Global poverty and Christianity

We have a moral obligation to help those in dire need if (1) it is within our power to do so and (2) helping doesn’t require a sacrifice of greater moral worth than not helping. I think it’s pretty clear that we collectively have the ability to not only rescue people from extreme poverty, but to provide people in those circumstances with the education and resources to sustain a way of life that eradicates extreme poverty without having wealthy nations continuously playing a direct role. I don’t think the question is, ‘should we give them a fish or teach them how to fish’—both are needed.

And this moral argument proceeds just fine before Christianity is factored in.

Anyone who considers the Bible to be a source of normative morality would be hard-pressed to find a loophole out of the moral obligation reason alone seems to impose on us. The Bible is absolutely full of descriptive and prescriptive language regarding poverty, and throughout the scope of scripture there is a clear sense that poverty does carry moral weight—and those who contribute to poverty and those who ignore poverty are held accountable.

This theme is extremely prominent in the prophetic books. Isaiah, a harsh indictment against Judah, centers around the people’s practicing ritual worship while failing to “defend the orphan and the widow’s cause” (1:23). Chapter 58 very specifically deals with the obsession to “draw near to God” while fasting, but the people are condemned for turning a blind eye to the oppression going on around them—or being caused by them.

The people of Israel are also called out in Amos after a tour de force of indictments against the neighboring peoples because they “trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way” (2:7).

Micah 6:8 famously instructs God’s people to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.”

In Zechariah, the failure to uphold God’s command to “not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor” is given as a theological reason for why the people were scattered and taken into captivity. There are far more examples in the rest of the prophets than I can go into.

And of course the New Testament is full of admonitions to protect and provide for the last, the lost, and the least.

The point is, we have a moral obligation to work towards dealing with extreme poverty sans religion. Christianity does nothing to blunt what is already clear-cut; in fact, it commands us to do what our moral intuitions already tell us—that we must defend the cause of those who cannot defend themselves.