Living Irresponsibly

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

In 2 Thessalonians where it says “anyone unwilling to work should not eat,” is often a scripture passage summoned out of context to become a defense for regressive responses to poverty in our country today. It is quoted to provide a “christian defense” for why there should be no funding for nutrition assistance programs, universal healthcare, or services available to help people get out of homelessness.

This passage, and others like it in scripture are often used as slings and arrows against people who rely on services to make ends meet. It is often wielded as a cudgel in our conversation about poverty; a conversation that is infuriatingly silent about the perverse consolidation of wealth in our country into the hands of so few; a conversation that doesn’t acknowledge that in a capitalist economy, the work force is often the first thing to be sacrificed on the altar of higher profits for shareholders.

Our conversations about poverty in America don’t acknowledge nearly enough how it is more expensive to be poor, nor does it recognize that while a certain class of individuals can afford very direct advocacy for their interests in public policy making, people in poverty can barely spare enough time to pay attention to what is happening in the halls of government power at any level. Time is money—and when you are poor, you are working way past 40 hours a week to keep food on the table.

In 2 Thessalonians 3, we hear a warning from the apostle Paul that some were “living irresponsibly” in the church community to which we was writing his epistle. He mentioned how they were “not doing any work.” And the problem with us taking that as an indictment for anyone today who does not have a job is that there is ample reason to believe Paul was actually referring to a wealthy class of inviduals instead of the poor. I think Paul was indicting those who did not need to work in order to make a living, and not a working class group of people who had to work just to get food on the table.

And this is to say nothing about the fact that the working poor in our country today still don’t make enough to get by without help either.

The early christian church developed and spread robustly along wealthy olive oil trade routes and prospered in urban areas full of wealth and imperial infrastrucutre. The earliest christian communities outside Jerusalem consisted of very wealthy communities. Many of the early church meetings were held in the homes of wealthy patriarchs and matriarchs.

The reason we see over and over an emphasis to help the poor, to share resources, and warnings about the difficulty of being a wealthy person entering the kingdom of heaven across the New Testament had a lot to do with the intended audiences of the epistles and Gospels: many people who had means and wealth. It seems to me that Paul, himself a worker, had a valid critique that the work of building God’s kingdom and uplifting the poor (including the saints of Jerusalem who faced famines and catastrophes that Paul often fundraised for) was not being shared equally among everyone.

It is very easy not to work when you are wealthy enough to get by without earning a wage! But for some reason, today, we still believe that the wealthiest among us work the hardest.

What if living irresponsibly meant that we stopped participating in the broader good of our community? If we have our own house on our own lot, make a really nice paycheck, and have inherited considerable wealth—enough to guarantee we aren’t in any kind of significant debt—why would we want to pay higher taxes, or invest in work done in our communities to help the poorest among us? And what effect does that have on our worldview but drive us to believe that we deserve what we have, and other people must not; hence why they are poor.

I believe that the advocacy for the full human dignity and worthiness of the poor is a primary teaching of the Gospels, and a criticism of hoarding wealth is broadly stated througout the New Testament alongside an abiding hope for Jesus Christ’s return.

How can we live “responsibly” today? I think it is by investing in our communities, willingly sacrificing our wealth (even if it is through taxation) to ensure that the lowest rung of society’s ladder doesn’t guarantee poor health outcomes, hunger, or homelessness, and to work on our own hearts that we not be swept up in the easy narrative that those of us who have much have earned it and deserve it more than those who have less.