This is a dangerous...
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Object:
This is a dangerous text, easily distorted. Paul's warning against assisting believers living in idleness has been taken by some as justification for bashing the poor. In fact, the major Protestant Reformers help us see this text as a call to alleviate the plight of the 1 in 6 Americans victimized by poverty (as per recent U.S. Census Bureau statistics). Martin Luther sees it as nothing more than a call to political realism in our generosity:
But here we must be careful not to give rogues and rascals the chance to take advantage... Therefore it is important to be careful here and to ascertain what sort of people there may be in a city, who there is poor and badly off and who is not.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 21, pp. 116-117)
John Calvin protests the use of this text to justify failing to help the poor:
Hence Paul admonishes us that, although there are many who are undeserving while others abuse our liberality, we must not on this account leave off helping those who need our aid. Here we have a statement worthy of being observed -- that however ingratitude, moroseness, pride, arrogance, and other unseemly dispositions on the part of the poor may have a tendency to annoy us, or to dispirit us, from a feeling of weariness, we must strive, nevertheless, never to leave off aiming at doing good.
(Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XXI/2, pp. 358-359)
But here we must be careful not to give rogues and rascals the chance to take advantage... Therefore it is important to be careful here and to ascertain what sort of people there may be in a city, who there is poor and badly off and who is not.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 21, pp. 116-117)
John Calvin protests the use of this text to justify failing to help the poor:
Hence Paul admonishes us that, although there are many who are undeserving while others abuse our liberality, we must not on this account leave off helping those who need our aid. Here we have a statement worthy of being observed -- that however ingratitude, moroseness, pride, arrogance, and other unseemly dispositions on the part of the poor may have a tendency to annoy us, or to dispirit us, from a feeling of weariness, we must strive, nevertheless, never to leave off aiming at doing good.
(Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XXI/2, pp. 358-359)
