In an article for Christianity Today, Hannah Anderson expresses her disappointment with Oliver Anthony’s viral song “Rich Men North of Richmond.” Her particular grievance is with the part that describes people on welfare.

Anderson herself is from Appalachia/coal country. She also has experienced firsthand what it’s like to deal with food scarcity and food stamps. As a young mother of three and a pastor’s wife, this was her life for a while. It was a cause of great shame to her because of the stigma attached to people who use food stamps.

The particular lyrics she takes issue with are these:

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat/ And the obese milkin’ welfare/ Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds/ Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.

When you single out these words, it’s understandable that Anderson’s mind went back to those memories she’d like to forget. However, it is a woeful misunderstanding of the entire song. Anthony is critical of those who are able-bodied and choose not to work. They instead will leech off of welfare. Then, via unhealthy food choices on which they use their government resources, they further the need for government supplementation by developing obesity-related diseases. (Thanks, ObamaCare.)

If you take an even wider view of the song, it adds a whole other dimension of meaning to that particular section. The song is about being controlled by the government and what a darn shame that is for everyone, especially blue-collar workers. Government welfare sucks people in, and few can get out. Anthony is commenting on this government-induced dependency and underscoring how it causes the infantilization of some people who use the welfare system as an excuse to be slothful and gluttonous as well as slaves to a system.

This point in emphasized in his next line when he says, “Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground/ ‘Cause all this d*mn country does is keep on kicking them down.” Those who resist or try to get out of their poverty-stricken circumstances by working a low-paying job can’t catch a break. In other words, the system is against them. It ties back into the first verse’s complaints about inflation and being overtaxed.

Anthony is intimately familiar with these poverty-induced circumstances himself. While working in a paper mill in North Carolina, he endured a head injury and was on unemployment for six months, and that fostered a drug and alcohol problem leading him down dark paths until he was saved by the Lord and became a Christian.

His song is not despising people on welfare. It is despising people using a system meant to help with food security in ways that are not judicious or good stewardship of those funds (which ultimately come from other people’s taxes).

Christians are supposed to care about good stewardship, self-discipline, and good work. It’s not loving to let your neighbors continue in what the Bible clearly describes as sinful behavior.

It also prompts another question on the other end: Is it loving your neighbor to be slothful, gluttonous, and slovenly of resources granted to you out of charity? The 5'3", 300-pound person eating fudge rounds and not working has something to answer for under those circumstances.

There are many people like this as well. How many stories did we read about during the pandemic of people refusing to pay rent or stealing COVID relief money? Their greed was at the expense of not only the people they have cheated but others in poverty-stricken circumstances who are making responsible and hard choices. Oliver Anthony’s commentary would not even apply to Hannah Anderson’s personal story.

At the time of their experience with food stamps, Anderson and her husband were working. Her husband was an assistant pastor, and they had three young children to take care of. They weren’t sponging off of welfare. They are not the people Anthony is criticizing at all.

In fact, the sort of people Anthony is championing are those in the next lyrics about young men dying because, despite playing by all the rules, they are still trapped in poverty. People like Anderson and her husband.

There are people in poverty who cannot get out, but it’s not for lack of trying or lack of industry. There are also people who are poor and have no inclination to change their circumstances. The latter are just going to waste their lives away and use taxpayer money to do it. That is wrong, and that’s what Anthony is protesting against.