Poverty, Work, and Dependency

Beautiful October day. I’m walking in the park for some exercise. The leaves on some of the trees have turned yellow, with small flashes of red. There’s a maple tree that has turned maybe a dark burgundy. Blue skies, white clouds, green grass. The park has quite a few people today. There’s an older guy and a younger guy tossing a football, maybe father and son. And there’s a white butterfly floating across the green grass. My brain doesn’t turn off very easily. I’m exceptionally bad at small talk. Put me at a party with someone I don’t know, and I’m probably not very good at talking about nothing. Maybe these two things are related. Because here I am, walking through a park on a beautiful October afternoon, and what I’m thinking about is immediate need and permanent dependency. It’s a question that sounds simple until you start pulling on it: if part of my taxes goes to feed people, house people, provide medical care, or otherwise support people who need help, does any of that count toward our Christian obligation to give? This is not a question about Christianity as a whole, and it is not an attempt to define what every Christian should believe about government. It is a question about America. You can argue that America is not a Christian nation and still advocate strongly for public assistance to people in need. Or you could argue that the bedrock and basis of America’s Constitution and law is in Christian theology. Either way, here’s the question. If we use public money to help people in need, should the design of that help reflect the moral logic Christians see in Scripture? I do not know the answer. I am not the Almighty, and I’m not going to pretend that I can settle a theological question Christians have argued about for generations. But I think the question becomes more interesting when we stop asking only whether taxes count as a tithe and ask instead what a tithe, or Christian giving more broadly, is supposed to achieve. The biblical idea of giving was never simply to, “Take ten percent of your income and put it in an envelope for your local church.” In ancient Israel, tithes supported the religious community, including the Levites, but they also helped support widows, orphans, foreigners, and others who were vulnerable. That makes the modern situation complicated. Today, the government performs some of those functions. We pay taxes, and a portion of that money goes toward food assistance, housing assistance, medical care, disability programs, and other forms of public support. So maybe the question isn’t whether government should provide that assistance. If government is using our taxes to provide some of the same kinds of help Christians are commanded to provide, should that assistance follow the same moral logic? And that brings me to two stories. Consider the feeding of the five thousand. Whatever else that story means theologically, there is an extraordinarily simple act in the middle of it. People are hungry, and Jesus feeds them. He doesn’t stop to ask whether they made good choices. He doesn’t set up a job-training program before allowing them to eat. There is an immediate human need, and he meets it. Sometimes compassion is that simple. Someone is hungry tonight—feed them. Someone has nowhere to sleep—give them somewhere safe to sleep. Someone is sick—treat them. Immediate suffering creates an immediate obligation. But there is another category of stories in the Gospels. Jesus heals the blind. He heals the lame. He restores people who had been physically excluded from ordinary life. These people were restored to participation in society. They could move through their communities, support their lives where possible, participate in family and economic life, and become less dependent on others. And they could work. Possibly the most important way to participate in society and be independent, to eat your bread as a result of the sweat of your effort. So those stories suggest a second principle of compassion: meet the immediate need when the need is immediate, but when restoration is possible, structure the help toward restored capacity rather than unnecessary permanent dependency. That gives us a standard by which we can begin judging assistance itself. Does it function as a bridge through a period of need? Does it restore a person’s capacity to function and support his own life, where possible? Or does the system gradually become a permanent structure of dependency? And that question doesn’t apply only to the person receiving assistance. It can apply to businesses, too. If taxpayers repeatedly make up the difference between what a worker earns and what that worker needs to live, then assistance may be helping the worker survive, but it may also be allowing an employer to build that subsidy permanently into its labor model. So both sides become dependent on the system. But there is another side to this. Reducing dependency cannot simply mean reducing assistance. If someone is working and still cannot support a reasonable life, cutting aid does not restore independence. It simply recreates the immediate need. If the goal is restoration, reform has to work from both directions. Assistance should be structured so that people can move out of dependency. But our economy also has to make it possible for someone who works to actually make that move. Otherwise, we are not building a bridge out of poverty. We are pulling the bridge away while someone is still standing on it. So. Have we built a system that needs poverty to justify itself? And if that system perpetuates long-term dependency, then as Christians, shouldn’t we push to reform it so that it better aligns with the logic of the Almighty—meet the immediate need, restore the person where possible, avoid creating dependency, and build an economy in which that restoration can last? And maybe there is some humility required here, too. We have a tendency to believe that, with enough policy and expertise we can design a system better than the moral order we inherited. But we are not wiser than that moral order. It’s hilarious that we think otherwise, but the Almighty will not be mocked. A system that abandons people in genuine need will create resistance, because leaving suffering unanswered violates something deeply rooted in us. And a system that turns temporary help into permanent dependency will create resistance, too, because dependency is not restoration. Maybe the mistake is thinking we have to choose between compassion and independence. Can we build an American system that respects both? Sources Biblical tithing and support for Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows: Deuteronomy 14:22–29 — Bible Gateway; Numbers 18:21–24 — Bible Gateway Christian obligation to feed, shelter, and care for those in need: Matthew 25:35–40 — Bible Gateway Bible Gateway Jesus feeding the five thousand and meeting an immediate need: Matthew 14:13–21 — Bible Gateway Jesus healing and restoring people to ordinary life and community: Matthew 11:2–6 — Bible Gateway; John 9 — Bible Gateway Work, independence, and providing for those in need: Genesis 3:19 — Bible Gateway; 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12 — Bible Gateway Bible Gateway; Ephesians 4:28 — Bible Gateway Bible Gateway Work, provision, and eating by the labor of one’s own effort: Genesis 3:19 — Bible Gateway — “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food.” Federal food, housing, medical, and disability assistance programs: USDA — Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); HUD — Housing Choice Voucher Program HUD; Medicaid.gov — Medicaid Medicaid; Social Security Administration — Benefit Types, including Disability and SSI Social Security Administration Working Americans who still rely on public assistance: U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Federal Social Safety Net Programs: Millions of Full-Time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs,” October 19, 2020 Government Accountability Office Benefit phaseouts, effective marginal tax rates, and incentives affecting movement from assistance toward greater earnings: Congressional Budget Office, “How Taxes and Transfers Affect the Work Incentives of People With Low and Moderate Income,” March 17, 2017 Congressional Budget Office Religion, Christianity, and the intellectual and political environment surrounding the American founding: Library of Congress, “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic”; Library of Congress, “Religion and the American Revolution” Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe