Caring for the Poor: “War” on Poverty? – The Law of God and Public Policy

Caring for the Poor: “War” on Poverty?
The Law of God and Public Policy

Poverty is not a condition to be overcome by war, but love.

“For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’” Deuteronomy 15:11

Because poverty will be with us always, as we have seen, it will not be a goal of a just society to eliminate poverty. Declaring “war on poverty,” and other such rhetoric, is impractical and self-serving. It assigns poverty to the class of things evil, things to be eliminated, when, in fact, the Scriptures teach no such thing. Such bold and high-sounding aims play well in political campaigns, but they fly in the face of what God has plainly revealed. To undertake a “war on poverty” is to deny the authority of God’s Word and the teaching of Jesus Christ.

We do not seek to wage war on poverty, as though poverty were some sort of enemy which we might isolate, attack, and destroy. Poverty is no such thing, but a condition inherent in the human situation through which we must work to discover ways of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

No society can be just in which indifference to, scorn toward, or neglect of the poor is considered acceptable. The poor in any society are the neighbors of all members of the society, and all the members of any society thus are responsible to “open wide” their hands to meet the needs of the poor. Rather than warring against the poverty of the poor, the members of a just society accept the condition of poverty as a call to serve their neighbors in love.

Let us take it as a matter of public policy, therefore, to discover the Biblical teaching concerning the poor and to adopt policies that will enable us to fulfill the responsibilities of neighbor-love toward 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.