Christianity and the Social Question

If you ask what Jesus did to bring deliverance from the social needs of his time, here is the answer. He knew that such desperate needs grow from the malignant roots of error and sin, so he placed the truth over against error and broke the power of sin by shedding his blood and pouring out his Holy Spirit on his own. Since rich and poor had become divided because they had lost their point of union in God, he called both together back to their Father who is in heaven. He saw how the idolizing of money had killed nobility in the human heart, so he held up the "service of Mammon" before his followers as an object for their deep contempt. Since he understood the curse that lies in capital, especially for the man of great wealth, he adjured him to cease his accumulation of capital and to gather not treasure on earth, where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal (Matt. 6:19). He rejected the rich young man because he could not decide to sell all his goods and give to the poor. In his heart Jesus harbored no hatred for the rich, but rather a deep compassion for their pitiable condition. The service of Mammon is exceedingly difficult. Sooner would a camel go through the eye of a needle than would a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 9:16-24). Only when the possession of money leads to usury and harshness does Jesus become angry, and in a moving parable he tells how the man who would not release his debtor is handed over to torturers and branded as a wicked servant who knows no pity (Matt. 18:23-35). [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 37-38]

The socialists so flatly reverse [this] when they preach it: "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matt. 6:33). For both rich and poor, Jesus’ teaching simultaneously cuts to the root of sin in our human heart. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 39-40]

On almost every point in regard to the social question, God’s Word gives us the most positive direction. Think only of the family, whose immediate destruction is being advocated; of marriage, which some men would transpose into free love; of the family tie between generations, which some propose to dissolve by removing every right of inheritance; and not least, of birth, which others want to permit only by law and regulation. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 68]

The family is portrayed as the wonderful creation through which the rich fabric of our organic human life must spin itself out…We do not have to organize society; we have only to develop the germ of organization that God himself has created in our human nature. Away with false individualism, therefore, and anathema on every attempt to break up the family. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 69]

It is a renunciation of duty when you let your inner nature run its course unbridled, without coming to its rescue to improve it through the holy art of "watching, praying, and struggling," It is shameful for fathers and mothers to let their children grow up naturally without improving on nature through the art of education. It is nothing but primitive barbarism whenever human society, without higher supervision, is left to the course of nature. Thus, the art of statecraft, here taken in the higher sense, intervenes so that out of society a community may develop, and that the community, both in itself and in its relation to the material world, may be ennobled. [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 30]

Socialists constantly invoke Christ in support of their utopias, and continually hold before us important texts from the Holy Word. Indeed, socialists have so strongly felt the bond between social distress and the Christian religion that they have not hesitated to present Christ himself as the great prophet of socialism…

A liberal of the old school, Adolphe Naquet, is consequently uneasy that socialism may be generating new triumps for Christianity. He reproaches the socialist for furthering the cause of religion despite his hatred for it. "You do the work of religion," he exclaims, "when you put in the foreground exactly those problems in whose solution Christianity is so closely involved." This is an unintentional but nevertheless meaningful tribute to the influence that Christianity can exercise in bringing about a solution of the social problem. That influence comes out more beautifully in these rich words of Johann Fichte: "Christianity hides in its womb a much greater treasure of rejuvenation than you suspect. Until now it has exerted its power only on individual people and only indirectly on the state. But anyone, whether believer or unbeliever, who has been able to detect its hidden power, must grant that Christianity can also exert a wonderful organizing power on society; and not till this power bursts through will the religion of the cross [, or commitment to it,] shine before the whole world in all the depths of its conception and in all the wealth of the blessings which it brings." [THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, 27-28]