No Preferential Treatment – The Law of God and Public Policy: Responsibility for the Poor (3)

No Preferential Treatment

The Law of God and Public Policy: Responsibility for the Poor (3)

The Law of God does not promote preferential treatment of the poor.

“You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” Leviticus 19:15

Over the last century or so the view has been popularized by certain members of the Christian community that all poor people are worthy of our care and have a right to expect a certain measure of deference and public support, simply by virtue of their status as poor people. This view comes from the spirit of an egalitarian age, and not from the Spirit of God.

There are legitimate reasons why people become poor, as we have seen. And truly poor people should expect a just society to show them neighbor-love in ways that enable them to maintain their dignity and their place as contributing members of the social order. The Law of God expects even those who are poor to work and to tithe from the fruit of their labors. Thus, though they may be poor, they do not forfeit their dignity, and they are not excused from being responsible and contributing members of the community.

Not all those who are poor, however, deserve the same consideration as those who are truly poor, as we have also seen. And those who are truly poor have no right to expect that society will ensure them a particular “standard of living.”

Public policies that make the poor wards of the State are unjust for two reasons. First, they rob the poor of their true dignity by creating an entitlement mindset, making the poor dependent on society rather than contributors to it. Second, such policies go beyond the requirements of God’s Law in the area of distributive justice. Nowhere does the Law of God approve seizing the property of one group of citizens in order to bolster the material well-being of another group. And even in situations in which the property of one group is to be available for the needs of the poor, the State has no right to seize that property and distribute it through its channels and bureaucracies. As we shall see, the poor have a “right” to the property of the non-poor only if they work for it themselves. Thus, the poor in any community should expect to be loved as neighbors; however, they must not expect to be elevated as equals in any kind of material sense.

The poor should be protected and served by the laws and policies of the community, but they must not be favored by them.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.