–20)

Jesus is king now and will continue being king in the future. He cares about the people living in his kingdom now, as well as who will be living in his kingdom in the future. He calls us to live in his kingdom now, with the values of his kingdom in the future. And he has taught us to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt 6:9–10)

Committing to evangelism and social responsibility

Granted, then, that the true gospel means that we need to both care for the poor and proclaim the gospel, the next question is how these two hang together. Is one more important the other? Should the one always precede the other? Or is there a more complicated relationship between them. I want to share two versions of an answer that I think does justice to the nuances in scripture.

The first version is shorter, and comes from John Piper. He has said that “Christian care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering.” I think this perfectly summarizes the way we as Christians are meant to think about the material and spiritual needs of people. Piper explains:

[The first] half of the sentence is designed to prick the conscience of Christians who are hesitant to mobilize themselves or others to care about all suffering like disease, malnutrition, disability, mental illness, injury, abuse, assault, loneliness, rejection, calamity.

The second half is designed to challenge those Christians who forget about the eternal consequences of the decisions we make in this life, before Jesus returns. The sentence as a whole is trying to convey that we don’t have to choose between caring for the poor and evangelizing—we can and need to do both! But at the same time, it doesn’t say that they’re of equal ultimate importance—the word “especially” indicates that we consider the eternal consequences of our decisions of greater importance, but without sacrificing the importance of the immediate suffering that people are going through.

The second version of the answer is a bit longer, and requires more context. In 1974, evangelical church leaders from around the world convened the International Congress on World Evangelization, where they formulated and adopted what is known as the “Lausanne Covenant”. This covenant is a call to evangelical Christians throughout the world to unite in our efforts to proclaim and live out the gospel to all nations. In this covenant, paragraphs 4 and 5 hold up the two duties of Christians for evangelism and social responsibility. While the covenant does say that evangelism is “primary”, it doesn’t spend much time unpacking the relationship between these two duties. Thus, almost a decade later, in 1982, another meeting was convened where they formulated a publication titled “Evangelism and Social Responsibility: An Evangelical Commitment”. The purpose was to detail an evangelical position on the relationship between these two Christian duties that the Lausanne Covenant.

I mention this for two reasons. First, because I find it very encouraging. It doesn’t often happen when we’re struggling to piece together something in theology, that a large collection of evangelical leaders from around the world have come together and worked out a nuanced answer. I encourage all of you to go read it—it’s not too long and is available online for free. The second reason I mention it to draw your attention to section 4 of the commitment.

In this section, they propose that there are three ways that evangelism and social activity relate to one another, which I’ll summarize now briefly. These aren’t three options that we need to choose between, but three pillars that are all true and that we need to keep in mind when thinking about this issue.

First, social activity is a consequence and one of the principal aims of evangelism. As we proclaim the gospel throughout the world, and thereby bring more and more to know Christ and follow him as their king, we should expect to see more and more people loving others as he has commanded (John 15:12–14). But not only is social activity a consequence that we should expect to see but it’s also one of the main aims of evangelism, since part of the reason God saved us through Christ is that we might do good works (Tit 2:14; Eph 2:10).

Second, social activity can be a bridge to evangelism. Evangelism is primary because it deals with people’s eternal needs, but this doesn’t mean that it must always come before social activity. Caring for the material needs of people “can break down prejudice and suspicion, open closed doors, and gain a hearing for the Gospel.” As one of the participants said in the meeting, “if we turn a blind eye to the suffering, the social oppression, the alienation and loneliness of people, let us not be surprised if they turn a deaf ear to our message of eternal salvation.”

Third, social activity and evangelism are partners. We should never think of either as valuable only as a means to the end, but recognize that they are both expressions of our love for others. They’re not the same thing and neither should be confused for the other, but they also shouldn’t be separated. Following the example of Jesus, we should let our works explain our works, and let our works dramatize our words. If we want to proclaim the Good News of God’s love, then unless we want to be hypocrites we need to show his love in our care for the poor.

