Christians Should Be Effective Altruists
There's a deep concordance rather than a conflict
1 The Christian duty to give to the poor
Most Christians aren’t effective altruists and most effective altruists aren’t Christians. But in my view, the reason for this is sociological; there’s no deep conflict between the two ideas. Christians should be effective altruists—they should look to give effectively, just as others should.
I’ve written a long piece rebutting the main objections to effective altruism. In short, I think the core idea behind effective altruism is very commonsensical: that we should try to do good effectively. Doing this means not just donating or taking whichever career seems good to us, but actually looking at high quality evidence about what does the most good. As Proverbs 12:15 says “The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.”
In my view, Christian scripture emphasizes the core tenets of effective altruism. There are three ways effective altruists recommend giving that differ from how most people give. I’ll argue each one is found in scripture.
Emphasizing the importance of giving a lot. Most people don’t donate very much—EAs recommend giving more than most people do. Effective altruists often give away 10% of their earnings.
Explicitly focusing on effectiveness. Most people donate to charities they think will do some good, but don’t focus too much on which will do the most good.
Emphasizing the interests of people in other countries. Most people primarily donate to charities in their own country. However, because charities that give money away to foreign countries tend to do much, much more good, effective altruists often recommend giving money to people in other countries.
Regarding the importance of major donations, Jesus in Matthew 19:20-22 says to a man:
20 The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
I think this passage clearly establishes that the ideal thing to do is give away almost all of one’s wealth to the poor. While we’re not all perfect, this is the ideal—the standard we should shoot for, even if few live up to it. Many are, like the man who questioned Jesus, “sorrowful, for [they have] great possessions.”
Those of us who possess the average income of people in the United States are far richer than anyone in Jesus’s time. We also have the opportunity to do even more good with our donations.
And this is, of course, not the only passage—the Bible is filled with injunctions to help the poor. Much of the Old Testament was spent cursing the Israelites for not helping the poor enough. I obviously can’t discuss every single passage about helping the poor, but let me just list the 10 that strike me as most convincing:
Luke 14:12-14:
“When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Luke 6:38
Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Proverbs 19:17:
“Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward them for what they have done.”
Matthew 25:
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
1 John 3:17-18:
“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
James 2:15-16:
“Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?”
Leviticus 19:9-10:
“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 foreigner.”
Luke 3:11
“Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”
(Note: much of the world lives on less than 2 dollars per day. They often have only one shirt while we have many more than 2).
Jeremiah 22:16:
“He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me? declares the LORD.”
Proverbs 21:13:
“Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered.”
Thus, scripture seems very clear: we all ought to be giving considerably more than we do give. Were Jesus to live in the 21st century, he’d give away nearly all his wealth—at least, if Christianity is true.
2 Focus on effectiveness
A second important way that effective altruism differs from traditional giving is that effective altruists support giving effectively. Effective altruists advocate looking into which charities do the most good per dollar, and donating there.
I think this once again fits very well with scripture. One of the most important teachings of Jesus—found earlier in Leviticus—was to love your neighbor as yourself. But that demands effectiveness. If you’re ill, the medicine you purchase won’t just be whichever one sounds best to you. It will be whichever one seems, based on high-quality evidence, to be the most effective. If you care for your neighbor the way you care for yourself, then just as you practice prudence when caring for yourself, you should practice effective giving when caring for your neighbor.
Similarly, Jesus advocates for the golden rule—he declares “in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” But if you treat others the way you’d want them to treat you, then you should give effectively. If you suffered from two ailments, you’d want people to cure them as effectively as possible—focusing first on the more serious ailment. If you treat others the same as yourself, counting their interests equally, then you should practice prudence when caring for the interests of others. But once again, that requires effective giving.
When doing things to benefit yourself, you try to do whichever does more good rather than less. So too should one do the same for others.
There are more explicit biblical exhortations towards carefulness and effectiveness. Jesus urges people to be “shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves,” which seems to indicate they should be both generous and effective. In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) Jesus rewards people who multiplied the money they were given effectively. He seems, therefore, to support using one’s resources effectively.
In addition, the idea one should give effectively seems to be common sense. Good things are, by definition, worth promoting. Promoting more of that which is worth promoting is obviously better than promoting less of it. Jesus may not have talked much about it, but that’s because in his time, there weren’t radical differences between the effectiveness of different charities!
3 Give to foreigners
People in other countries are much poorer than those in the United States. For this reason, it’s much easier to help people by giving overseas than giving domestically.
Now, the Old Testament is extremely clear about the importance of treating foreigners well. Exodus 23:9 declares “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” Leviticus 23:22 goes even farther and declares “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 for the foreigner residing among you.”
The Leviticus passage provides quite a specific injunction to leave some food for foreigners. This is extremely similar to advocating donating wealth to poor foreigners. While the situation in the modern era is different, similar principles should apply.
However, the most specific passage supporting a duty to help foreigners rather than merely one’s own countrymen is The Parable of the Good Samaritan. I’ll quote it in full:
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d]”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
We’re told to love our neighbor as ourself. But this passage seems to hold that our neighbor doesn’t just refer to people near to us. It refers to foreigners too! Samaritans at the time were the hated ethnic group. But Jesus seems to suggest that even Samaritans are our neighbors—that we have a general duty to be compassionate to all.
