Editorial: Christian responsibility and the president’s budget

What is wealthy America’s responsibility to the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet? That question is central to the debate over President Donald Trump’s first budget.

Marv Knox

The Trump Administration’s proposed federal budget would implement significant cuts in foreign assistance programs, ensuring misery and death around the globe. It might be an “America First” budget, but it if results in malnutrition, illness from curable diseases and starvation, it’s also a “Gospel Last” budget.

Devastating results

The results would be devastating, insisted David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a broadly respected collective Christian voice urging America’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad.

“The Trump Administration’s plan to gut foreign aid would have catastrophic consequences worldwide,” Beckmann said. “The proposed cuts would result in the deaths of millions of people, especially children, from famine and malnutrition. These cuts would roll back the tremendous progress we’ve made against hunger.”

Christians must lend their voices to protect foreign aid—particularly grants that provide food, medicine and education to the world’s poorest, weakest people.

That should be a point of broad consensus. Unfortunately, in me-first America, even people who claim to follow Jesus don’t bat an eye at turning the clear message of the gospel upside down. Here are three arguments you’re likely to hear from Christians in support of cutting foreign aid that will result in death:

“Jesus didn’t mean them.”

The Gospel of Matthew records a fascinating and comforting-or-terrifying speech in which Jesus says people ultimately will be judged by the degree to which they serve the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoners. Jesus’ admonition seems obvious on its face; we’ll be judged by how we treat the people he called “the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46).

Ironically, myopically and tragically, Christians who don’t want to help all people point to Jesus’ affirmation of the people who serve others to support their view. Jesus said, “… to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even to the least of them, you did it to me.” So, they say Jesus meant Christians are only supposed to meet those needs for poor fellow Christians. They conveniently ignore Jesus’ stern rebuke of the people who failed to serve others, in which he did not provide the “one of these brothers of mine” caveat.

A few problems with the “not them” approach: First, the people who come under Jesus’ judgment don’t get a pass for limiting their charity to people like them. Second, technically, no Christians existed when Jesus preached parables, so if you’re going to strain that hard, you sure better be great to the Jews. Third, is “eternal punishment” (Jesus’ words) worth splitting hairs about who we help?

“It’s the church’s job, not the government’s.”

This is another common approach to get out of advocating help for poor people. Some Christians—often sincere and well-meaning—say Jesus assigned the church, not government, the responsibility for ministering to the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable.

Question: Do you know a church that is capable of providing all the poverty support, food provision, medical care, emergency housing and abuse protection to everyone in its community, much less entire countries around the world? People who narrow responsibility to the church fail to recognize Jesus also called on his followers to be “salt” and “light.” Yes, those terms directly apply to evangelism, but they also apply to public influence.

Christian people ought to be about influencing the government to look out for of the people—at home and abroad—who can’t take care of themselves. That’s not a church-state issue; many humanists show more compassion in the public square than many Christians do. For shame.

“We’ve got to be disciplined.”

This is a budget perspective, and it’s understandable. Millions of responsible citizens, Christians among them, want the government to live within its means. They think the government should operate on a balanced budget, just like many citizens live on at home. That makes sense, even for those of us who are not economists.

But this year, in particular, we’ve got an opportunity to look at this more clearly. President Trump wants to implement huge tax cuts—such as reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent—which nonpartisan experts agree will raise the federal debt. Simultaneously, he wants to cut foreign aid, which other experts agree will result in malnutrition and starvation.

So, Americans who agree with both of those moves say it’s more important for some Americans to live a little higher on the hog than for God’s creatures in other places to starve to death.

Now is an important time to contact your senators and representative and urge them to protect foreign aid. Besides being the right thing to do, foreign aid reduces the opportunity for terrorist organizations to recruit hurting and disgruntled young people. So, foreign aid saves lives now by combatting hunger and saves lives later by making the world safer.

To identify your senators and representative and to learn how to contact them, click here.

Follow Marv on Twitter: @marvknoxbs