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"At the end of every three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in the same year and lay it up within your towns. And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled, that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do." (Deuteronomy 14:28-29) "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: . . . He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards. . . . He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves." (1 Samuel 8:11,15,17)
There was no state welfare system under the law of Moses. The poor could glean from the fields after the harvest (Leviticus 23:22), they could hand-pick and eat from the crop growing in a farmer’s field (Deuteronomy 23:25; Matthew 12:1); they could receive zero-interest, collateralized loans (Exodus 22:25-26); and every third year the priests collected a tithe that was set aside for the poor (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). The State did not collect taxes from the rich to redistribute to the poor. A tax rate of less than ten percent, as required by 1 Samuel 8, would not allow for such a welfare program. In a Christian society, the church receives a ten percent “tax” at the minimum. The poor tithe seems to have been paid in addition to the regular tithe every third year (see here), which works out to 13.3% paid to the church annually on average, apart from freewill offerings for special needs that may arise. Even if you take the position that the tithe under the Law of Moses is not directly applicable to the New Covenant era, surely we should be no less generous to the poor under the New Covenant than under the Law of Moses! The New Covenant represents a transition from wrath to grace as a general principle after all (cf. Heb. 12:18-24). Jesus introduced His earthly ministry by proclaiming a new era of "good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18). Giving generously to the poor was a frequent theme of Jesus' teaching: Matthew 6:1-4, 19:16-21, 25:35-40; Luke 3:11, 12:33, 14:12-14; John 13:29. The beginning of the account of the widow's offering of two mites says of Jesus, "And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box" (Mark 12:41). R.J. Rushdoony comments, "Our Lord deliberately watched how people gave. We have no reason to believe He is less observant of us" (In His Service: The Christian Calling to Charity, p. 184). Immediately after the church formed after Peter's sermon on Pentecost, Christians showed extreme generosity to the poor by selling houses and land and bringing the money to the apostles to distribute: Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-37, 5:1-2, 6:1-3, 9:36, 10:1-2. This is more controversial, but Jesus said that His purpose, as a general principle, was not to overturn the law of Moses, and that those who don't obey the law better than the Pharisees demonstrate that they are not saved: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. . . . Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:17-20). The New Covenant not only secured forgiveness for violations of God's law, but it results in the law of God being written on the hearts of the redeemed, giving them a desire to obey the law (Heb. 8:10-12; cf. Rom. 8:7-9). Jesus taught that the Law and Prophets are summarized by the commands to love God and love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:38-40; cf. Rom. 13:9-10), and Jesus certainly didn't come to undermine the obligation to love God or your neighbor. In the one case where Jesus mentions tithing specifically, He says to the Pharisees: "For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the other undone" (Matthew 23:23-24). He rebukes them for neglecting the weightier matters of the law, while still affirming that being so meticulous in following the law of Moses that they tithed out of the spices in their garden was something that "you ought to have done." The frequent emphasis on giving generously to the poor in the New Testament is evidence against the idea that Christ replaced the commandments concerning charitable giving in the Old Testament with less generous requirements. With the Church receiving a higher tax rate than the State, in a Christian society the Church becomes a more influential institution than the State. The Church cares for the poor, not the State. And unlike the State, the Church gives the poor the moral uplift that they need to escape poverty, along with the material aid. This approach to poverty relief creates more productive, law-abiding citizens than the approach of welfare from the hand of a godless state, which lures the poor into a cycle of intergenerational poverty, breaks down the family, and increases crime. (See for example, Charles Murray, Losing Ground.)
God has established four governments with their own spheres of authority delegated to them by God: Self government, Family government, Church government, and State government. The biblical prescription for poverty puts responsibility for caring for the poor first with the individual, then the family, then the church as an institution of last resort.
Liberals trying to find a justification for statist welfare in the Bible have argued that the Bible commands us to help the poor, and simply because of that, statist welfare is required by the Bible. They ignore how the Bible says the poor are to be helped. The State is given no commands to help the poor, unlike the other governments listed above, and it is restricted from collecting taxes in an amount that would allow support of an extensive welfare system. Some liberals have argued that the Biblical teaching of human sinfulness precludes relying on voluntary contributions to be the main source of helping the poor. Sinful humans will not voluntarily give enough to help the poor, so State coercion to fund welfare programs is necessary. They have also argued that statist tax-based welfare reduces the temptation to be prideful that is created in people who contribute to voluntary charity programs. Yet the Apostle Paul specifically says that charity should be voluntary rather than coerced:
This claim that voluntary charity on the part of individuals is unbiblical because it creates pride in the givers also flies in the face of the many examples where individuals in the Bible are praised for their charity: The widow who gave her last two mites (Mark 12:42-44); the disciples who voluntarily sold their land and houses to provide for the poor among them (Acts 4:34-37); the disciple Tabitha who "was full of good works and acts of charity" (Acts 9:36); the centurion Cornelius, "a devout man" who "gave alms generously to the people" (Acts 10:2) and whose "alms have been remembered before God" (Acts 10:31); and the apostle Paul who was always mindful to carry alms from generous Christians to others in need: Galatians 2:10, Romans 15:26, Acts 24:17, 1 Corinthians 16:1-2, 2 Corinthians 9:5. James says that charity to the needy is the mark of an individual having true religion and faith in God (James 1:27, 2:15-16), as does Jesus (Matthew 25:34-40). In general, the validity of these deductions from the sinfulness of humanity to support statist welfare is refuted by the low level of taxation allowed to the State, and the specific commandments of God's word, which set up a private, decentralized charity program, not a statist one. God's concern in many passages of the Bible, such as the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9, the judgment against the oppressive "Leviathan" of Egypt in Exodus (cf. Psalm 74:12-14), the restrictions placed on kings in Deuteronomy 17:14-20, the description of tyranny in 1 Samuel 8, the