Homeless Does Not Mean Helpless

Sticking a homeless person into an apartment without requiring anything from him is a bad idea not only because idle hands often turn to drugs, alcohol, or other mischief. It’s also a bad idea because not requiring work that a person can do is treating him as sub-human.

Here it’s important to understand the biblical concept of labor, both before and after the traumatic events in the Garden of Eden. If work were something that had to be done only because of man’s sin and fall from grace, then we would be right to treat it as something to be endured only until “Miller time” arrives — but Genesis 2:15 (pre-fall) tells how “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”

Adam had a good combination of intellectual and physical labor: It was his job not only to work the garden but to name the animals. A name was supposed to reveal the essence of the creature, so finding the right name required hard thinking. Adam’s work was not endlessly frustrating, as work sometimes is today, for then it was without thorns. He enjoyed perfect dominion over the earth.

That all changed with man’s independent and rebellious grasping for the knowledge of good and evil and consequent expulsion from the garden. Genesis 3:17-19 summarizes the outcome: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food…”

Man must now do tiring work to live, but the pre-fall nature of work shows us that man does not work for bread alone. We miss one of God’s gifts to us when we do not seek productive work. Work, although sometimes painful, is useful both for survival and for character development. Work is a tuition-free education in diligence.

Throughout the Bible, and in Proverbs specifically, character and economic uplift go together: “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.…He who works with his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.…Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor.…Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare” (Prov. 10:4, 12:11, 12:24, 20:13).

That there are annual exceptions to these general rules is clear — farmers may work hard throughout the summer and lose their crops to a sudden storm — but over a lifetime their applicability is equally clear. The moral value of labor is emphasized by the way Proverbs lampoons the lazy: “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he will not even bring it back to his mouth.…The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside!’ or ‘I will be murdered in the streets'” (Prov. 19:24, 22:13).

For the most part, though, God’s writers contrast the present-mindedness of the destitute with the willingness to delay gratification that is the engine of economic progress: “A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks and finds nothing.…The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.…He who loves pleasure will become poor.…In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.…The sluggard’s craving will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work” (Prov. 20:4, 21:5, 21:17, 21:20, 21:25).

I’m laying on lots of these verses because they counter easy slippage into talk about a “preferential option” for the poor, or say, “Jesus was homeless and we should be too.” The Bible has a preferential option for those unfairly evicted or cheated by landlords, yes. But for those allergic to work, negligent toward children, or acquiescent to addiction, no.

The folly of some among the poor does not mean that they can be treated as subhuman: Poor as well as rich are created in God’s image. The Old Testament anticipates the New in noting that wrong action toward the least of God’s people shows a lack of faith in their Creator: “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God” (Prov. 14:31).