Frank: In the book, you make several key statements about God’s passion to help the poor. You also make a few statements about how the “powers that be” often neglect the poor. In my country right now (USA), there is a huge debate over this issue among Christians. One aspect of the debate revolves around the question, “Who are the poor exactly?” Some Christians argue that there is a distinction between the poor who are trying to find work and/or who are working (but cannot make ends meet) versus the indigent who refuse to work and expect others to support them.
What do you say to this debate? And how do you think Christians should square Paul’s words in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15 that if a person “doesn’t work, neither should he eat” with the injunctions in Scripture exhorting God’s people to help the poor?
N.T. Wright: Of course, whenever people discover that other folk are going out of their way to give handouts, some will get lazy and simply try to trade off this goodwill. It’s a telling point, actually, that this was already a danger in the very early church – because you only get that problem arising if the church is being generous. The line between “deserving poor” and “undeserving poor” is very, very hard to draw, and one of the things about poverty, whether one has work or not (some jobs pay so little that the people who do them are still well within the poverty trap), is that it is depressing and actually saps the energy and nerve and vitality in ways that people like me, who have never been out of work and never been truly poor, can only appreciate by being with and ministering to people who are genuinely and chronically poor.
There is a real danger that in a go-getting country like the USA those who have initiative, energy, advantages of birth, and education can easily look down on those who have none of those things. It simply isn’t the case that every human starts at the same level point so that the rich are those who’ve worked for it and the poor are those who couldn’t be bothered. Throughout the Bible, God seems to take special note of those trapped in poverty, and we should do the same.
Frank: A related question to the above: In my country (USA), many Christians wish to help the poor more. But they are bitterly divided as to how to do that. Some Christians believe it’s the government’s job to aid the poor, and Christians should back those politicians who support programs that seek to aid the poor and rebuke those who do not.
Other Christians feel that the government doesn’t really help the poor but creates a system that perpetuates poverty by keeping poor people stuck in their impoverished state. For such people, helping the poor is the church’s responsibility, not the State’s. Given the practical implications of your book – that Christians should hold earthly governments accountable when they run contrary to God’s will – what do you say to Christians on both sides of this debate?
N.T. Wright: One of the real problems we face in the Western church is that ever since the C18, at least, the ‘state’ (that’s a very modern idea, by the way) has taken over the running and administration of things that used to be done purely or mostly by the church – I’m thinking of hospitals and other medical facilities, and of course of education. Certainly, care for the poor comes into that category. Part of the Enlightenment problem is that the ‘state’ has squeezed out the church.
Granted, the church has made a comeback; in my country, the hospice movement was started purely by Christians and is still run, very successfully, by volunteers and donations almost all through the churches. Now it may be that God is pleased to work through ‘secular’ authorities – though that brings other problems in its wake, often enough. And of course, whether it’s the church or the ‘state’ that’s helping the poor, locally and globally, it is vital that this be done wisely and shrewdly, with the wisdom of the serpent and the innocence of the dove, to avoid any chance of the trap you mention happening, perpetuating poverty (e.g. by large handouts to foreign countries that then put local folk out of business).
But that danger must not be used as an excuse – as, sadly, it sometimes has been – for saying, “so there’s nothing really we need to do.” There is plenty, but it calls for serious and urgent study and prayer – and pretty certainly, some serious reshaping of Western capitalism and banking. It isn’t rocket science to see that if a few people are being paid millions in bonuses while others are struggling to survive on a few dollars a week, this does no honor to the God of love and justice we know in and as Jesus Christ.
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