If the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself applies to foreigners, then one should mostly give overseas. Because it’s so easy to help people overseas—literally orders of magnitude more effective—one should do that. If you have two neighbors suffering, one of whom you can help a hundred times more easily than the other, you should help that one first.
In response to this parable, people sometimes suggest that the parable establishes only an obligation to help those physically near you. The Samaritan was physically near the Israelite. Perhaps, then, this is the source of obligation.
But this is extremely implausible. Suppose that the Samaritan initially walked past the man—on a donkey moving very quickly. Would his obligation to save the man lessen the further away he got?
Or consider another case: suppose you can press a button to save someone’s life. However, assume that pressing the button is expensive. If you get on a train and fly away, would your duty to press the button lessen as you get further away? No, of course not! Your obligation to save someone’s life doesn’t depend on how far away you are from them. You have just as strong a reason to pull someone out of a pond if you’re next to them as if you’re continents away but have really long arms.
Now, it’s true that Paul suggests in 1 Timothy 5:8 that “Certainly if anyone does not provide for those who are his own, and especially for those who are members of his household, he has disowned the faith and is worse than a person without faith.” So plausibly if you are a Christian, you should take care of your family first. But once your family has been taken care of, there are strong reasons to give overseas.
Lastly, the golden rule endorsed by Jesus makes a strong case for giving overseas. The golden rule seems to suggest one should treat others’ interests as similar to their own. You should help other people if you can do so without costing yourself as much. But if someone was deciding whether to help me or a stranger, I wouldn’t want them to make the decision based on which country they were in or who was nearer to them. I’d want them to make the decision simply based on who needs the help more. So I should do the same in my giving.
4 Conclusion
Christians and effective altruists are often treated as natural enemies—with very different ethical views. But there are many Christian effective altruists: Dustin Crummett, Leah Libresco Sargeant, Aron Wall, and many others. In fact, anecdotally I have found that the wisest and most devout Christians I know are all effective altruists.
The divergence between Christians and effective altruists is, therefore, purely sociological. There is a deep concordance between the ideas, and it is only by unfortunate happenstance that they are seen as being in opposition to each other.
Judaism, like Christianity, emphasizes ideas that overlap with EA. There are lots of obvious examples, but here are three less obvious ones.
1. Matthew writes, "Your obligation to save someone’s life doesn’t depend on how far away you are from them. You have just as strong a reason to pull someone out of a pond if you’re next to them as if you’re continents away but have really long arms."
I don't know if Matthew realized there, but there's a midrash making literally this same point. In Exodus 2, Pharaoh's daughter comes down to the river and sees the basket with baby Moses. She supernaturally stretched out her arms an impossible distance (perhaps up to 60 cubits, about 90 feet) to get the basket. She literally pulled baby Moses out of a river (OK, not a pond) with really long arms. The lesson is exactly Matthew's point: you have a duty to help, regardless of great distance.
Here's the technical details. The Torah says, "She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl [אֲמָתָ֖ה] [amatah] to fetch it." (Exod. 2:5.) In the Talmud, there's a dispute over the exact meaning of this word: "Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Neḥemya disagree as to the definition of the word 'amatah.' One says that it means her arm, and one says that it means her maidservant." (Sotah 12b:5.) Elsewhere in the Talmud, there is a discussion of how far King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther miraculously reached out his scepter: 16, 24, or 60 cubits. It concludes, "And similarly you find with the arm of Pharaoh’s daughter, which she stretched out to take Moshe.
Rashi in his commentary on this verse and these midrashim explains, "Scripture intentionally uses this term ("adatah") to indicate that her hand increased in length several cubits (אמה, a cubit) in order that she might more easily reach the cradle."
2. Here's the second and more general point. Leviticus 19:1-2 (which was part of the weekly parsha last week in synagogue, BTW) says "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.' " This -- coupled with the verse that God created people in God's image ("b'tzellem Elohim") -- raises the question of in what specific ways can we emulate God's holiness. (We can't create universes, for example.)
To help elucidate this, as well as focus on on gratitude in general, there are a series of "morning blessings" that are traditionally recited every day (either individually on in a minyan). They are commonly recited in most traditional synagogues during psukei d'zimrah at the beginning of morning services. Each starts with the traditional "Blessed are You, Adonai our God, King of the Universe, Who . . . ." and then adds the following predicates among others:
gives sight to the blind.
clothes the naked.
releases the imprisoned.
straightens the bent.
provided me with all my needs.
gives strength to the weary.
Just as God does these things, we should as well. And we have a daily reminder.
3. Matthew cited Leviticus 19:9-10 (also from last week's parsha): “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 foreigner.” This passage shows a limiting principle of altruism.
The passage requires that the corners of the field not be reaped. The "gleanings" are the crops left after the "reaping" or first pass at harvesting. The commandment is not to get all the food possible and then give some to the poor. It is to leave some in the field so that the poor can get it for themselves. We see this illustrated in the Book of Ruth. "And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, 'Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.' Naomi said to her, 'Go ahead, my daughter.' So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters." (Ruth 2:2-3.)
This reflects a principle that where possible, it is preferable to preserve the dignity of people and allow them to take care of their own needs rather than treating them as incapable and providing for their needs directly. This is not always possible, of course. People in third-world countries might not be able to manufacture their own vaccines or build hydroelectric dams without assistance. But they might be able to farm or build houses with no assistance, or with minimal assistance. Helping them solve their own problems, rather than doing it for them, is preferable.
S Tier take. Sharing to my Christian friends!