I saw a content creator call a whole bunch of churches pretending she’d run out of formula and her baby was hungry. Very few churches were willing to help. Now, I’m not thrilled with tricking churches like that. That’s a pretty dirty tactic, and it’s possible some of those churches saw through it and just declined politely. But it still exposed something: there are a lot of churches that are either unable or unwilling to help someone in immediate need.
Then I saw another creator completely lose it. She was crying, yelling, and cursing because the church does not and has not done enough. Her argument was, “If the church was doing its job, we wouldn’t have people on SNAP.” It was hard to watch her raw emotion and her pain for the church at large, but there was definitely some truth in what she said.
I grew up in a family that believed in small government, more freedom, and that it was the church’s job to care for the poor and the sick. The church I grew up in, along with several I worked in, had a discretionary fund the pastor could use to quietly help anyone in need, whether they were part of the church or from the community.
But here’s the part people don’t want to say out loud: if you want small government, you have to fund the alternative. If you want churches and charities to handle poverty relief, then churches and charities have to be resourced at the level of the need. If the alternative isn’t actually funded, society won’t just magically be okay.
I was taught by my church that government assistance was a concession. Because the church at large wasn’t doing enough. And while I have seen churches make herculean efforts to help their communities, they simply can’t do it all. At the same time, there are just as many churches that think having a few dollars a month in a discretionary fund is enough to say they “help the poor.”
There’s also a structural problem we never name: even if every church were generous, churches in poor areas have fewer donors and more need. The places that need the most help tend to have the least church money. That’s not a compassion problem; that’s a math problem. That’s why public programs exist, because they can pool resources across regions and income levels in a way a single congregation can’t.
What makes this even stranger is watching some evangelicals vote for “Christian identity” issues like putting the Ten Commandments in schools, prayer, abortion, whatever, while Jesus’ most concrete commands about money and poverty don’t show up in their policy priorities. They aren’t willing to vote for the things Jesus actually did: feed the hungry, heal the sick, help the poor. He literally told the rich young ruler to sell everything and give it to the poor. If we want the public sphere to reflect Christian values, why don’t we start with the ones about the poor and the ones Jesus actually repeated?
Meanwhile politicians keep saying the U.S. is the richest country in the world. If that’s true, why do we have people who can’t afford to eat? Why are we criticizing single moms, disabled people, and the elderly because they can’t make enough money?
I can’t believe that in 2025 this is still a polarizing issue—that so many people are genuinely angry about other people having basic necessities. That so many people think most folks on SNAP are freeloaders. I’ve seen the comments:
• “Most SNAP recipients are scammers.”
• “People don’t want to work.”
• “It’s all single moms making bad choices.”
And those are just a few.
But that’s simply not who most benefits go to. They go to kids, to the elderly, to disabled people, and to the working poor. The people we claim to care about. The part that disturbs me most is that these stereotypes exist mostly because of misinformation and people only looking to confirm what they already believe instead of finding out what’s actually true. Some of these people are so angry about the government helping people.
But the fix doesn’t have to be government or church. It can be both.
The local church can and should be out there meeting the community’s needs—because churches can do things the government can’t: build relationships, know names, offer encouragement, pray, walk with a family. And the government can do the things churches can’t: provide consistency, scale, and a floor that isn’t dependent on whether donations came in this month.
The truth is, the church has the calling but not always the capacity. Charity is beautiful but patchy. Government is impersonal but scalable. When we insist the church should do it all, while refusing to fund it anywhere near the level of national need, we create a gap and then we blame the people who fall into it.
So now what?
If you love the church, support policies that make sure people eat even when the church can’t. Do both. Get out there and love your neighbor, even the poor ones.