The Christian and others' poverty

Nonetheless, the Christian is a human being, and while he can legitimately allow such things to happen to himself, and not be particularly concerned about whether what is happening to himself is good or bad, the Christian cannot abdicate his humanity and consider these curses as neutral for other people.

That is, while more-than-normal restriction of my activities might be a matter of indifference to me (because I concern myself with what I can do, not with the fact that I cannot do what "the average person" can do); still, I cannot as a human being cooperate with forcing others into an abnormally limited situation. I cannot oppress others simply because I don't care whether I am oppressed or not; I cannot make others poor because I don't care whether I am poor; I cannot trample on others' rights because it is of no consequence to me if others trample on mine.

To cooperate in forcing others into an abnormally limited situation is to dehumanize them; and it is inconsistent with me as a human being to do this. Christianity is not, as I have so often said, a humanism; but the Christian does not cease to be a human being. And certainly the Christian, who has God's infinite respect for the reality that exists, will not contradict either his own nature as human or others' humanity. We love with Jesus' love, who is human as well as divine. Hence, even though the Christian does not look on things as good and bad, this does not mean he does not notice what is right and wrong, and avoid what is wrong.

Now what does this mean in practice for the Christian who is faced with the poverty of others?

First of all, it does not mean working "to right this wrong." A Christian may in fact work to get people out of poverty, which in fact rights the wrongs that are involved in poverty. But in Christianity, we are talking about attitude, basically, and "righting wrongs" (looking on things as bad and to be corrected) is the serpent's attitude, not the Christian one.

Secondly, the Christian's attitude in the face of poverty and even starvation does not mean a guilt-trip of the nature of "Here I am with more than enough and people are starving," as if the mere possession of what is humanly decent is wrong as long as there is one person who is deprived. God, remember, is not interested in eliminating evils in the world; if this were so, there would be none. Evils are a human way of looking at things, not God's way.

No, what the Christian attitude in the face of poverty is in the first place is one of not cooperating with the empoverishment of others, and alleviating their poverty to the extent that not to do so is to cooperate in their impoverishment.

This, of course, is minimally necessary for any human being faced with dehumanized conditions in others which he can eliminate. To refuse to do anything when no harm will come to yourself and your refusal does harm to others is to will the harm to others.

But once one gets beyond this minimum, it cannot be said that one is equivalently willing harm to others if one does not help them; it would be self-contradictory to assert this, because the minimum is the level at which not helping is willing harm.

As I pointed out in The Moral Dimension of Human Economic Life, this minimum amounts to saying that the affluent do not have a right to that percentage of what they own whose mere possession is depriving others of the minimum necessary to live a minimally human life.

But what this percentage is cannot be known in practice by any person; and so it becomes the function of civil society to discover what the minimal needs of the indigent are, and how, using the Principle of Least Social Harm, the affluent are to be assessed to make their necessary contribution to these needs, and to tax them this amount.

Thus, on the assumption that civil society is making a reasonable effort in this direction, this moral duty is discharged by paying taxes.

Let me try to be clear on this, without re-writing the book I am referring to. I think there is good evidence that such a reasonable effort is being made in our country, and that the tax structure is such that no one need worry about whether, after paying taxes, he actually has no right to what he now owns because his ownership is a connivance in forcing others into starvation or other positively inhuman conditions.

That there are people in our society who are starving can be admitted and still the above is true. I will speak of this shortly. What I am getting at is that I think that in our country, it is absurd to say that with those not even really affluent paying over a third of their income in taxes, this is not enough and they must do more. There is no reason to feel guilty because you are living decently.

Secondly, the Christian attitude is not one of "compassion," in the sense of a pity that sees the plight of the poor and does not think about what the situation is and what in practice can be done without dragging other evils in its train. It is very difficult not to sound like Scrooge when one treats this subject rationally; but it does not follow that because Scrooge was grasping and selfish, his arguments have no validity.

The Christian is not a prey to his emotions, of which "compassion" is perhaps the most insidious, because it sounds like unselfishness. I know a woman who out of "compassion" fed fudge to a diabetic, who "craved it so much." This is not Christian love. "Compassion" in this sense is a way of looking evils because of the emotion of empathy; and like all emotions, it tends to concentrate attention toward direct action, and away from consideration of facts, which are cold and abstract. The result often is action which is counter-productive, because it is the obvious thing to be done to alleviate the evil felt; but it does not address the actual situation.

The government, as I mentioned, has the primary obligation of finding out who is living an inhuman life because of inability to find the means to live a human one, and how much is needed to correct this condition. But in correcting the condition, a situation must not be created which causes an economic incentive to get into the situation of dependence on this activity of the government.

