This is my notes from a sermon that I preached at The Storehouse Church in Skegness late 2023
I believe God has given me a message that has the same nature as some of my more controversial offerings and I believe that He told me that I was the one to bring these words.
Most of you know that I am a teacher of Maths, but I also teach Economics and indeed my first degree was in Economics from the LSE. My message today is titled Biblical Economics and the Christian attitude to the Poor.
Now there is only time to really touch upon this here.
Biblical Economics is a topic that does not seem to have a great volume of literature on and an online search led mostly to US sites who gave a very superficial consideration, largely consisting of logic such as God gave us free choice therefore the free market must be the best solution or God creates us as rational beings so the therefore free market economics with the assumptions that humans operate rationally is the best.
Indeed, the assumptions underpinning free market economics includes that we are all act rationally all the time as well and that we all have perfect knowledge and perfect foresight and that we are selfish utility maximisers. The theory says that the best thing for society is that we all act selfishly. That does not sound very Christian to me.
So, if not too many people have written about it, then the best place to start is the Bible. We do have to be a little wary about that, because of course the economy in bible times both old and new is very different to the economy today.
We also must be careful not to just cherry pick, The Christian Party manifesto at one point declared because the Biblical tithe is 10% so should the tax rate, without considering the wider economic setting.
In the Old Testament, God set laws in place for how the nation of Israel was to be governed, including its economy. Now as I said we must be careful; the economy of the time was very different to the economy today. Israel was going to be an agrarian economy, the main, almost the sole wealth was the land, and it was from the land that the people would derive an income. In modern parlance the land was the predominant capital available to the Israelites.
So what did God say about the land
Leviticus 25
8 “In addition, you must count off seven Sabbath years, seven sets of seven years, adding up to forty-nine years in all. 9 Then on the Day of Atonement in the fiftieth year, blow the ram’s horn loud and long throughout the land. 10 Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan. 11 This fiftieth year will be a jubilee for you. During that year you must not plant your fields or store away any of the crops that grow on their own, and don’t gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. 12 It will be a jubilee year for you, and you must keep it holy. But you may eat whatever the land produces on its own. 13 In the Year of Jubilee each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors.
14 “When you make an agreement with your neighbour to buy or sell property, you must not take advantage of each other. 15 When you buy land from your neighbour, the price you pay must be based on the number of years since the last jubilee. The seller must set the price by taking into account the number of years remaining until the next Year of Jubilee. 16 The more years until the next jubilee, the higher the price; the fewer years, the lower the price. After all, the person selling the land is actually selling you a certain number of harvests. 17 Show your fear of God by not taking advantage of each other. I am the Lord your God.
What this says is that Every 50 years the land, the capital was to be returned to its original owners. Land could not be permanently sold, merely effectively leased out.
If followed Israel would not be a country with great wealth disparity, because each family would have long term access to the means to produce income. This of course is so very different to modern society, where wealth is increasingly accumulated into the hands of the few. The last rich list had 168 Uk billionaires with the wealthiest worth £35 billion pounds. The wealth of this select few has grown massively in recent years. To give some perspective on this, to earn a billion pounds on the minimum wage, you would roughly have to work 50 hours a week, for 50 weeks of the year for 40000 years. This sort of wealth discrepancy is frowned upon in the bible.
God, of course, knew that his template was not going to be applied in Israel for long, so he put provision in for what would happen, indeed my contention is that the laws put down in Old Testament amount to probably the first welfare state that ever existed.
Take for instance these verses from the book of Deuteronomy Chapter 14
28 At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, 29 so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
Throughout the Old Testament laws as expounded in the book of Moses concern is placed to look after the elderly, the sick, the widows and indeed the foreigner. Deuteronomy 10:18-19 and 24:17-21, are good examples where those who are unable to fend for themselves are to be well treated, some would say even given welfare, for out of the tithe, like a 10% tax on income, these groups of people were to be looked after.
A provision that wouldn’t sit well with modern practice is described in Deuteronomy 24 whereby landowners should not go back over fields to check for missed produce because this should be left for the poor, the protection that Naomi used to gather food. Today those poor would fall foul of trespass laws.
Now you may have realised that I am passionate about this subject and I am particularly passionate about alleviating poverty. This maybe for personal reasons; growing up, my family were considered poor. I was a free school meal kid, at the start of each school day I would queue up outside the Head of house’s office to be given a pink plastic token which I would then use to pay for my school lunch. We lived in a council house which was a prefab built just after the war and later declared not fit for habitation. We had night storage heaters so old that most did not work and until my parents bought an oil heater, there was no heat upstairs, waking up to ice on the inside of the window was not unknown. In primary school the whole year was offered the choice of two residential trips, one to Cornwall and one to the Isle of Wight. I and several others would go on the cheaper alternative of a series of day trips. Perhaps one of the most stand out points of this was the fact that despite loving football, the first pair of new football boots I owned were a 21st birthday present from my brother. Before that I had several ill-fitting hand-me-downs. Why I hadn’t bought myself a pair at university I am not quite sure, perhaps I considered them an extravagance.
