When governments do “charity”, it tends to PRODUCE more poverty in that region rather than ALLEVIATE it over time, because the government has removed the incentives for hard work and ingenuity in society. (A good portion of the population thinks, “Eh, why get out and grind, the government will cover me.”)
– A Christian pastor during last fall’s government shutdown
If anyone is not willing to work, neither should he eat.
– 2 Thess. 3:10
I met Barry one Saturday in the year 2000. I was a grad student at the University of Tennessee and was living right off campus at the Christian Student Fellowship’s campus house, and one of my chores was yard upkeep. While I was mowing the lawn, a man walked up to me and introduced himself as Barry. He looked around 60, maybe younger – homelessness ages you – on the shorter side, wiry and muscular, one or two tattoos. UT is close enough to downtown Knoxville that meeting homeless people was not uncommon, but Barry explained that he wanted work, not handouts. He asked if I’d pay him to do the yardwork. He explained that he’d worked out similar arrangements with other houses along the street.
I’m something of a cheapskate and would normally rather do a task myself, but I thought it was great that he wanted to do this, so I agreed. For a modest charge that came out of my grad student stipend, he took care of mowing the lawn and weeding each week. This arrangement lasted for most of the time I was at UT.
As a teenager I worked at a bailiffs in the office typing up the paperwork [for impoverished debtors]. One case that stuck was me was where the debtor owed somewhere around £400. The bailiff took a motorbike (or scooter) that could easily have covered the debt. It was sold at auction for £50. £35 bailiff fees for taking it there and £15 auctioneer fees, £0 off the debt.
my partner grew up genuinely poor and it’s interesting seeing how it impacts their mentality. The simplest but clear example is they never finish low-perishable food they like until they have more of it. There is always a few potato chips left in the bag. One cookie left waiting till it’s necessary to get through a rough day or more are purchased. They are the best saver I’ve ever met. But it wasn’t until they got lucky and got a break that it mattered because they never had anything to save but cookies.
As a software developer and a small business owner, I make good money. I’ve worked hard to reach this point in my life: I’ve practiced and pursued software development since I was a kid, I got good grades and got a master’s degree. I put significant energy, effort, and stress into my career.
But there’s a lot I can’t take credit for. I was born with natural talents (a mind that can easily solve the kinds of tasks that schooling and software development assign). I didn’t really choose my career, so much as fall into it; we had an early PC in our house, and tinkering on that became a natural outlet for my introverted curiosity. My general incompetence at athletics didn’t matter there, and my biggest limitation (extreme nearsightedness) can be addressed with two pieces of polycarbonate from Eyeglass World. I didn’t earn a country in which this medical care is available. I didn’t choose to be born in an era when a good mind and lackluster physique results in a well-paying job. Two centuries earlier, I would have been a mediocre farmer. Four thousand years earlier, I would have been an awful hunter. Thirty years earlier, and I might have been getting shot at in the jungles of Vietnam, instead of sitting at a computer writing code. Thirty years later, and I might have been unemployed: the tech industry has laid off hundreds of thousands of developers over the past few years, and many fear that the AI revolution will decimate the field.
When someone is telling me they are or have been poor and I’m trying to determine how poor exactly they were, there’s one evergreen question I ask that has never failed to give me a good idea of what kind of situation I’m dealing with. That question is: “How many times have they turned off your water?”…
Being broke implies you have some structural problem with your income and finances that you can’t fix - all it took was a small bump of some kind to upset your apple cart, and now you’ve moved from “hanging on” to “asking your neighbor to use their hose to fill up a bucket so you can flush your toilet”.
– Resident Contrarian, “On The Experience of Being Poor-ish, For People Who Aren’t”
My time at Kroger gave me a front-row seat to how Americans actually live—and to the benefits systems so many quietly navigate every day… the pause before someone mentioned they’d be using a benefits card, the way their voice dropped, the apology that often followed—offered to no one in particular. Worse were the moments when something went wrong. The balance wasn’t what it should have been. The PIN didn’t work. An item wasn’t covered. And there, beneath fluorescent lights and the impatience of a growing line, a parent had to decide—aloud—which necessities could wait. Milk or diapers. Bread or produce. I watched people stare at the conveyor belt, the despair and anxiety on their faces evident as I scanned items out of their order to bring the total down to what they could afford. I had customers break down sobbing at the register in moments like this.
