BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES  
George Grant

 This book is both interesting and important.  It is interesting because it is a sincere effort to address the issues of Christian charity and the ills of our civilization from a Biblical viewpoint.  It is important because it is written by a well known conservative Protestant Evangelical and will thus be taken seriously by many Christians.  My concern is not with the author's integrity, nor his motives, but only with his conclusions.  I believe that they are totally unscriptural.  He starts off with his explicit refutation of government welfare and the laudable intent of replacing it with Christian charity as Biblically defined.  Unfortunately, he winds up replacing State welfare with ecclesiastical welfare, which is no more scriptural than the former. 

Disappointingly, Grant starts off with the typical approach.  We are all guilty for the terrible hopeless poverty in America.  He opens the book with the suicide of a poor person who has lost all hope.  He makes it clear that this suicide represents the church's failure to come to grips with the problems of poverty.  That the church has not responded to these needs and that the poor are committing suicide as a result is the thrust of this guilt trip.  And he does not mean that we have not responded to the despair of men with the hope we can find in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He means that we have not responded with a program of "Christian" charity.  Now the history of Christianity is replete with tales of poor saints, who being tried of God, faced many afflictions including hunger.  However, they never committed suicide, having their faith in Christ and in the world to come.  As Paul stated it,

".....and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:  And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:  They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;  (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.  And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:  God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect" (Hebrews 11:35-40). 

It is affliction without hope that leads to despair.  It is affliction without faith in God, and confidence in his goodness and his purposes, that drives men to suicide.  How an evangelical church proclaiming Christ can be responsible for the suicide of unbelievers is past my comprehension.  For ultimately as Solomon professed, as he quoted Christ, "For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD.  But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death" (Proverbs 8:35-36).  Nonetheless, it makes a powerful and emotional beginning to Grant's appeal and makes the now "guilty" readers ready to be instructed in their duty to the poor.  Grant then goes on to swamp the reader with current poverty statistics.  This is followed by some graphic descriptions of poverty in America.  Having thus reviewed the scope of the problem and established the church's guilt for these circumstances, Grant is ready to get to the specifics, to get to his view of the Christian's Biblical responsibility to the hungry. 

There are several serious problems with this book.  Grant begins with laying a foundation for his program of "Christian" charity by appealing to a number of scripture passages.  These are frequently misapplied or misinterpreted in his zeal to establish his position.  Then having persuaded his readers that they need to do something he turns elsewhere for his methodologies.  Like the rest of the genre, Grant applies the passage of Matthew 25 indiscriminately to all "the poor and disadvantaged".¹  He makes this the test of real faith and asks, "How will we fare when the Son of Man comes in His glory?"²  And take his treatment of the homeless.  Grant believes that the whole solution to the housing crisis and the homeless problem is Christian hospitality.  He quotes the following texts. 

"For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:  He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.  Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 10:17-19). 

"Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.  Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.  If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry;  And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless" (Exodus 22:21-24). 

"Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.  And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.  Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 23:7-9). ³

Now the latter two texts deal with granting justice to the weak and helpless, including the stranger.  The first text calls us to love the stranger and is also in a context of justice.  This is a pretty weak foundation for requiring Christians to open their homes to all and sundry and practice radical and indiscriminate hospitality.  Many of the homeless are drunks, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the sexually immoral, etc.  Do Christian families want to bring such into their homes and expose their children?  And remember we are not talking of the repentant and those who have made a commitment to Christianity and Christian standards of conduct.  According to Grant this hospitality is to be extended to the poor per se as a Biblical duty.  To buttress his argument Grant quotes some more texts, but again to no avail to the discerning. 

"Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality" (Romans 12:13). 

"And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.  Use hospitality one to another without grudging" (1 Peter 4:8-9). 

"Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers;  Which have borne witness of thy charity before the church: whom if thou bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou shalt do well: Because that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles.  We therefore ought to receive such, that we might be fellowhelpers to the truth" (3 John 1:5-8). ⁴