So the biblical verses that talk about looking after the poor strike a real chord in me and there are many of them. We have been told that if God says something once it is important but if he says it twice then verily, verily, we should listen. Well I have seven pages of verses here from the bible where God expresses concern for the poor, here are just a few
Proverbs 22:16 ESV
Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty.
James 2:6 ESV
But you have dishonoured the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court?
Proverbs 21:13 ESV
Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.
Amos 5:11 ESV
Therefore because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.
Proverbs 29:7 — (NLT)
7 The godly care about the rights of the poor;
the wicked don’t care at all.
The early church took this serious enough that Acts 4v34 tells us:
There were no needy people among them because those who owned land or houses would sell them 35 and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need.
For a long time I heard people say that in Britain no-one was really poor, well in 2016 a documentary was made looking at poverty in the UK, this is one clip.
I wonder if anyone whilst watching that was thinking thoughts such critical thoughts of the parents maybe the parents should get a job or work harder.
I have seen poor people divided into the deserving and undeserving, but Jesus didn’t ask questions like this, He healed all who came before Him and when performing the miracles of feeding the thousands, he didn’t say “what feckless parents coming into the desert with no food to feed their children”, He acted with compassion to those around Him and fed them.
Memes
Recently we have seen the big oil and electricity companies posting record profits whilst energy bills for ordinary people have soared. I have seen a number of tweets by ambulance drivers who have been called to attend people with hypothermia, because they couldn’t afford to turn on their heating, sadly some of them died. That is exploitation and something that is repeatedly criticised in the Bible.
Now one of the fiercest arguments against this compassion centres on 2 Thessalonians 3v10
10 Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: “Those unwilling to work will not get to eat.”
Frequently you hear the accusation that people are happy on benefits and should be made to work or get no support, this verse is used to support that argument.
Firstly, though this may be true for some, we don’t know how that works for an individual, their maybe mental health issues, for some parents, the cost of childcare may outweigh the earnings.
Besides this verse was probably not aimed at poor people, in that society generally if people didn’t work, they begged or starved. This verse was talking about the food handed out at Church and those people who this verse was talking about might well have had their own means, but hung around the Church gossiping but not helping out.
The truth is that just under 40% of UK benefit claimants are actually in work, just that wages are not high enough. The government changed the “minimum” wage into the “living” wage for those over 25 years old (because it is cheaper to live when you are 24 years old obviously) but that is still below what is called the real living wage, calculated to be the wage required to actually live on. Then you have the issue of zero hours contracts, where people may turn up for work and be told they are not needed that day. The Bible tells us that the worker is worth his wages, but in the UK many firms try to pay as little as possible and there is little enforcement of the even the minimum wage.
There is an economic analysis that says that it is important for unemployment to exist because this keeps wages low, so benefits profits.....
Now I hear the thoughts that this is not really what you might expect for a sermon in Church, but the volume of scripture that talks about this issue shows that it is definitely is worth talking about. To reinforce this, consider Sodom, we all know why that city was destroyed don’t we; because of the immorality they demonstrated how they were filled with lust wanted to gang rape the male angels.
However if we read Ezekiel 16
49 Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door. 50 She was proud and committed detestable sins, so I wiped her out, as you have seen.
This suggests that the treatment of the poor was at least as important a reason for the city’s destruction. Maybe God’s priorities are not the same as the Western Church.
So, what is the lesson, what is the conclusion. It is clear from the Bible that God cares for the poor and requires us to do so as well. Jesus showed compassion not judgement in his dealings with people and would want us to do likewise.
We are to care in practical ways, maybe you could join a campaign group or increase your support for the food bank. But also in modern society this should be a factor we consider important when we cast our vote. We should be asking the questions, why in the 6th richest nation in the world do 22% of households skip meals because they can’t afford to do otherwise, why were there in 2022, 3.3 million children living in absolute poverty, that is lacking provision of basic needs and that is even before the cost of living crisis.
There is a challenge to us a Church that we might live up to the verses on the wall behind the reception desk
Isaiah 58
6 “No, this is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people.
7 Share your food with the hungry,
and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
8 “Then your salvation will come like the dawn,
and your wounds will quickly heal.
Your godliness will lead you forward,
and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind.
9 Then when you call, the Lord will answer.
‘Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply.
“Remove the heavy yoke of oppression.
Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors!
10 Feed the hungry,
and help those in trouble.
Then your light will shine out from the darkness,
and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
giving you water when you are dry
and restoring your strength.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like an ever-flowing spring.
12 Some of you will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities.
Then you will be known as a rebuilder of walls
and a restorer of homes.
Let us shrug off negative attitudes and put into practice our mission.