For instance, it is said (and I take the figures for the sake of the argument) that at least in some states, the assistance given to mothers with dependent children is more than the minimum that it costs to raise those children for a year. One can ask why the children should have the bare minimum when it is the mother or society which is at fault. Why should they suffer?

The problem, however, is that if more than the bare minimum is provided (however compassionate it may be to do so), then it becomes economically advantageous to have several children, because the more children you have, the greater the "profit" (income - cost) you get from it. Granted most mothers do not have children for the sake of the tiny monetary "reward" for having them; but the point is that this sort of thing makes it objectively advantageous to go on welfare and have no husband and many children; and the government must not create such a temptation. We have no idea how strong it can be for those who have practically nothing any way they look on their lives.

Further, the affluent must not be forced by the government (which exacts taxes under penalty) to do more than what is necessary. This is to make necessary what is not necessary, and government can only justify taking money from those who have it on the grounds of necessity.

This makes the economic situation of the people vastly unequal. But we are not equal. Rights are not based on equality, but on personhood. There is no right to be equal to others, as the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard shows; there is not even a right to equality of opportunity.

This is a fact: these "rights" of equality and equality of opportunity do not exist; it does not dehumanize me if someone else has greater advantages than I have. I have tried to show the basis for this in my book on economics and ethics. "Compassion" cannot face this fact; and therefore, it should not be what directs one's actions.

"Compassion" would also be in favor of individual "charity" as opposed to governmental action, because actions of individuals to individuals is more "personal." The problem here is that, though some percentage (let us say, for the sake or argument, a quarter) of my income is not by rights mine because my mere possessing of it is depriving others of necessities, still no single person among those deprived has any right to more than an infinitesimal part of this--given that there are millions of deprived people in the world. But each person has a right against the whole class of the affluent to the conditions for a minimally human life.

Now suppose I give fifty dollars to a needy family. This is much less than they need to live a minimally human life; and so they are not receiving what they have a right to receive from me and people like me. Yet they have no right to receive even one dollar from me, and so my action of giving them fifty is objectively an act of generosity toward them (in particular) on my part.

This puts them in the position of having to be grateful to me for generosity when what they are receiving is something they have a right to receive. And I am receiving gratitude for my generosity in giving much less than I have an obligation to give to the poor as a class.

The relation is a personal one, to be sure; but if there are such things as economic rights (and I agree with the American Bishops that there are, though not quite in what their extent is), then this person-to-person giving and receiving is calculated only to (a) enable the affluent to do less than they probably have an obligation in justice to do, and (b) feel good doing it, while the poor (a) receive less than they have a right to receive, and (b) must be grateful to the donors for giving it to them. It is an anti-human situation, which is only permissible if the government can't function, or when the government isn't functioning.

The problem is an exceedingly complex one; but it is basically the government's problem, and is not one for the individual citizen. The problem is how to keep society (in this case by its affluence) from actively doing harm to the powerless without creating incentives for people to drop from the class of "those with very little power" into "the powerless." It is not my purpose in these pages to suggest solutions to the problem; this is an ethical issue and a practical issue, and the book before us is one of how the layman expresses the Christian attitude.

Let me, then, close this section with two remarks. There can definitely be a vocation for the layman who thinks he can see ways of steering government between the Scylla and Charybdis I just mentioned: who can look all the facts square in the face, and become an advisor to the government in what must be done, and how it can be done, given the realities of the society and of the people in government. If his advice is followed, fine; if not, his Christian attitude is that he has done his job, offered what he has to offer, and that is all that is to be expected of him.

Other laymen, who have not studied the issue, need not feel guilty if they are not involved with the plight of the poor, because Christianity does not exist to right the wrongs in the world, but for the sake of the contribution one can make to the world--and this contribution need not be to the poor.

Nevertheless, in any governmental attempt to help the needy, there will be people who will "fall through the cracks," who need help (or even who can use help), and who must, humanly speaking, be cared for, or who can be cared for privately without the bad side-effects of creating incentives toward dependence. Insofar as the Christian knows of such people, he will do something to help them, realizing that this is not something he is doing to rid himself of guilt at being affluent, but something that can be done, that he can do, and why not do it?

The one thing Christianity can be said to have done for us is free us from guilt. When supposedly "Christian" preaching has a function of creating an attitude of "I will be guilty unless I do..." it is, I think, the Christian version of Phariseism, where Christian virtue consists in "works" and not in a way of looking at things.

The upshot of all of this is that, though it is not anti-Christian by any means to give away all you have to the poor, this is not the only Christian attitude a person can have toward his money and possessions. I thought it was necessary to clear this up before we could even consider how the layman is to look at his money.