On a recent episode of the Holy Post podcast, a listener asked the following question:
My question is whether our government should be funding humanitarian aid for foreign countries. Is that biblical? Or, is that a biblical, valid role of government, especially a government that can’t pay its own bills? As a husband, father, I have a biblical obligation to provide for my family, whether that means incurring debt, working multiple jobs, etc., but I don’t think I have a biblical obligation to provide for all families at any cost. I must be generous and not hoard wealth, but I don’t think I have an obligation to work multiple jobs, take out loans, etc. to feed all families. In the same way, isn’t our government’s obligation to us as Americans? Does it have a biblical obligation to fund aid for countries around the world, especially if that aid does not align with US interests? Does our government have a biblical mandate to care for the poor around the world, or is that the mandate of the church?
This is a good question and touches on several important challenges in how we think about money, how we relate to politics, and how to apply the Bible to today.
The first obvious challenge is that the New Testament was written to a tiny minority of religious believers in an autocratic empire. Someone1 quipped that the New Testament’s advice to Christians regarding politics can be summed up in one word: “Duck!” The Old Testament law and prophets may have more direct guidance, as they describe how God intended a God-honoring society to function – but that’s a society with Iron Age technologies, a subsistence farming economy, and a theocratic tribal monarchy. There are enormous challenges in applying that to a modern, free-market, pluralistic, liberal democracy.
In fact, I think that sometimes our answers to these questions end up saying more about us than about God’s will. We grow up hearing about American civic virtues and American myths. (“Myth” here is used in the technical sense of “a story that we tell each other to make sense of the world.” “Abe Lincoln taught himself to read and write by firelight in his Kentucky cabin” is a true story and also a myth: it uses the life of one our heroes to tell about the American frontier and American values such as education, self-sufficiency, and self-improvement.) Our perspectives are shaped by the times and cultures and world events we grew up in: World War 2, the Cold War, 9/11, the Great Recession. They’re further shaped by current news sources and social media opinions, which in turn are shaped by politicians and media figures trying to push their agendas. Partisanship has people looking at the same events with opposite opinions and sometimes even conflicting facts. Much of this isn’t bad, per se; it’s simply the water that we swim in as one of the “nation[s] of the human race [that God made] to inhabit the entire earth, determining their set times and the fixed limits of the places where they would live” (Acts 15:26). But it causes challenges as we seek to be transformed rather than conformed to our culture (Rom 12:2).
And I’m not immune to any of this. The following is how I think about these things, but I too may just be bringing my own preconceived ideas to the topic. Let me know if I’m off base in any of the following.
The first possible answer to the Holy Post listener’s question (and the answer discussed most on their podcast) is that US foreign aid isn’t necessarily charity – it’s part of a deliberate US strategy. After World War 1, the Allies imposed crippling penalties on Germany. The resulting bitterness and economic woes left Germans susceptible to a strongman who promised that he could make everything better. After World War 2, the US instead helped rebuild war-torn Europe, including Germany, and Japan. Over the following years, it continued to broaden its strategy of foreign aid to spread its influence around the world; for example, USAID was started by Kennedy in 1961, with a goal of countering the Soviet Union. Supporting this was a network of alliances such as NATO and, held in reserve, the US military (which was built to be capable of fighting and winning in two fronts anywhere in the world). This worked out well for the US: wars have declined (at least cross-border wars of conquest or aggression), the US has gotten fabulously wealthy as a result of its influence and global free trade, the world as a whole has gotten much wealthier (the rate of extreme poverty has dropped from 55% in 1945 to 10% in 2018, largely as a result of global free trade), US military spending has declined both as a percentage of GDP and a percentage of federal budget (the so-called “peace dividend”), and most international people surveyed have a positive view of the US and believe it contributes to peace and stability. The resulting state of affairs is known as the rules-based international order, more poetically, ”the status quo coalition.”
I’m deliberately giving a one-sided portrayal of the rules-based international order. There are serious and substantive critiques of it from the left and the right, and knowing whether it’s truly for the best could easily employ entire university departments of economists, historians, political scientists, and theologians. But, if you want to reject this status quo (as many Americans currently do), it’s worth understanding what you’re rejecting. Economist Noah Smith and historian Brett Devereaux have good articles for further reading.