– Johnny Gartner, “The American Dream, Brought to You by Kroger”
I’ve never experienced poverty. The closest I came was when a business challenge threatened to wipe out my assets. In that case, the worst that would happen was that I’d declare bankruptcy and move in with my financially stable parents. I know nothing about Barry’s family; I assume they were dead, useless, or gone. “Two are better than one… For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!”
The friends and family route works the first time around. You couch surf until you find a job, as you go through your contact list people are happy to host at first, but there comes the awkward “so… it’s been a couple weeks… how’s that job search going?”. Then you have to put your job search on pause until you find a new place to live.
Eventually your job search keeps turning up “no” because they don’t like the answers to “can you explain this gap on your resume?” and they really don’t like the answer to “do you have a permanent residence” or “do you have any drug-related convictions?”
Hopefully you find a job before you’ve exhausted the good will of all your friends. And pray to GOD it doesn’t happen again because the next time around, each one will have an excuse as to why they can’t host you. “Oh sorry, we’ve got our in-laws, try X, Y, Z”… who are also “unable” to host.
So then your car is your home.
There’s an internet meme that says that teeth are “luxury bones” that insurance doesn’t cover, and this is more or less true… I haven’t been to a dentist since I was 11 years old for reasons related to this. I often consider the fact that I’m in a bit of a race against time with my own teeth - at some point they will go from “merely crooked” to “visibly rotting”, and very few people will hire a person with visibly rotten teeth for work.
– Resident Contrarian, “On The Experience of Being Poor-ish, For People Who Aren’t”
Barry worked harder than many people I’ve met. But he had problems. One night, Barry and his wife Sarah showed up on the porch of the campus house. They were drunk; they’d been kicked out of a bar; Sarah had fallen and gashed her head. They wanted our help but explained that calling an ambulance would be a mistake because Sarah had an outstanding warrant. My friends and I didn’t know what to do; they finally agreed to let us call the ambulance anyway.
Barry worked harder than me. I’ve had problems, too. But they’re the sort of problems that I can hide behind an air of respectability, trusting my talents to let me skate past academic or professional consequences. I studied diligently and made straight A’s, but I was not above putting off work then exploiting my smarts to get good grades despite my procrastination. I doubt I would have had the diligence to approach a bunch of strangers as a homeless man, line up a bunch of jobs, then show up reliably every week to get them done.
A close friend grew up in first-world poverty (meaning, warm house, state-supported education, health care) but experienced no luxuries. To this day, they will buy themselves a tub of ice-cream or chocolate and eat it all completely alone, almost hoarding it, because growing up they had to share everything with the many siblings. It’s crazy how weird pathologies we humans have.
Jobs are actually a big cause of poverty… If you’ve just spent the entire day at work, and you’re really exhausted, and you never get any time to yourself, maybe you don’t have the energy left to drive to the cheaper supermarket on the other end of town. Maybe you don’t have the time to search for the absolute best deal on the new computer you’re getting. Maybe you don’t have the willpower to resist splurging and giving yourself one nice thing in your life of wage slavery. All of this sounds kind of shameful, but they’re all things that my patients have told me and things that I do myself sometimes despite my perfectly nice well-paying job.
– Scott Alexander, “Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia”
Sam, the campus minister, heard of what I was doing with Barry and thought that he should get involved. Through his ministry contacts, he found a place for Barry and Sarah to live. It didn’t stick: despite Barry’s work ethic, the responsibility of being tied to a schedule and a physical address was too much for him.
I have parents who taught me to work hard, live frugally, be responsible. I didn’t choose that. I haven’t always lived up to those lessons (see above), but, even when I failed, I had them as building blocks to help me rebuild when I was ready to try again. I have, I believe, no major traumas – certainly no more than the ordinary results of living in a fallen world. And I have my faith: if we truly believe that the Spirit lives within us and empowers us, then we have resources that others do not have.