So, the true gospel calls us both to evangelize and care for the poor, and I hope that these two answers have helped somewhat explain the relationship between the two. Before we move to how we can care for the poor in our context today, I want to share a little thought experiment with you, that might help solidify what we’ve been talking about.

Suppose your brother or sister, or your best friend, was in need of food. And suppose that this was at least in part because they’d been irresponsible with their money. How would you help them? Would you give them food or would you help them be more responsible with their money? Obviously this is a false dichotomy—you would do both! You would give them food, recognizing it as necessary short term help; and you would help them budget their money better, recognizing that this won’t solve their immediate problems. Both of these, together, are needed. Which is more important? Of course it’s the budgeting, since this is what helps them to thrive without your constant attention. Does this importance mean that this is necessarily the first thing you do? Of course not, for how can they hear your advice over the screams of starvation? The two false gospels we considered earlier are what happen when you buy into the false dichotomy without questioning it. The true gospel refuses to play these against one another—even though it recognizes one as primary, it sees both as important expressions of our love.

Caring for the poor today

We’ve seen that Christians should care for the poor, and we’ve seen that a proper understanding of the gospel doesn’t force us into a false dichotomy between this and proclaiming the gospel. Now the question is: how do we care for the poor today?

Before we look at a way to think about this, I want to take a step back and emphasize that all care needs to be responsible and well-informed. It does no-one any good if we do something that we feel is helping, but in fact is making things worse. To illustrate what I mean, let me give you an example. In 2012, there was a mass shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, a town in the United States. This is a horrible thing to happen, and so people from around the country wanted to help these victims and their families. But because many of them didn’t get informed about what these people actually needed, their “help” wasn’t really helpful at all. Paul Bloom explains:

The town was inundated with so much charity that it added to their burden. Hundreds of volunteers had to be recruited to store the gifts and toys that got sent to the city, which kept arriving despite pleas from Newtown officials for people to stop. A vast warehouse was crammed with plush toys that the townspeople had no use for…

I think we can safely assume that no-one intentionally tried to add to the city’s burden. But that doesn’t change the fact that their actions—however well-intentioned—did add to it rather than relieve it.

Now, I recognize that there will always be unintended ripple-effects to our actions, and I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t act unless we’re 100% sure of what all of these will be. If that were the case, then we’d never be able to do anything! The point, rather, is that we should always act on the best information we have, and always try to get better informed. Initially, our feelings or instincts might be the only thing we have to go on, and that’s fine. But we should always be trying to improve our understanding of the effects our actions have on the world around us. This applies to all ethical action, including caring for the poor in the way the Bible tells us to.

Now, when it comes to caring for the poor, Christopher Wright suggests that the biblical authors advocate an ethos of compassion, generosity, and justice. We can organize our thoughts around these three ideas. Generosity is about giving up our time or money for the sake of another, as when farmers in Israel were to leave some of their produce for the poor. Compassion is about caring about the well-being of another, as when Israelites were to return the coat of a debtor if it was all they had to keep them warm at night. And justice, in this context, is primarily about protecting the rights of the poor against those who would ignore them, as when Israel were to uphold the rights of the poor in the courts. We’ll take each of these in turn, and think about how they might work out in our daily lives today in South Africa. None of this is meant to be definitive or exhaustive—we’re just highlighting some examples to get us thinking in the right direction.

Generosity

Giving to people on the street is probably one of the first things that come to mind when we hear the phrase “care for the poor”. And it’s no wonder: I’m sure many of us interact with beggars every day, and are faced with the question of whether to give them something or not. If we try to apply some of what the Bible says directly to our circumstances, then it would seem that giving money or food or clothes would be the right thing to do. But we need to recognize that there are important differences between poverty in the ancient world and homelessness today. One is that it is now far easier to get hold of drugs that are highly addictive and damaging to one’s life and relationships, such as tik (crystal meth) or heroin. Another is that we now have both government and non-government organizations that help street people by providing shelter and food, rehabilitation, counselling, and skill development in order to help them become self-sufficient. Given these two differences, caring for the homeless today might be more complicated than simply handing out money or food. In fact, doing so can be actively detrimental to them.

