Christians who are otherwise like-minded can experience different reactions to the Trump administration’s skeptical posture toward publicly funded foreign aid. Some wish the federal government would continue supporting international Christian aid organizations, while others judge taxpayer dollars better spent here at home. While Scripture speaks with perfect authority, it does not address every issue with equal attention or clarity, and on this issue, Scripture provides no specific instructions.

However, this does not mean that the Bible says nothing relevant to the wisdom, prudence, or morality of foreign aid. It only means that any inference we make about foreign aid in Scripture must be taken as just that — a matter of wisdom — rather than a “thus saith the Lord.” As we seek to submit all our lives to the counsel of God’s word, we should also investigate what Scripture has to say that relates to foreign aid — even if the fruit of this search may not be as bountiful or certain as other queries may be.

For the purposes of this article, I will only consider foreign aid funded by the U.S. government through taxes and/or debt. International charity projects pursued by private organizations, funded with private donations, are a separate issue; they may be tangentially relevant to the piece, but they may interact differently with any principles or conclusions drawn.

Love of Neighbor

One Christian principle that applies to virtually any interaction with fellow human beings is the love of neighbor. Shortly into Donald Trump’s first term in office, Catholic Relief Services CEO Sean Callahan and then-president of World Vision, Richard Stearns, argued in The Washington Post, “Jesus declares that loving our neighbor — wherever they live — is one of the greatest commandments, a corollary to loving God.”

With one caveat, this is largely correct. In Matthew 22:34-40 and Mark 12:28-34, Jesus famously summarizes the Ten Commandments, the entire Mosaic law, and indeed the entire study of ethics into two great commands. The greatest is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). The second is “like” the first because it flows out of it — namely the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Luke 10:25-28 records the same summary of the law in a different context, as the prelude to the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37).

Yet the one caveat dramatically alters the application. Callahan and Stearns argue that Jesus instructs us to love our neighbor “wherever they live,” as a justification for international charity work. But this seems to stretch Jesus’s teaching too far. In Greek, as in English, the word “neighbor” connotes a sense of proximity or “nearness.” The good Samaritan may have hailed from a different country as the Jew beaten by robbers, but he became his neighbor, in a sense, when he encountered him on the road. If we recognize this element of “nearness” in the word “neighbor,” Jesus’s command — at least in its primary sense — is to love the people we personally encounter, who are nearby us.

“As Christians, we believe in the parable of the Good Samaritan. We believe that everyone, in a sense, is owed ‘neighbor-love,'” explained David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, on “Washington Watch.” “But there’s another principle — it’s called the principle of subsidiarity — that says that there is a greater love that’s owed to those closest to you.” He cited 1 Timothy 5:8, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Foreign aid proponents might respond that modern technologies such as telecommunications, the internet, and air travel have rendered distant corners of the globe much “closer” to us than they were to previous generations. We can call someone suffering from an earthquake in Turkey, read up-to-date news reports about a famine in Sudan, and conceivably act to alleviate a plague in Congo in ways that people who lived in previous centuries simply could not.

There is merit to this argument, but since those places are still more distant than our own land, I don’t believe it overrides the principle of subsidiarity. (In any event, this area ventures far into “wisdom territory,” where Christians must exercise discernment, without clear guidance from Scripture.)

Government’s Role

Proceeding one step beyond the individual obligation to love our neighbors, we must next ask whether this command applies to the government. Simply put, Scripture does not directly apply the command to love one’s neighbor to government, but there may be an instrumental, prudential role for government to play in facilitating private charity. “While the U.S. government doesn’t directly share this mandate [to love one’s neighbor],” concede Callahan and Stearns, “it plays a critical role in fulfilling the moral responsibility of all Americans to help those less fortunate.”

According to Scripture, a government official’s primary duty is to establish justice. This involves judging impartially (Deuteronomy 1:15-17), punishing evildoers (Romans 13:1-15), and defending the rights of the poor and helpless (Proverbs 31:1-9). A government’s primary tool is the sword, not the loaf.

Conclusion

To summarize, Scripture clearly commands believers to love their neighbors as themselves. However, this command to individuals does not apply in the same way to the government. The government is tasked with upholding justice, advocating for the poor and helpless, and punishing the wicked.

Thus, while neighbor-love prompts many individual Christians to acts of charity at home and abroad, foreign aid is on the periphery of governmental priorities. According to the principle of subsidiarity, a government has a greater obligation to its own people than to inhabitants of distant lands.

To the extent that a government has margin to look out for the welfare of the poor in other countries, foreign aid is an indirect and distant application. Our government cannot address every instance of oppression in the world. But it can emphasize the most grievous, opening its mouth for the rights of all who are destitute far more effectively than writing large checks for humanitarian projects. Biblical principles don’t forbid publicly-funded foreign aid, but there are far more direct applications of biblical principles to foreign policy.