However, arguing that foreign aid is a matter of enlightened self-interest avoids the listener’s question: questions about morality (what the biblical course of action is, what our obligations are) shouldn’t be answered with pragmatics (what works, what materially benefits us). Let’s dig into the question and possible answers a bit more.
First, although our resources are limited and we do need to be wise in how we steward them, the analogy of working two jobs or incurring debt breaks down a bit at the national level. For my household, if I try to keep on borrowing money, I pretty quickly run into bank refusals, credit card denials, maybe even eviction or foreclosure. At the national level, if the US tries to keep on borrowing money, lenders… keep on lending. Money at this scale is kind of imaginary; the value of a dollar hasn’t been tied to anything concrete since 1933 (when FDR ended the gold standard domestically) or 1971 (when Nixon effectively ended the Bretton Woods system of international trade). It’s true that the US deficit exists on paper (and continues to grow depressingly large), but, as long as economic growth matches or exceeds the debt and tax revenue is sufficient to cover the interest payments, many economists and finance experts don’t consider this to be a problem. Economists who advocate for modern monetary theory (MMT) take this one step further and argue that debt at the national level is completely imaginary and governments can make up as much money as they want. (From my layperson perspective, the events of the last four or five years, with rampant inflation resulting from the government making up a lot of stimulus money in a pandemic-choked economy, are a rebuke of MMT.) At the household level, most of us are comfortable wisely using some debt: a promptly-paid-off credit card for convenience, a government-supported mortgage to buy a house, etc. This at least raises the possibility that some kind-of-imaginary national debt can be a good way of meeting real needs around the world.
There’s still the need to use government spending wisely; for example, fiscal hawks will argue that our current level of debt spending is outstripping our economic growth and that interest payments on federal debt will become prohibitively expensive unless policies are changed. From looking at the relevant numbers, I believe this is obviously correct. But its implications for foreign aid are much less obvious: foreign aid is such a small amount of the US budget (roughly 1%), and, because of the US’s fabulous wealth, has such an outsized effect on the rest of the world (roughly 40% of humanitarian spending tracked by the UN), that it’s hard to say this is where we need to cut. To make an alternative analogy to personal economics: I believe that Christians should tithe. In the absence of any New Testament command, I refuse to judge someone who says they truly cannot make ends meet and still tithe, who says they instead need to work with gazelle intensity to meet previously incurred financial obligations. However, if someone is still indulging in Starbucks lattes and a Netflix subscription and eating out on credit cards, I’m less sympathetic to the claim that they can’t afford to tithe. And if someone has enough to make payments on their debt, with some left over, it seems selfish to prioritize getting out of debt over any giving to others. Similarly, to say that the US can’t afford the 1% that it puts toward foreign aid, when there are no serious proposals to address any significant percentage of the rest of the deficit, seems questionable. (This is especially true when no one in authority is even considering changes to Medicare and Social Security, which are the two biggest single items in the federal budget, at 32% for 2024, and, in the case of Social Security, is currently unsustainable as a matter of simple math.)
Second, the questioner’s distinction between the role of the government and the role of the church is both vitally important and somewhat of a distraction. It’s vitally important because, as I understand it, the church’s primary role is to be the people of God, God’s new kingdom. We can go badly astray when we mistake that, when we instead act like our mission is to improve the temporal prospects of the world. However, part of being the people of God means seeking to do good to those around us. A common argument against domestic or foreign aid is that they (the government) shouldn’t be taking our money; a more specifically Christian argument is that this should be our role as the church, not their role. But we live in a democracy: “they” are us. In David Platt’s Before You Vote 2, he points out that the Bible repeatedly instructs people in general to seek the good of those around them and instructs rulers in particular to promote justice (e.g., Dan 4:27, Jer 22:3, Jer 29:7, Mic 6:8). It would be an enormous mistake, taking us off mission and corroding both the church and government, to try and use the government to promote Christianity. But we can and should use any influence we have to encourage the government to do good for others, as best as we understand it. Someone’s values will be reflected in government; we have as much liberty as anyone to advocate for what those values should be.
