Gary discusses a recent comment by late night host Stephen Colbert about Christians helping the poor.
Christians are commanded to be positively involved in the lives of people: “Seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). This is, in fact, the essence of Christian living: “This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27).
The church has a special responsibility in this regard. Paul exhorted Timothy to “honor widows” (I Timothy 5:3). The Greek word translated “honor” is often used in Scripture to indicate payment, and it obviously has that meaning here in 1 Timothy 5 (in fact, Jesus clearly used the term in this way when he commanded that children should provide their aged parents with financial support: Matthew 15:4-6). There is, however, a limitation on the church’s responsibility to aid widows: regular support must be given only to those widows “who are widows indeed,” who are without a family, too old to remarry, and thus unable to receive support from relatives (I Timothy 5:3-16). The family bears the major responsibility for financial (and other) aid, and no other institution or group must usurp this responsibility. “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his own household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever” (I Timothy 5:8). These are strong words, and we must take them with utmost seriousness. When we are too quick to call for aid to the unfortunate from some non-family agency, we undercut the responsibility of families to care for their own.
We all have a tendency to abandon our responsibilities if some agency is there to assume them for us. The basic social institution is the family. Family members are best equipped to deal with needy relatives, in terms of personal care and attention. They are more aware of the real wants of the person, and, because they are close to the situation, are most able to detect abuses of charity. God wants to build responsible relationships within families, and the church’s responsibility in caring for needy members grows out of the fact that it is our larger family, “the household of God.” But any appeal to the larger family must be only as a last resort.
Productive Christians
Socialism has a perennial appeal, and Christians seem to be particularly susceptible to its allure. The modern evangelical resurgence of interest in social justice, critical race theory, gender equity, and woke idealism are clear evidence of this. But, for all its aspirations for justice, equality, and fairness, the rhetoric of socialism is typically marked only by high sounding moralisms stuffed with cliché, guilt, pity, bluster, and resentment. What is worse is that history demonstrates that this rhetoric has had disastrous results whenever it has been translated into economic or political policy. Socialism has proven itself to be the sort of ideology that could produce a shortage of salt water in the Pacific.
Buy NowGary discusses a recent comment by late night host Stephen Colbert about Christians helping the poor. Colbert, not surprisingly, is terribly uninformed on how much the Church has done for the poor for thousands of years. In fact, until big government stepped into to “help,” the Church was about the only organization doing it.