The Bible says far more about justice for the poor than about gay wedding cakes

"When you harvest your grain, always leave some of it standing around the edges of your fields and don't pick up what falls on the ground. Leave it for the poor and for those foreigners who live among you."

This compassionate and just command is given by God to his people in Leviticus 23:22. It is a decree telling farmers to deliberately make less profit in order to benefit those who are worse off. The welfare of the poor, including immigrants, is to be prioritised over money-making by those who are blessed to have their own fields and crops. The reasons behind the poverty are not given as a condition for the kindness. There are other verses that encourage hard work, as we will see later. But this passage is a blanket command to restrain the free market from making as much money as possible, because it's the right thing to do.

Poverty is arguably the moral issue God speaks about most in the Bible. Unjust treatment by the powerful and rich of those who are worse off invokes his wrath. Proverbs 22:16 reads, "Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty". 

There are hundreds of such verses. The character of God revealed in his Word cannot be squared with the propensity of white Christians to continually lend their votes and support to the Conservative party in the UK and the Republican party in the USA.

In the seemingly perpetual age of Torynomics, the opposite of these verses is exactly what is happening. The poor are being oppressed in order to give wealth to the rich. Today's announcement on energy policy means that the profits of the extremely rich, the directors of gas and oil companies, are being not just propped up, but inflated, by the Government, by borrowing at least £120 billion from the taxpayer. That is literally a case of maximising profits at the expense of the needy and less well off. It is the polar opposite of leaving grain around the edges of the field. 

Many Christians express a concern with moral issues they say God cares most about. These are usually said, by large swathes of the evangelical church, to be social matters such as abortion and gay marriage. Christian organisations have famously fought for the rights of Christians to be able to wear crosses on aircraft and stop gay couples from sleeping in their B&Bs. 

Yet the economy is the moral issue the Bible dedicates the most pages to. Leviticus 23:22 is one of over 2000 references to the poor that can be found in the Bible, many of which read equally damningly in today's context: look after the poor, treat them well, honour them.

The economy is a moral issue. 

Taxes are a moral issue.

The benefit system is as much of a concern to God as whether someone is stabbed to death in the street.

Yet we don't often see or hear Christian leaders in the media decrying the criminally amoral treatment of the poorer people in our country. You're more likely to see them talking about trans rights or whether a baker should have to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding. 

It doesn't seem like we are all reading the same Bible. White Christians are statistically far more likely to vote for conservative parties that land on the right-wing of the spectrum, due to their historical stance on these discussions. In the 2019 UK General Election, 40% of Anglicans voted Conservative while only 17.1% voted for Labour (only just beating the 15% who didn't bother voting at all). In the 2020 Presidential Election, 81% of White Evangelicals voted for Trump compared with 18% who voted for Biden. (Conversely, 90% of Black Evangelical voters cast their ballots for Joe Biden.) 

Ironically of course, gay marriage was legalised in the UK under a Conservative Government, and the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade in the US when President Biden was already in the White House. Such is the nature of politics. This may have offended many evangelical voters, but it also gives us a significant clue as to what Christians really care about, deep down. And I would argue that that is money. And for white Christians who tend to be on the wealthier end of the scale, keeping as much of it as possible, which makes it quite handy that the politicians who want to help them do that are the ones who are conservative on "social" issues.

When I look at the Bible, it seems to be glaringly obvious that the moral issue God spends most of his time talking to his people about is how to exercise social justice. Being rich is not wrong - on the contrary, it's a good gift from God to be enjoyed and to be used for the good of others. Ephesians 4:28 says, "Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands". And surprisingly, the reason given for this is not simply that they may be self-sufficient. Paul says it's so "that they may have something to share with those in need". Working and earning is first and foremost so you can not only look after yourself but have something to share with others.

I am ashamed to be a British citizen right now because of the choices of our Government over the last 12 years. But I am also often ashamed of the publicly expressed views of so many Christians who seem to conveniently forget that being a child of God means being open-handed, compassionate and generous to those in need. It means making a conscious decision to be less rich than we could be. After all, God has given us a plethora of riches that we didn't deserve, at every cost to himself, in Jesus. 

So while the profits of the billionaires increase year on year, and the numbers of food bank users and homeless soar sky-high, let us remember those farmers who had to leave the grain around the edges of their fields, and consider honouring the God who gave that command with our wallets as well as our mouths.