All but the cruelest of us understand that you cannot tell a double amputee, “Get up and walk! Most people can. You just need to try harder!” Trying harder does not work if your body is not whole, does not work. Can we tell everyone, “Get up and get a job and a house! Most people can. You just need to try harder!” Are their minds whole? Do their psyches work? What pathologies and traumas are they dealing with? What crooked timber are they building with?
Things came to a head when she was 12 years old. “My mom and I got in a fight and she told me she was going to kill me,” she recalls. “And I wrapped a belt around my neck and told her I would do it for her. I ended up in a psychiatric hospital and from there I went to foster care.” That meant moving from home to home to home… She attended 26 different schools.
– NPR, “One Family’s Story Shows How The Cycle Of Poverty Is Hard To Break”
The last news I heard of Barry was that the fire at their camp got out of control one night and Sarah burned to death.
I never learned their last name.
The Bible says, “If anyone is not willing to work, neither should he eat.” We’re repeatedly cautioned against people taking advantage of us: We need to cut back government programs because they incentivize laziness; we need to crack down on marginalized populations because of fraud. People are abusing welfare. If you give to a homeless person, they may spend it on alcohol or drugs. But Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile. I don’t necessarily know what this means; I’ve heard it interpreted as anything from an absolute practice of nonviolence, to a sort of peaceful but active resistance that forces your enemy to confront your personhood, to a hyperbole instructing us to repay evil with good, to a more abstract principle that in no way prevents self-defense on a personal or group level. Although the specifics are debated, the core principle seems to be a contemptuous disregard for our own rights. We’re told to be “wise as serpents,” but we’re also told that it’s better to “be wronged” and “be cheated” than to risk doing wrong to another believer or to the reputation of the body of Christ. Why, then, do we decide that, when confronted with the poor (either in person or in politics), it’s more important to be shrewd and not be taken advantage of? Paul’s instruction in 2 Thess. 3:10 was delivered within the context of the local church, with people who he knew and people who he knew could work and were instead actively causing problems for others. Are we too quick to apply it as a blanket statement today, to people whose struggles we don’t know and can little empathize with? In the worst cases, saying that the poor need merely work harder is another form of the prosperity gospel or just-world fallacy: blaming the victim, claiming that if you try hard enough you’ll automatically have good things happen to you.
In the church circles I grew up in, alcohol was taboo. There is some good reason for this; alcoholism has ruined many lives. And, certainly, we’re commanded to avoid drunkenness (Eph 5:18, Rom 13:13, Isaiah 5:11, etc.); an addictive behavior that damages or destroys our self-control is the opposite of the life that God wants us to live. But the Bible also says, “Give strong drink to the one who is perishing and wine to those who are bitterly distressed; let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more.” If alleviating suffering is worth breaking taboos and may supersede our religious mores, then what taboos should we break to spare someone from the horrible gnawing anxiety of wondering where their next meal will home from? To prevent someone from dying of exposure during the next cold snap? To save Sarah, Barry’s wife, from burning to death?
And all of this is before considering how our demands that others first help themselves, that they prove deserving of our aid, fly in the face of the example of the Father’s prodigal love and Christ’s costly grace “while we were still helpless” and “sinners.”
Malnutrition reduces IQ by 15 points. Financial stress reduces IQ by 10-13 points. Fast food reduces academic performance by 20%…
Stress from financial insecurity wreaks havoc on mental bandwidth. Stress isn’t just an emotional state; it’s a chemical cascade that alters hormone levels, hijacks cognitive resources, and impairs decision-making… The mere anticipation of financial strain was enough to impair mental performance [of 10-12 IQ points]… Poverty literally taxes the brain—limiting the very resource needed to escape its grip.
