A Christian Response to Welfare

    Many evangelical churches practice “giving Sunday”--- the one Sunday a year it is acceptable for the preacher to talk about money and to suggest--- sometimes aggressively, sometimes timidly--- that the church members consider helping pay for the church ministries and services that they benefit from. It is a reliable fact that the pastor will at some point bring up Malachi 3:8-10, where God accuses the people of Judah of robbing him by failing to pay their tithes and offerings. Every prosperity gospel-preacher’s favorite verse follows this where God promises that he will pour out blessings if they resume tithes and offerings.

          Most of these sermons miss two vital aspects of this passage. First, failing to bring tithes is one of three offences that God is putting his people on trial for. Before he talks about money, he talks about the poor--- about those who “defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners of justice” (Mal. 3:5). The second accusation is that Judah is not paying tithes and offerings, and the final indictment is that the Jewish people have stopping living in God’s pattern because “what do we  gain by carrying out his requirements?” They have started idolizing and imitating “the evildoer” because he is prosperous (Mal 3:13-15).If a person or country is struggling, they should look at who they may be oppressing, where their money is going, and what is the conduct of the leaders they are admiring.

There is a lot there that could be applied to today’s church, but let’s return to the money issue with the second thing most sermons on this passage miss: what were the tithes and offerings for. For that, we must look at the passages that instigated tithes and offering in the law. The tithes served several purposes. First, it was to pay religious and political servants since the Levities were designed to serve both roles (Num 18). Some of the tithes the Israelite people gave were theirs to keep and enjoy during religious celebrations (Deut 14). A third function of the tithes is care of the poor--- the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow (Deut 26:12). This was both political welfare and religious charity since as a theodicy, Israel had no distinctions between these. The giving of this tenth to the poor expanded beyond donating through the Levites but included ideas such as leaving the leftovers of the field for the poor to collect, which we see in the story of Ruth.

The Old Testament law also adjusts its required taxes and fees to make it easier for the poor to pay. For example, the fee to dedicate a child to the Lord was prorated based on the parents’ income level (Lev 14). When Jesus was dedicated, his parents brought two turtle doves, which was what was requested of the poorest of the people since Jesus was born into poverty (Luke 2).

The Year of Jubilee, which was supposed to happen every forty-nine years (it is not clear that it ever happened) took this idea of wealth redistribution one step further. When Israel took Canaan, they were to divide the land evenly among the family clans. For forty-nine years, people could buy, sell, and accumulate property and wealth. But on the forty-ninth year, they had to give it back the descendants of those who originally owned it. In this system, it should be impossible for a “top 1%” to develop because their wealth had a time limit (Lev 25).

As soon as the New Testament church was born, they assumed responsibility for the poor around them. The first official church leaders outside of the Apostles were deacons to make sure all the poor were well cared for (Acts 6). Early church historians Dan Brown and Susan Holman are leading a throng of scholars in highlighting the ways the early church considered care for the poor, the sick, and the stranger as a primary function of the church. Brown contrasts Greek and Roman concepts of charity which were focused on giving to a community through buildings, games, and circuses and early Christian charity that was focuses on tangible needs of the most vulnerable. In her work, The Hungry Are Dying, Holman demonstrates that failing to care for the poor disqualified bishops from leadership, excluded new clergy from consideration, and made stingy governors and emperors targets of scathing sermon rebukes.

          There is a whole conversation needing to be had about advocating for programs that empower rather than enable those caught in poverty, but the overwhelming conclusion is that the poor are the responsibility of God’s people. Christians have the option of engaging a government as the mechanism for meeting their needs but cannot delegate the responsibility for it. In American history, poverty care has been done through private Christian groups and by harnesses the government, but in recent history, we have primarily engaged the government as the tool for this care. This means that Christians should advocate for government policies that provide care for the poorer members of our society. Christians should treat taxes that help pay for these with the same sacred nature that they pay their tithes and offerings to their churches. And wealthy Christians should expect to pay more.

          Malachi’s “showers of blessings” in this context solidify from some fickly divine whim to a realistic process that God has built into our world. When countries reduce poverty and have reliable safety nets for those who are caught in it, the whole country benefits. Crime drops. Employment and education rates increase. New industries and businesses are created. Generally, countries with the best economies have a smaller gap between the extremely poor and extremely rich with a solid, active middle class in between who also willingly pay their fair share to elevate the standards of living of the whole country. In countries like this, Malachi’s promise that “all nations will call you blessed because yours will be a delightful land” are a natural result of the system they have built.