The poor you shall always have with you

John Fielding

On September 18, 2009, Bill Ulrich commented on the passage “For you always have the poor with you” and, in so doing, excerpted a comment of mine from the combox of my blog, “Berks Conservative”:

Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you," and he is right, almost by definition. Since I beleive (sic) the problem to be ultimately intractable (at least in the sense of some always suffering), I tend to steer clear of utopian solutions since those "solutions" have hsitorically (sic) caused the most suffering experience by the greatest number. Ultimately, if government would get out of the way, I think charity would then be freed to step up to the plate (if it hasn't already become so atrophied by haveing [sic] government usurp its role all these years.)

Now, I am not accustomed to having my blog read by folks at the Reading Eagle, still less Bill Ulrich, and even less, the combox. I guess I will have to be more careful of my spelling next time if my comments in my combox are going to gain such notoriety. Indeed, it took me quite a while to even realize that Ulrich had said anything, and the intervening election kept me from responding more quickly.

Before Mr. Ulrich disagrees with me in his column, however, he disagrees with the Bible itself (“Clearly, this is one story the Bible doesn’t have straight.”), so I suppose I should feel flattered to be in such esteemed company. He engages in the same fish-eyed criticism of the Bible that we have come to expect from liberal churchmen so I suppose we should expect the same from liberal church laymen. Having destroyed the Bible as divine revelation by interpreting it in the most naturalistic manner possible, the liberals have proceeded to pour into it the most saccharine liberal social understanding possible. Indeed, Jesus is so inoffensive in the liberal telling, one wonders why anyone would have gone to the trouble of crucifying him at all.

In this scene, Jesus is attending a meal at the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany. A woman has an expensive box of perfume and anoints Jesus’ head with the perfume. The disciples (in John, we learn it is Judas leading the way) begin murmuring against this to the effect that the perfume was expensive and could have been sold, and the money given to the poor. Jesus responds in the Mark account, “Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.” (Mk. 14:6-9).

Oddly enough, Ulrich says this:

In the Markan account, Jesus says "For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish" (14:7), echoing the Mosaic law set down in Deuteronomy: "Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’" (15:11).” We can make much of the fact that in the synoptic Gospel accounts of Jesus’ anointing, he is in the house of a leper – one who is unclean and a societal outcast - in Matthew and Mark and in the house of a Pharisee in Luke. We can also explicate the significance of a kingly anointing by a woman when women had no status in that society and what significance exists in the anointing of Jesus’ head in Matthew and Mark and his feet in Luke and John.

That’s a long discussion for another day.

Then he goes on to take issue with me: “But we must take issue with Fielding’s hyperbole that his straw-man ‘utopian solutions… have historically caused greater suffering among the most people.’ Is care for the poor a "utopian" ideal or a Christian value?”

Of course we know that care for the poor is not a utopian value, but in order to find out why, we must have the long discussion that Ulrich eschews.

To the contrary, the Bible commands care for the poor. In fact, the fact that Jesus quotes the Deuteronomy verse indicates that, contra some current scholarship, Jesus’ teachings are not just dropped out of heaven, with no connection to the Old Testament.

And that is the point.

God has commanded how the poor are to be cared for in the Old Testament, and the government is nary to be seen, either in prescibing the care, or in enforcing it, or in punishing the lack of it. In fact, part of the condemnation of the nation Israel by the prophets was that Israel did not care for the poor as God had commanded and that was one reason for God’s judgment. But we search the Scriptures in vain for commands for governmental action on behalf of the poor, actual governmental action such as a welfare state, or, more importantly, any enforcement mechanism for individual Israelites’ failures to obey the commands of the poor law.

In creating his own strawman, Ulrich equivocates between my distaste for “utopian solutions” to poverty, and any care for the poor whatsoever.

Despite the impression upon our modern society has, which would rather create its own standard for good and evil, and generosity or lack thereof, Biblical law is fairly moderate in its approach.

The state and the church are fairly closely circumscribed, with certain responsibilities being left to the family (such as the bulk of charity), leaving considerable freedom for individual action. I believe I said nothing about the “free-market” or “capitalism” in my combox, but Ulrich just assumes that I believe that the free-market is the solution.

And of course he is right, although not to the exclusion of care for the poor by individuals, families, and church under biblical law. Notice I did not mention the state. Because there is no such provision. It is when the state steps in a la liberal progressive Christian social gospel that we have the “utopian” solutions I distrust so much.

Because the free-market is what is left after state, church, family, and individual have obeyed those commandments directed to those spheres of authority in the Bible. Thus, “free-market” is simply another word for free individuals engaging in free human action.

Sorry Bill doesn’t like it.