– Psychology Today, “How Poverty Reduces Cognitive Performance”
I often hear Jesus quoted: “You will always have the poor with you.” This is wielded as an argument against progressives’ utopian dreams of eradicating poverty. And there is real wisdom there: a conservative humility about what we can actually accomplish can inform both our goals and methods. But I rarely hear discussed the full section of Deuteronomy 15 that Jesus is quoting:
7 If a fellow Israelite from one of your villages in the land that the Lord your God is giving you should be poor, you must not harden your heart or be insensitive to his impoverished condition. 8 Instead, you must be sure to open your hand to him and generously lend him whatever he needs. 9 Be careful lest you entertain the wicked thought that the seventh year, the year of cancellation of debts, has almost arrived, and your attitude be wrong toward your impoverished fellow Israelite and you do not lend him anything; he will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be regarded as having sinned. 10 You must by all means lend to him and not be upset by doing it, for because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you attempt. 11 There will never cease to be some poor people in the land; therefore, I am commanding you to make sure you open your hand to your fellow Israelites who are needy and poor in your land.
Somehow in our political discourse we’ve taken a rationale to give to the poor and turned it into a rationalization for trying less for the poor. Note what Moses does not say: Work requirements. Concern that the loan would be used for alcohol or opium (which was known in the ancient Near East). Admonishment against being taken advantage of. In fact, a concern that you might be taken advantage of, by lending too close to the sabbatical year in which all debts are canceled, is a “wicked” thought that explicitly incurs God’s judgment. Care for those in your community was more important than protecting your own interests.
Obviously, we do need to be wise as serpents. We need to be good stewards. Not every proposal to help the poor is wise, and not everything is good stewardship. Normally our political discourse has framed this as a dilemma between increasing social programs versus being more fiscally responsible or as increasing social programs versus fostering dependence. But consider health care:
The U.S. far exceeds other large and wealthy nations in per capita health spending, and health care represents a much larger share of the economy in the U.S. than in peer nations. Despite substantial spending, the U.S. health system grapples with disparities and gaps in coverage.
The typical argument against doing more for health care is that we can’t afford it and that it would worsen service, but somehow we’ve ended up with more cost and arguably worse service. (The US life expectancy of 79.76 years puts it 61st in the world.)
Or consider social programs more broadly. The stereotype is that the US spends less on its welfare state than Europe, resulting in a more dynamic economy but perhaps more struggles for the poor. However:
Most government aid goes to families that need it the least… If you add up the amount that the government is dedicating to tax breaks — mortgage interest deduction, wealth transfer tax breaks, tax breaks we get on our retirement accounts, our health insurance, our college savings accounts — you learn that we are doing so much more to subsidize affluence than to alleviate poverty.
– Matthew Desmond, as quoted in “Private opulence, public squalor: How the U.S. helps the rich and hurts the poor”
A 2020 study by Commonwealth Fund confirmed that the US “spends a similar percentage of its gross domestic product on social programs as other high-income countries do,” with much of that going to elderly households (even financially well-off retirees) in the form of pensions and Social Security. If government aid fosters dependence, then why aren’t we campaigning against our own tax breaks? If – as the current zeitgeist seems to believe – this government aid in the form of tax breaks is necessary to accommodate higher cost of living, then why aren’t we advocating for even further increased aid for those with even less than us? It’s easy for me to conclude that we’re neither practicing stewardship nor care for the poor.
What, then, should we do? There are no easy answers. Poverty is, after all, a wicked problem. And, although Jesus’ statement that we will always have the poor is often misapplied, it’s no less true.
To start, we can follow Paul’s instruction to “acknowledge no one from an outward human point of view” (2 Cor 5:16). Instead of reducing the poor to stereotypes (welfare queens, lazy bums, no one to blame but themselves, etc.) or to a political problem, we can recognize them as image-bearers of God, sharing in God’s love. Instead of crossing the street or avoiding eye contact with people like Barry, acknowledge their dignity and humanity.
Instead of merely practicing serpents’ wisdom, we can practice the wisdom of God: striving to bring God’s justice on earth, instead of settling for political talking points and binary partisan thinking.
And we can educate ourselves. For what it’s like to be poor in the US, read the Resident Contrarian’s “On The Experience of Being Poor-ish, For People Who Aren’t.” For how to think about all of this more biblically, read Tim Keller’s “A Biblical Critique of Secular Justice and Critical Theory”.
Then, take action.