True Charity has its share of amazing content on their website. This recent article puts words and data to what many of us already know—not because we read it in a report, but because we’ve lived it, seen it, and walked alongside people who are caught in it.
Beyond the Welfare State is one of those articles.
It starts with a sobering fact: since the launch of the War on Poverty in the 1960s, the official poverty rate in the United States has barely moved. This is despite the fact that government spending on the poor has increased dramatically—by orders of magnitude. If money alone were the solution, we would have solved this problem a long time ago. But we haven’t.
What makes this article worth your time is not that it dismisses material help—it doesn’t—but that it names something we often tiptoe around: poverty is more than a lack of money. It is often a poverty of relationships, purpose, formation, and hope.
The article points out realities that are hard to ignore:
- A third of children born into poverty will remain there for life.
- Social isolation is increasing, not decreasing.
- The majority of working-age adults in poverty are not working at all.
- Deaths of despair—from addiction and suicide—are rising, not falling.
These aren’t just statistics. They represent real people—neighbors, sons and daughters, men and women created in the image of God—who are stuck despite a system designed to help them.
What the article does particularly well is explain why.
Government programs, by design, are distant and uniform. They can transfer resources, but they cannot form character, restore meaning, or rebuild trust. Markets can create opportunity, but they cannot compel hope or heal brokenness. And when those two spheres are left to carry the full weight of poverty alleviation, people fall through the cracks.
That’s where civil society comes in.
Families, churches, friendships, charities, and voluntary associations do what systems cannot: they get close. They know names. They discern when someone needs help, when they need encouragement, and when they need accountability. They deal not only in dollars, but in dignity.
The article names what many of us have seen firsthand: most people who are thriving today didn’t get there alone. Someone invested in them—not just financially, but personally. Someone cared enough to show up, speak truth, model virtue, and stay.
That kind of help is costly. It’s slow. It’s relational. And it doesn’t scale neatly on a spreadsheet. But it works.
The article doesn’t argue that voluntary charity can—or should—replace every government program overnight. Instead, it asks a better question: What are we ignoring because it doesn’t fit our preferred solutions? And it makes a compelling case that when we crowd out civil society, we weaken the very structures that historically helped people escape poverty in the first place.
I encourage you to read Beyond the Welfare State carefully and thoughtfully—not to win an argument, but to better understand the problem we all care about. Whether you serve in a church, a nonprofit, a business, or simply want to love your neighbor well, this article will sharpen how you think about poverty, responsibility, compassion, and hope.
You can read or listen to the article here: https://www.truecharity.us/beyond-the-welfare-state/
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