Now it is clear that all these three texts refer exclusively to charity to the saints.  The strangers that John is referring to are Christians, who were unknown to their hosts.  They are strangers who have gone on their journey for Christ's sake.  Extending hospitality to such makes the hosts "fellowhelpers to the truth".  Grant is playing a little sleight of hand here.  A few texts about justice to strangers and hospitality to the saints and "voila" a Biblical mandate for universal hospitality.  Grant concludes that though the federal government has failed "God's people are the solution to the sheltering crisis".⁵  Now it is true that Christians are to exercise hospitality.  They are specifically commanded to exercise hospitality to the saints.  Beyond that any further hospitality comes under the requirement to "do good to all men".  But this falls into a voluntary and case by case basis.  Our homes are to be Christians homes.  God's law is to be the standard there.  God commands us to keep the Sabbath holy and says that this includes the stranger within our gates.  If our guests refuse to keep the Sabbath then they cannot remain within our gates.  Only brothers and sisters in Christ and those who are willing to submit to Christian standards of conduct are fit to receive the kind of extensive hospitality that Grant is speaking of.  The homeless crisis has been solved but only within the body of Christ.  Later on Grant does state that all applicants should be screened and that those who refuse to abide by scriptural principles are not eligible for aid.  But this is confusing.  Having made it a duty, a Biblical requirement, to practice hospitality to all, and having stated that the homeless crisis has been solved, he then lays down restrictions that bring him back to square one.  He can't have it both ways.

In his zeal to establish his "theology of poverty" he seems to forget the rest of his theology.  Church government is one such casualty.   The Biblical deaconate and its limited function is replaced by a church "Poverty Task Force" that is to deal with all the poor.⁶  In fact the whole function of the church seems to be redirected in its emphasis away from its Biblical priorities of worship, teaching and preaching the word, discipling the saints, and evangelism.  The church has become a super welfare agency.  No man can serve two masters and any church and pastor that follows Grant's program will have their time and resources severely challenged.  It is not hard to guess what will suffer as this crusade is zealously implemented.  Grant has an abundance of zeal for his program but zeal is a two edged sword.  The past generation of evangelicals allowed their zeal for winning the lost to lead them into cooperative ecumenical evangelism with theological liberals and even Catholics.  The results were disastrous.  Similarly in his zeal for serving the poor and fulfilling what he sees as his Biblical mandate Grant proposes ecumenical cooperative charity programs with all the other churches in the community.⁷  The kind of charity cooperatives he envisions does not only span the entire theological and denominational spectrum but includes overt unbelievers as well.⁸  He then astoundingly compares these kind of cooperatives with the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15.⁹  What do they have in common?  According to Grant they share a concern for charity.¹⁰  Unfortunately for his thesis the Jerusalem Council was about legalism and the relationship of the Gentiles to the ceremonial law and does not even mention charity.  And what does a church council composed of Apostles and church elders have in common with a cooperative association that includes theological liberals and unbelievers?  Grant's ecclesiology is staggering under the weight of his charitable crusade. 

But there is more.  Grant is prepared to restructure both the mission and the methodologies of the church.  He states that the goal is to get the government out of the welfare business and the church into it stating "Welfare is our job.  It is the job of Christians".¹¹  He supports this radical assertion by again quoting a plethora texts on charity and concern for the poor.¹²  However every single one is either explicitly referring to aid to the saints or is in the context of the Hebrew Republic.  Not one supports his notion of indiscriminate aid to the ungodly and the unchurched.  And all this is set forth under the requirement of exercising a "Good Samaritan Faith" whatever that is.¹³  Any faith the Good Samaritan may have had was not a Biblical one and ought not to be emulated, seeing he was a Samaritan.  The Good Samaritan carried out an act of private charity in conformity with the requirements of the sixth commandment.  It is his fulfilling of the law that we are commanded to emulate, not his beliefs.  But this is the kind of confusion that the book is replete with.  As for methodologies we have already noted "Hunger Task Forces" and "Community Cooperatives".  Grant also proposes a thorough analysis of local poverty conditions and a demographic survey.¹⁴  Once these have been done the church can get started.  This means setting up food banks, homeless shelters, job referral services, etc., etc.  There is no end to the activities that he thrusts on the church.  It is a full fledged program of ecclesiatical welfare in competition with the welfare state.  His motto is the church can do it better.  But he fails to definitively answer the question, should the church do it at all? 

This review could go on and on but all disputations must come to an end.  This is a dangerous book.  It seriously mishandles of the word of God.  It directs the Lord's people into activities that were never commanded by the Head of the church.  It takes away their liberty in Christ and oppresses them with an unscriptural guilt.  It redefines the mission of the church.  And to achieve these new goals it sacrifices scriptural church government and replaces the separation of the Lord's people from apostasy with ecumenism.  Those who read it will do well to read it with care and with discernment.