But “For the Least of These” makes it clear that we should stop talking about work as a stick, and instead view it as a carrot. We need to stop bashing people over the head if they’re not working their way to wealth; life is complicated and unfair, and many people worldwide lack the resources at our disposal. That said, unjust circumstances don’t negate the importance of work. Vocation is vital to the very nature of humanity: we were made to work, and to enjoy work. It makes us happy and fulfilled.

Review of For the Least of these: A Biblical Answer to Poverty

I’ve often heard conservatives called “anti-poor” (take this Atlantic article). While the term “compassionate conservative” was highly prevalent during and after George W. Bush’s presidency, conservatives’ adherence to free market principles sometimes gives them a perception of apathy and even ruthlessness toward the less fortunate.

But these perceptions are sadly faulty—and thankfully, The Institute for Faith, Work and Economics has just released a book that may help change such perceptions: titled For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer To Poverty, it’s a series of essays from Christian conservative thinkers, explaining the ties between free-market economic principles with biblical commands to care for the poor. The book shows that Christian conservative theory empowers and helps the poor in a way the welfare state does not, and that a conservative understanding of vocation is crucial to a right understanding of the free market. But most of all, the book is a call to conservatives: stop talking about the problem, and start fighting it.

The book does offer an important caveat: as contributor Robert A. Sirico puts it, “The free market is not inherently moral; what it produces is not necessarily moral; and those operating in it are not necessarily virtuous.” It’s easy to applaud one economic or political system above another; but if we blindly applaud the free market without keeping in mind its faults, we make an important mistake. While Americans on left and right tend to blame or champion a certain institutional model for fixing societal problems, a truly conservative approach looks past the institution, and understands that our problems lie within the weakness of humanity. We are not perfect. Sinful people create and run the “system,” whatever the system may be. There are always going to be human tendencies—like greed and power-lust—that tend to make our institutions less free.

However, as R. Mark Isaac writes in his essay, “Any human institution is subject to the effects of sin, but that does not mean that we can shun all human institutions.” We still need a system and structure of philanthropy and government, even if our system is faulty. And the free market encourages a sort of decentralized and localized philanthropy that offers greater accountability and greater connection. In his essay at the beginning of the book, contributor Glenn Sunshine writes, “Governmental institutions are subsidiary, or secondary, to more immediate groups in finding solutions to problems.” If a situation is “sufficiently widespread or intractable,” government should help out—but on a local level. “The principle of subsidiarity thus does not reject governmental involvement in poor-relief out of hand, but argues that it should be a last resort after other institutions prove unable to provide solutions,” says Sunshine.

Several authors in the book point to the Mosaic law’s “safety net” for the poor, described in passages like this one:

“When you reap the harvest of your land,
Do not reap to the very edges of your field
or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
Leave them for the poor and the alien.
I am the LORD your God.” – Leviticus 23:22

Essayist Walter Kaiser, Jr. points out that the Bible offered help the poor and needy, but with limited government intervention: “The emphasis was more on the local level and on the need for individuals to respond, rather than leaving the work for the government to pick up.”

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