To illustrate this, consider a case study from Ons Plek, an organization aimed at helping girls on the street through housing and education. When Yoliswa was ten years old she ran away from her home to live on the streets, because her father was alcoholic and physically abusing her:

On the street, she discovered that she could provide for herself very well without adult supervision. She bought lovely food and did what she wanted to, when she wanted to, with her new street friends. On hot days, she went to the beach. On other days, she frequented the games arcade. She discovered that contrary to what she had always been told, she did not have to get an education in order to support herself because people always give.

Eventually, she made her way to the Ons Plek Shelter, where she was put in contact with her mother, received a small amount of pocket money each week, and started going to school again. But after an initial bout of excitement, she realized that discipline was difficult, homework was a chore, and her pocket money was nothing compared to what she was earning before. “She argued with Ons Plek staff members that it would be stupid to complete her education when the adults she knew could not earn as much by working as she could by begging.” Eventually, she decided to leave Ons Plek and return to life on the streets. Years later Yoliswa has realized that her decision was a mistake, that the long-term gains of proper education far outweigh the short-term gains of having more money to spend.

Stories like this should help us see the danger of giving to beggars. Even when we’re not enabling a drug addiction, we’re still making life on the street a real option for people who could otherwise make a better life for themselves. Even though this second option is better in the long-run, initially it’s much more difficult, because it means fighting addiction, learning self-discipline, and developing skills for employment.

But don’t mishear me. The takeaway here is not that we shouldn’t give to the homeless, but about how we should give to the homeless. Two alternatives come to mind. First, just as we regularly give to the work at our churches, we should regularly give to the work at NGOs for the homeless; instead of encouraging people to remain homeless, we can empower these organizations to help them in effective and long-lasting ways. Second, some organizations provide vouchers that entitle homeless people to food and clothing, and also enable them to make contact with them, thereby opening the way to future aid.

But the homeless are not the only poor people that we interact with. If we have a domestic worker or gardener at home, then it’s quite likely that they are poor as well, living from paycheck to paycheck. What does generosity look like in these cases? Well, given the competitive environments of domestic work and gardening, people are willing to work for much less than is necessary for them to make a proper living, and there are no unions to fight on their behalf. A very obvious thing we can do, then, is ensure that we are at least paying our domestic workers a living wage, and then consider how generous we can be in addition to this. And whenever we replace appliances or furniture, we should consider giving our old ones to our domestic worker or gardener before we try selling them to others. Beyond this we should sit down with those in our employ, and talk with them to determine how we best can be generous to them. Everyone is different: they might need help opening a bank account, they might not have thought about a pension, they might need extra sick days, or any number of things that they likely won’t raise with us unless we’ve made it clear that we want to help however we can.

The last case of generosity we’ll consider has to do with how we think about the things we own. I’m sure many of us—myself included—have clothes, books, appliances, and the like lying around the house that we no longer use, but which we don’t do anything about. We need to realize that this is a failure in generosity towards the poor. These things can be given to charities and NGOs who can use them to help people, and so our laziness amounts to withholding goods from those in need. In fact, we can take this a step further: instead of giving away things because they are no longer valuable to us, we should consider giving away things simply because they will be more valuable to someone else. We live in a country where many people get by day-to-day because of the charity of others, and so it’s up to us who have more to be deliberate, and perhaps even ruthless, in our generosity.

Compassion

In many ways, compassion for the poor will work itself out in generosity, but this isn’t to say that compassion and generosity are the same. Compassion also works itself out in other ways, such as respect, attention, and getting to know someone.

