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Thread: Ben Franklin, Deuteronomy and Helping the Poor

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    Ben Franklin, Deuteronomy and Helping the Poor


    Ben Franklin, Deuteronomy and Helping the Poor
    By David Barton Published on October 10, 2019
    Ben Franklin, Deuteronomy and Helping the Poor | The Stream

    Note from Stream publisher James Robison:

    Benjamin Franklin wasn't known as a spiritual giant, but he knew the Word of God. In this adapted essay from The Founder's Bible, David Barton shows how Franklin and the other Founders used the teachings of Deuteronomy to express how the new American society should help the less fortunate.


    The Founder's Bible commentary accompanying Deuteronomy 15 examines God's directives about who should care for the poor. In Deutoronomy 24, God gives instructions about a different facet of care for the poor. He told the people:


    When you reap your harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. (Deuteronomy 24:19-21, first given in Leviticus 19:9-10, 23:22)


    Any grain left in the field, any olives on the trees, or grapes on the vines were to be for the poor. And God also made other provisions for the poor, commanding:


    During the seventh year, let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove." (Exodus 23:11)


    God had already required that man must have a Sabbath — a seventh day that he took off for the purpose of rest; but now He required that the land also have a Sabbath, and that anything that grew on the land in that year was for the poor.


    Poor Collect For Themselves God's Provisions

    In each of these many ways God had made provision for the poor. But notice that the poor always had to do the work for themselves to collect those provisions made available to them.

    That is, the harvesters left sheaves and rounded off the corners of the field while harvesting, but if the poor were to have that food, they had to carry out the extra sheaves and harvest the corners for themselves. Similarly, the poor had to pick the remaining clusters off the vines and collect the grapes that fell in the vineyard, and they had to gather the remaining olives off the trees. And everything that grew on any property in its Sabbath year had to be harvested by the poor if they were to partake of its food.


    God made opportunities for the poor, but work was always required in exchange. After all, the Bible commands, "If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10). (Of course, the exception to this was orphans, widows, and the disabled who were truly unable to work; if they were physically unable to supply for themselves, then charity was provided for them.)


    America Adopts This Biblical Policy

    This Biblical policy is what was adopted in America. In fact, when Benjamin Franklin was in London, he wrote a newspaper piece criticizing the English practice of providing for the poor by taxing citizens (both directly taxing their incomes and also indirectly taxing commodities sold and bought by them). Franklin rebuked them for that approach, explaining:


    I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves and of course became poorer. And on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves and became richer.

    There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them – so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities – so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful? And do they use their best endeavors to maintain themselves and lighten our shoulders of this burthen?

    On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety. . . . In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. Repeal that law and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday will cease to be holidays. "Six days shalt thou labor" [Exodus 20:9], though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase (and with it plenty among the lower people); their circumstances will mend; and more will be done for their happiness by inuring [enabling] them to provide for themselves than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.


    Franklin listed several bad fruits that resulted when the Biblical method of caring for the poor was not followed: an increase of poverty, ungratefulness, laziness, higher taxes with no resulting benefits, etc.

    The Founding Fathers were very concerned about helping the poor, but they were equally concerned about doing it in a Biblical manner. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were both very generous with their personal charity, and both were leaders in organizing the community to care for the poor; but both were also insistent that whatever the poor receive must not encourage laziness or idleness.


    As Jefferson observed:


    An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings, whether moral or political, than a lazy lounger, valuing himself on his family, too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men's labor.


    And when Washington had given instructions to his business manager at Mount Vernon, he told them:


    Let the hospitality of the house, with respect to the poor, be kept up. Let no one go hungry away. If any of this kind of people should be in want of corn, supply their necessities – provided it does not encourage them in idleness.


    God definitely cares for the poor, and He tells us to do the same; but He has also established clear principles for how that assistance is to occur, and it requires some type of effort from the poor.








    Last edited by GodismyJudge; 10-10-2019 at 10:32 PM. Reason: Format
    This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity (futility) of their mind, having the understanding darkened...
    (Ephesians 4:17-18)

    Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly...
    (Psalm 1)

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