Editor’s Note: The USDA recently announced that if the government remains shut down at the end of this week, recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) won’t receive benefits for November. The following is adapted from “Feeding Jesus: Reimagining the Great Commission” in the September/October 2024 issue of Good Faith Magazine’s predecessor, Nurturing Faith Journal.
The biblical witness is clear that a core, nonnegotiable component of our discipleship is found in our attitudes and actions toward those who experience hunger and poverty. Unlike other contentious issues, we don’t have to dig very deep to find out what God believes about this. While there are at least 400 verses that deal with the subject directly, there are few, if any, pages in our Bibles that don’t address it more broadly.
On many days, it must have seemed as if every word that came out of the mouth of Jesus was about caring for those who are hungry, homeless, and impoverished. The most intense of all those teachings came in his parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-45. The parable is apocalyptic, creating a vision of what the ultimate judgment will look like.
None of what Christians often associate with salvation—such as praying a prayer to “ask Jesus into your heart” or believing certain doctrines about God—was a criterion for judgment in the parable of the sheep and the goats. Instead, the singular determining factor for whether one ended up in a place of punishment or eternal life was one’s actions toward those in need. I find this both fascinating and sobering.
A central tenet of being the people of God is taking care of Jesus, who comes to us disguised as people who are poor, hungry, naked, and imprisoned. However, how to do that in a contemporary setting—far removed from the ancient cultural norms that underpinned our sacred texts—is far less clear.
Some of us deal with this lack of clarity by ignoring the tension altogether and leaning into an individualized Christianity primarily about our “hearts” and the things we believe. A smaller group of people do the opposite, devoting their entire lives to careers and ministries aimed solely at meeting the physical needs of those experiencing poverty.
Most of us, though, live somewhere in the middle. We know the person holding the sign at the street corner is involved in our salvation, but we wonder what to do when someone is at every street corner asking for assistance.
There are no easy answers to living in this tension. Even experts often disagree. Some say, “Give whatever you can whenever you can,” while others suggest a more measured and thoughtful approach to charity. There are, however, some helpful frameworks we can consider to nurture more faithful action to alleviate the suffering of so many around us.
Understanding the Roots of Poverty
In a 1967 sermon at Riverside Church, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
Many church and community food pantries and benevolence ministries don’t concern themselves with restructuring the systems that lead to hunger. They believe their call is to serve people regardless of what put them in their current situation. This direct-service approach is needed for the same reason that emergency rooms will always be needed. Regardless of what we do about whatever is happening upstream, someone will always fall into the water.
Some do, however, run upstream to find out why people continue to show up at their doorsteps looking for food.
Many of them come to one of two drastically different conclusions. One is that people experience poverty because of a mistake they have made or a skill they lack. The other is that poverty is primarily due to social and economic systems that work against people seeking to meet their daily needs.
Those who believe hunger and poverty are due to poor life choices are likely to create ministries that help educate and train folks in certain job or financial management skills. Some may even offer classes on cooking on a budget.
Those who blame social and economic systems for hunger and poverty are more likely to advocate for government leaders to create legislation that makes it easier for people to pull themselves out of poverty. They may press for a higher minimum wage, greater access to health care, or expanded benefits, such as nutrition and child care programs.
So, which group is right? In a way, both.
There are certainly some who find themselves in need because of poor financial choices or a lack of skills. At the same time, no Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover program can pull someone out of poverty in a world that doesn’t require employers to pay living wages and where a single, unexpected illness can amount to a lifetime of debt.
The “poverty is a choice” folks are often more likely than the “poverty is a result of systems” people to form transformative personal relationships with those who experience poverty. (This makes sense, as the first group has a more individualistic view of just about everything.)
However, those who believe hunger and poverty are a result of broken social systems are often more likely to push for proven strategies that will actually lift people out of poverty. They understand that poverty is usually generational and, despite a dwindling number of “American Dream” stories, people born in wealth are likely to die in wealth, and those born in poverty are likely to die in poverty.
The first group has created a “charity industrial complex” that chips away at the problem of poverty but does little to solve it. This failure is often due to a lack of understanding—or unwillingness to see—the power of scale.
Scale
There is a new category of feel-good stories in the media about churches that purchase and forgive medical debts owed by families in their community. These campaigns can transform lives. They sometimes culminate in “debt-burning” ceremonies, where millions of dollars in medical bills are forgiven in a single swoop.
But these churches don’t purchase the full amount of the debts. Instead, they work with third-party organizations that bundle multiple debt portfolios into a single product and sell it at a drastically reduced rate—often less than a penny on the dollar.
This is a powerful strategy that leverages the power of scale to pull people out of harrowing situations.
Feeding America, the country’s largest network of food banks, also understands the power of scale. Although food banks have small “food drive” programs, where donors purchase food and bring it to an on-site facility, most purchase food in bulk from large suppliers to save on cost. They also receive food from America’s farmers that government programs have subsidized.
This allows them to serve millions of families each year for less money than a small food pantry can operate on. Again, like the forgiveness of medical debts, the ability to scale up a program is an effective tool to fight poverty.
If one church can forgive millions in medical debts for just a few thousand dollars, how much could our efforts be compounded if two churches put their resources together? Or if a relatively large donor base is responsible for feeding millions of people in an emergency, what could a larger donor base do?
The principle behind “economies of scale” is that there are cost advantages to efficiency—cost decreases as scale increases.
Supporting federal programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is another way to leverage the power of scale. There is nothing inherently virtuous about the federal government. But it is the largest entity among us that can leverage scale enough to transform the systems that keep people in poverty.
Isn’t there wisdom in using the largest tool available to us to fulfill our biblical mandate of caring for those on the margins?
There are certainly reasons to distrust the government in caring for those experiencing poverty. Sometimes, regulations designed to operate these programs with integrity can have unintended consequences, such as reversing the efficiency leverage that economies of scale provide.
But I often wonder if our distrust of these programs has less to do with those inefficiencies—which can be remedied through legislation—and more with our collective Christian egos.
Simply put, if we used economies of scale to give everyone easy access to food, what would we do with our church food pantries? If the reality of “medical debt” didn’t exist because everyone had access to free or low-cost health care, what would become of our “debt relief” parties that make for good social media content or local news stories?
What would happen if we stopped handing out food and began inviting people to our tables?
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.