Again, starting with beggars at intersections, the most obvious way to show them compassion is to acknowledge their existence and not actively avoid them. This seems really basic, I know, but I can’t tell you how many times the car in front of me has stopped a few meters short of the traffic light in order to avoid the homeless person begging there. Or how many times I’ve seen people flat-out ignore the person outside their car, treating them as if they didn’t exist. Can you imagine what it’s like for people to seriously treat you like that? It’s utterly dehumanizing. The next time you’re annoyed or impatient with a beggar, remember that your slight annoyance is no excuse for failing to show the respect that every human deserves.

Another place where many of us will interact with homeless people is in our church services. In my own church, the last few years have seen a noticeable increase in the number of homeless people who attend, and we’ve had to give serious thought to how we make them feel welcome. This isn’t something that just the staff need to think about—it’s up to everyone in the church to accept them into the community. In fact, there’s a great example of this from our own group tonight. A while ago, a homeless man called Chad began attending Dion and Danni’s church. He was initially attracted by food that the church offered for free to the homeless, but this also gave him an opportunity to listen to God’s word being preached in the sermons. Having lived a rough life on the streets, he was understandably a little difficult to get on with. Regrettably, some of the congregation were hostile because of this, but others, like Dion and Danni, showed him compassion. They talked with him and got to know him, and by God’s grace he is well on his way to becoming a believer. At his request they bought him his own Bible, and he reads it regularly. In fact, I’m told that when he can’t follow the sermon, he now just opens his Bible and starts reading away! This is a great example of what compassion looks like in practice. It’s easy to be compassionate to people who are like us, but as Jesus asked earlier what good is that? Even sinners do that. We are called to love our enemies, do good, and show compassion even when others make it difficult. (As a side note, this story also illustrates what we said earlier, namely that social action can be a bridge to evangelism.)

One final example of compassion. As I’m writing this talk, the world is facing the global pandemic of COVID-19, and everyone is being called to practice social distancing. In South Africa, our domestic workers typically come from vulnerable communities, where social distancing is very difficult due to constrained living spaces, and the need to travel in minibuses everyday. We should all be continuing to pay our domestic workers their full wages, but asking them not to come to work. They rely on their paychecks to feed themselves and their families, but the travel to our houses just serves to unnecessarily increase the chances that they will contract the virus. We should also consider checking in with them, and ensuring that they have enough money and supplies to get through.

Justice

Of the three, justice is the most difficult to think of what we can do in our daily lives. That being said, we need to recognize that we live in a democratic country that affords its citizens the rights to criticize the government and comment on new legislation. Perhaps one of the most important things we can do when it comes to upholding justice for the poor is keeping up to speed with what’s going on in our country, and exercising these rights when necessary.

For instance, under normal circumstances, before a bill can become a law it must be published in the Government Gazette for public comment. As South African citizens, upholding justice for the poor means being aware of what is in the current Government Gazette, giving thought to how it might affect the poor in our nation, and speaking up if need be. Our country gives its citizens certain powers to influence the legislative process, and it’s up to us to use these powers to care for the poor.

Another way we might uphold justice for the poor is by criticizing the government. An interesting example of this occurred last year in Cape Town. In July 2019, the City of Cape town began enforcing certain by-laws more strictly, which led to homeless people being fined and their property being confiscated by force. South Africans quickly took to social media to criticize the impact this was on these people. After a number of complaints, the South African Human Rights Commission stepped in and agreed to work with the City of Cape Town to find a better solution. And in September, the City of Cape Town was taken to court by a group of homeless people represented by lawyers pro bono. The whole situation is still evolving, but it goes to show that things can be done for the poor even after laws have been put in place.

Conclusion

We’ve seen that Christians need to care for the poor, how that fits with the gospel and evangelism, the importance of responsible and well-informed care, and some examples of what that could look like today. I hope that I’ve given you the motivation and tools to think more deeply about how you can care for the poor in our own life, and how that could relate to your evangelism. I think the best place to start and keep coming back to is this question: who are the poor people in my community, and how can I help them?