Caring for the Poor: Robbing the Poor – The Law of God and Public Policy

Caring for the Poor: Robbing the Poor
The Law of God and Public Policy

Government must not rob the poor of their dignity.

“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

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—or, more specifically, on the political class—rather than contributors to society who depend on God and His goodness and justice for their needs.

Second, such policies go beyond the requirements of what God’s Law requires in the area of distributive justice, thus presuming to know better than God what the norms of justice should be. Nowhere does the Law of God approve of the State seizing the property of one group of citizens in order to bolster the material well-being of another group, even if that group is chronically and justly poor. And even in situations in which the property of one group is to be made available for the needs of the poor, as in the third-year tithe in ancient Israel, this is to be done voluntarily, under the eyes—and thus the approval or disapproval—of local communities. The State has no right to seize that property and distribute it through its channels and bureaucracies. Everyone is called upon to fulfill his own duties vis à vis the poor and to receive the gratitude their faithfulness provokes or shame and stigma for their cold indifference.

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.