The New Testament describes a limited role for government: “commend” those who “do good” (Rom 12:3), “bear the sword” and “administer punishment on the person who does wrong” (Rom 13:4), “punish wrongdoers and praise those who do good” (1 Pe 2:14). But, again, the New Testament’s advice regarding politics can be summed up as “Duck!” It’s likely that at least part of the reason Paul and Peter have no specific instruction for Nero and his vassals and governors is because Nero paid no attention to Paul and Peter, unless he was looking for scapegoats. The New Testament writers were more interested in encouraging and reminding a harassed, powerless minority how to live faithfully than in laying out a philosophy of government. And what little they do say is broader than we may realize: being “God’s servant for your well-being” (Rom 12:4) is potentially expansive enough to justify even the most lurid dreams of big-government progressives.
Augustine wrote, “All people should be loved equally. But you cannot do good to all people equally, so you should take particular thought for those who, as if by lot, happen to be particularly close to you in terms of place, time, or any other circumstances.” This helps build the basis of the concept of ordo amoris, or the rightful ordering of our loves. In the modern era, it’s been used to justify de-emphasizing foreign aid. Even in the ancient world, though, aid to others still happened. After the AD. 17 Lydia earthquake that devastated Sardis and other nearby cities, the pagan emperor Tiberius waived the affected cities’ taxes and sent money and personnel to help rebuild. (The nearby city of Laodicea declined imperial aid, considering itself “rich and hav[ing] acquired great wealth, and need[ing] nothing” (Rev. 3:17).) It’s hard to imagine Paul or Peter rebuking Tiberius as stepping outside his appointed role of punishing wrongdoers and commending those who do good.
And Paul himself devoted a good deal of effort in his ministry to taking up a collection from Gentile Christians in Asian Minor, despite their own severe poverty (2 Cor 8:2), crossing geographic and cultural barriers, and personally delivering it to Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. He placed himself “in dangers from robbers, in dangers from [his] own countrymen” (2 Cor 11:26) to do so, in order that there would be financial “equality” (2 Cor 8:13-15) between believers. We’re getting off topic here, because Paul’s collection for the Jerusalem church is clearly on the side of “church” rather than “government,” but it shows the values that Christians can have toward material wealth and toward helping others. Paul’s handling of gifts within the church also contrasts with Roman culture. Like Kennedy’s creation of USAID, Tiberius’s assistance to Sardis and the other Lydian cities likely had an element of self-interest; in Roman patronage culture, giving gifts was a way of demonstrating your greatness and placing the recipients socially in your debt. Alastair Roberts explains that, by taking Christians’ gifts to each other (or to him) and reframing it as service to God, giving gratitude to God, Paul undercuts the hierarchical system of patronage and turns it into mutual service.
Augustine focused on “those who, as if by lot, happen to be particularly close to you.” But Augustine lived and wrote before TV satellites; undersea fiber optics cables that can transmit a signal around the world in under a quarter second; container ships that can carry thousands of semi trucks’ worth of cargo; airplanes that can transport even someone of modest means to another continent in hours. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man wasn’t condemned for failing to follow the Jewish practice of almsgiving as a religious duty; he was condemned because “in your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus likewise bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish” (Lk 16:25), after ignoring someone in need who was literally on his doorstep. The US is very, very rich indeed, and now the entire world is at our doorstep – literally, in the case of the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seeking immigrants who show up at our southern border, and effectively, thanks to modern technologies and economies. In our everyday lives, we drive cars designed in Japan, communicate on phones manufactured in China and Taiwan and Korea, wear clothing from Vietnam and Philippines, eat fruit from Central and South America, and enjoy the creative fruits of artists and entertainers from around the world. It feels short-sighted, perhaps even hypocritical, to freely participate in that up until something is asked of us, then throw up our hands and say that we don’t have the means to help because we have other needs at home.
None of this answers the numerous practical questions that arise when we try to figure out what foreign aid should look like. The fact remains that we cannot help everyone. And, for the sake of space and time, I’m omitting or assuming the answers to many important questions. (For example, there are serious, spiritually mature Christians who I respect who argue that any political involvement distracts us from our mission of being the kingdom of God. Even from that viewpoint, however, Christians can partner with governments to help provide foreign aid, as Christian charities did with USAID.) But it is a mistake to argue that we don’t have the resources to help anyone, that a modern government has no Biblical role in helping people abroad, or that Christians shouldn’t use what influence they have.