judgments against a succession of empires in the book of Daniel, and the description of Rome as the seven-headed Beast in Revelation, is that centralized human authority, especially when joined with the power of coercive violence as possessed by the State, magnifies human sinfulness into a devouring beast. When God delivered the Israelites from the tyranny of Pharaoh, He set up a republic of twelve confederate states, governed by a judge. Hundreds of years later when the Israelites asked for a king like the other nations, God told Samuel that the Israelites were rejecting God Himself as king (1 Samuel 8:7). The laws that God gave Israel did not set up a centralized, Statist welfare program like Egypt had under Joseph (see more on this below). According to God's law, a State should not prosecute a person for trespassing who was gleaning from a farmer's land. But the State is given no command to confiscate wealth from the rich and redistribute it to the poor. In fact, God commands the State to not show favoritism to the poor: "Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly" (Leviticus 19:15). The Eighth Commandment is "Do not steal," which is said in the context of desiring to take (i.e. coveting) your neighbor's private property (the Tenth Commandment). Therefore using the taxing power of the state to take private property from one individual and give it to others is theft in violation of the Eighth Commandment. It has rightly been called "the politics of envy." The entire body of the law of Moses is concerned with defending individual property rights, like the punishment for a goring ox and the restitution owed by a thief, with nothing about the right of the State to take private property to give to the poor. The poor are a concern in several places in the law of Moses, but as mentioned above, the means to help them is delegated to individuals, the family and church, not the State. Whatever pride is removed from private individuals by removing their responsibility to care for the poor becomes magnified in elite, powerful politicians. They begin to think of themselves as Saviors of the World because, by giving away other people's money, they become the source of life to the common people, whose vote can essentially be bought by the handouts. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul's vote (see here). The State has the power to enforce its laws against anyone at the end of a gun barrel; adding high taxes to fund its power of violence is like adding gasoline to a fire. Socialist-leaning Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization." But high taxes buy tyranny. Because of the State's power of violence, sin is able to wreak more destruction against more people through a highly-funded State than through any other human institution. This is tragically illustrated by the slaughter and slavery perpetrated by atheistic, socialistic regimes in the 20th Century that exceeded the abuse of power in all other centuries of human history combined (see here). In contrast to the elitism fostered in politicians by statist welfare, God's law is concerned with keeping the ruler humble, "that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers" (Deuteronomy 17:20). The Biblical teaching against a powerful State is expressed well by Lord Acton's dictum that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We cannot ignore the example of Christ on this issue of the Biblical legitimacy of the welfare State. When He performed the miracle of feeding the five thousand, the people wanted to make Him king. A king that could perform miracles to feed the entire populace would constitute the ideal welfare State. But Christ refused to become a welfare-state king and rebuked the people for having misplaced priorities: When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, "This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!" Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. . . . "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for
the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you." (John 6:14-15, 26-27) The appeal to the Biblical doctrine of sin to justify the welfare State also ignores the Biblical doctrine of grace. God's redemptive grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is powerful enough to overcome the curse: "For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:17). Redemption from the curse does not involve narrowly spiritual matters rather than earthly matters. All creation groans under the curse from the Fall of Adam (Romans 8:21-23). The curse from the Fall is the source of all the world's woes, including poverty; therefore Christ's redemptive power is the solution to poverty. Jesus announced, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor." (Luke 4:18) Furthermore, what liberals say can't be done has been done. The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky shows how the Church has been effective at caring for the poor in the past. Jesus said that "the poor will always be with you" (Matthew 26:11; cf. Deuteronomy 15:11), and indeed human perfection will never be achieved in anything on earth this side of the Last Judgment. But God's law is perfect, and following God's plan to help the poor, the best that imperfect people can, will always achieve the best results. Through our redemption by the Spirit of God, God has given us the power to obey His law, not perfectly, but substantially (Romans 8:7-9, 1 John 5:1-3). A few specific passages in the Bible are cited by liberals as requiring a welfare state:
Getting from here to the Biblical model: In the United States and most of the world, we are far from the Biblical model of relieving poverty. The current direction of nations is generally away from it and toward socialism, as with Obamacare. Merely cutting taxes and trying to defeat socialist healthcare legislation is not good enough. It will appear, rightly to an extent, that Christians don't care about the poor unless churches implement well-established, wide-spread programs of poverty relief that can replace the burden now carried by the State. (The same amount of money would not be needed. The money spent by the church to care for the poor would be much less than what civil governments currently spend on welfare because 1) a tax rate of less than 10% would astronomically increase the number of jobs and economic prosperity in general since much less money would be taken away from the business owners/job producers through taxation - a rising tide lifts all boats - and 2) the moral uplift provided by Christian charities would help the poor escape the ways of thinking and habits that often lead to poverty.) Churches must teach the moral obligation of giving at least an annual one-third tithe exclusively for poverty-relief. Current high rates of taxation hinder church-based poverty programs because high taxes take money away from Christians that they could give to their church for poverty relief. This calls for this generation of Christians to give sacrificially to change things. Christians must do what they can to give to the church at the levels that the Bible requires even while suffering taxation by the State at levels that far exceed what the Bible warns against. Along with your prayers, your giving to the poor will ascend as a memorial before God (Acts 10:4), and Jesus will take notice (Mark 12:41).
For more understanding and practical insight into the Biblical view of charity, see When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . . or Ourselves by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett. Also see the following books available for free at http://www.garynorth.com/freebooks: |
