The Gadfly

Audio of the exchange is also available.

OLASKY: Stanley, I appreciate your coming here, and I enjoyed your speech, but I have to say that in answering some of these questions you seem to be reading from a different Bible than the one I’m familiar with. [Applause.] And we could go book-by-book-by-book through the Bible, but let me just give a couple of examples.

Sure, there’s charity for widows and orphans, people, let’s say, who weren’t physically capable of helping themselves, but the classic biblical poverty-fighting device was gleaning in the fields. Gleaning was hard work. The corners of the fields were left ungleaned so people who were poor could go in and work very hard, and get food for themselves and their families and probably if they worked very hard enough food so that they could sell in the marketplace and begin earning some capital. The fruit from the trees was picked from the lower branches, but the upper branches were there for the poor people to get to. It was hard work; it was doable, people could achieve, but it was hard work. You look at the narratives like the story of Ruth, and she’s working very hard through the day, she’s very commended for that.

When we get to the New Testament, we hear, and it can’t be any plainer than this, the Apostle Paul’s telling the Thessalonians “if a man does not work, he shall not eat.” And we could go through book after book after book of how this works out. Now, when there’s a famine, when there are people in great need, as the people in Jerusalem were at some point, then there’s charity, but the normal poverty-fighting process was not begging. The normal poverty-fighting process was hard work. And if you look at the early church, in the first few centuries, churches typically had what they called the “three-day rule.” When a person came, was poor and helpless, they’d provide shelter and food for the person for three days, but after that, again, if the person was able-bodied, had to work. All through Scripture, book after book, you see this through much of the history of the Christian church.

Now you do see at some time in the Middle Ages a deviation from that where begging was prominent, but that’s a deviation. That’s something different from the biblical pattern, and that’s something different from the pattern of the church through most of the centuries.

HAUERWAS: I didn’t say that every Christian has to be literally a beggar. But every Christian is a beggar vis-á-vis our relationship with God——

OLASKY: Absolutely. God’s grace is supreme.

HAUERWAS: ——and that that has to take material form. There is nothing I said, I hope, that implied that what it means to be part of a good community is to participate in the common good of that community through the kinds of work that serve that common good. But that kind of work itself is part of the sharing of the community. That’s the reason why it becomes quite disastrous to only aid the poor in a way that they become dependent without ever sensing a contribution they make to the community. So I want to think that work is part of that, but some people, you know, the work they give the community is primarily receiving. They receive. And that makes us who we are. They’re not asked to do anything other than to receive, and in the receiving, they do it without regret.

What I’m thinking of in that regard is a Jean Vanier L’Arche community, where the core members receive, and they return what they receive by giving us joy. And that is a kind of work that we all depend upon. So, I want to be careful about underwriting a “work ethic” in and of itself. Look, I was raised a bricklayer: I know work. And I work as an academic. But if you want a place where we are very tempted to idolatry, it’s work, where I cannot live without it. [Applause.] And that is part of what I was trying to say.

OLASKY: Well, I appreciate that. So we’re agreed that there are temptations to idolatry all over.

HAUERWAS: Sure.

OLASKY: There are temptations to greed everywhere. The community you spoke of is a wonderful example of Christian charity. I think we’re agreed that when there are people who are less physically or mentally capable and they need help, then this is a wonderful thing to be able to offer that help. But I guess are we also agreed that the common pattern for able-bodied Christians most of the time is work and not begging?

HAUERWAS: Sure, it’s to work. But——

OLASKY: Well, that’s good.

HAUERWAS: ——but Vanier doesn’t understand what he does as charity. He understands what he receives from the people who allow him to bathe them is charity, not what he does. And that that’s very important, because what we fear in the face of the people he bathes is their weakness, because they expose our weakness, and that that is the most fearful thing that we possibly confront.

OLASKY: Well, I agree, in a sense we allow God to bathe us, and so we learn about God’s mercy by being merciful to others, and this is a great thing. So, again, thank you for the clarification, thank you for coming here.

HAUERWAS: Sure. It’s good to be here. [Applause.]