The Evangelical Argument for Welfare
God’s vision of society is greater than personal philanthropy
What is government for? One purpose is clearly to make and enforce laws. Having a justice system and law enforcement is a more efficient, less violent solution than relying on local strongmen or personal vengeance.
Another purpose is to keep things organized and share costs. With a government system, we don’t all need to know how to build roads or lay pipe, nor must we each negotiate tolls and trade. To be sure, some governments have built more monuments for kings than roads for the people, but we all expect government to be organizing these projects in the modern day.
I submit that a third purpose of government is to facilitate societal well-being. Similar to sharing costs, societies can spread risk across their members. This is the social safety net. How expensive and extensive it has been differs widely across history and geography, but it remains something that only government can effectively provide.
Conservative policy espoused by many US Christians has argued for more private philanthropy and less government-provided welfare — but I say, if philanthropy could be enough, it already would be.
However, you don’t have to approve of every policy proposal that comes your way. Like laws and infrastructure, welfare programs vary in effectiveness and efficiency. But I want to challenge the assumption that personal giving is the only way for Christians to help others; government services can improve societal well-being according to God’s vision.
To my non-Christian readers: while most of my argument is based on Biblical commands, you can think about the same trade-offs between risk and sharing.
To my Christian readers: think about God’s intention for government and the best ways for imperfect humans to accomplish it.
It is objectively good to alleviate suffering
Underlying my arguments is the belief that relieving another person’s suffering is objectively good. This is a deep-seated value that I’m not interested in debating. If you don’t think it’s good to alleviate suffering, I’m guessing none of the goals in this blog will be relevant to you anyway.
This value is also probably self-evident to Christians, but in case you want a Bible passage, read the parable of the sheep and the goats. Jesus praises the people who fed the hungry, looked after the sick, and visited the imprisoned with the famous words, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” In the parable, the rewards aren’t given to people who believe correct doctrine, but to those who show their faith by living it out. Helping people in need is a worthy end in itself, as well as an expression of a person’s obedience to God.*
God made government and cares how it treats people
God created people to be in relationship with him and with one another. He also meant for them to steward his creation and work with him to bring about its flourishing. As explained in the book Jesus and the Powers,
“The Creator intends his world to be run through obedient human beings. … God still desires and intends to work in his world through obedient humans, and he continues to do so even when that obedience is at best patchy.” (their emphasis)
The book further adds, “Saying that the authorities are appointed and authorised by God does not mean that God endorses whatever they then do. The biblical view is that God holds his appointed authorities to account for their actions.”
The biblical view is that God holds his appointed authorities to account for their actions.
I covered it in this article, but it bears repeating: the way people in power treat others matters to God, over and above our individual giving. Jesus didn’t shy away from criticizing religious leaders for hypocrisy. And the Old Testament prophets are full of admonishments to authorities who weren’t living up to their calling:
Both hands are skilled in doing evil;
the ruler demands gifts,
the judge accepts bribes,
the powerful dictate what they desire —
they all conspire together.They sell the innocent for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor
as on the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed.In you are people who accept bribes to shed blood; you take interest and make a profit from the poor. You extort unjust gain from your neighbors. I will surely strike my hands together at the unjust gain you have made and at the blood you have shed in your midst.
Now that democracies are common and Christians can easily participate in democratic government, I believe we are called to influence our nations’ laws, penalties, and programs in the direction of justice — which includes how our social safety net operates.
The US on the spectrum of social contracts
All societies are a negotiation among their members for how much risk an individual or family will bear alone versus how much risk will be spread across society. By definition, any risks that a government doesn’t mitigate are left to families by default.
On one end of the spectrum are loose affiliations with no formal agreement. In these groups, all risk of illness, death and accident is borne by the individual and any members of family or community who would help (which even early humans did). On the other end would be a government that directly provides all food, clothing, education, housing and healthcare to all its citizens — an experiment (“true” socialism or communism) that has arguably been attempted but never succeeded in practice. Obviously most countries fall in between the extremes.
Without a government safety net, the ability and willingness of an individual’s family and community to help determine that person’s outcome. Not surprisingly, those outcomes vary widely — it is essentially the chance of birth and whether a disaster strikes.
In the US, for example, we have a robust safety net against poverty for people over age 65, but not healthcare for working-age adults. FEMA can help after a disaster, but an individual’s disaster insurance also affects how much they receive. K-12 education is paid for, but not childcare or college. (I wrote two articles on how our current social contract was based on old assumptions and has not kept up with changes to our society, so read them for more details.)
What programs can and can’t do
Government programs can help more people faster than individuals and charities because the system — yes, the bureaucracy — is already in place. Nothing in the Bible opposes Christians using the government to bring about those ends, as long as we are also being personally generous. Because Americans can participate in government, I think we are morally obligated to use that ability to make our country more just and loving to the oppressed and marginalized.
I admit that I sometimes think we could solve everyone’s problems if we could just create and fund the right programs. The reality is that individuals still make choices, and you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. But we could certainly utilize the long reach of government to mitigate more risks for more people than we do now.
For example, the US is the only developed country that doesn’t provide universal healthcare of some kind. If you’re a Christian and you’re not advocating for more people to get healthcare, why not? Be really honest with yourself. Is it because you’re afraid you’d lose (some of) your own coverage?** Or because you want to control how much you give to other people’s healthcare (e.g., GoFundMe instead of taxes)? Whatever it is, do you think it’s a godly reason? If not, what could change?
Even in that example, there are still at least 32 different ways of trying to give every American access to basic healthcare, each with its own tradeoffs. Government funding is limited and has to be wisely distributed, so there will always be room to debate whom to tax, how much, and which programs to fund. What I want Christians to ask ourselves is whether we’re prioritizing good goals.
Building for the Kingdom
In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s kingdom is already here, ushered in by Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection; but creation has not yet been fully renewed, which will happen when Jesus comes in person again. In this between-time, writes Jesus and the Powers,
A pilgrim may make use of temporal goods such as government, employing them for their divinely intended ends, without worshipping them and without being corrupted by idolatries of power. If heavenly citizens do that, they will then be walking signposts of heavenly peace amid earthly chaos, and become a life-giving force in the world…
Anything we do to improve people’s lives here and now is preparation for and a signpost toward the New Creation. Social programs are tools available to us to build for God’s kingdom in anticipation of the perfect reign of Jesus later.
* I would not be surprised if this passage in the Bible was at least part of the rationale behind C.S. Lewis’s inclusion of Emeth in The Last Battle.
** We already spend as much public money on our non-universal system as other countries with universal care spend on theirs, and we have dozens of examples to use as models. A system doesn’t have to cover everything for everyone to cover some things for those who need it.
If you enjoyed this article, consider checking out the rest of this publication.
