By Ben Johnson

To properly understand how completely Tim Walz failed in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate with J.D. Vance, it is vital to understand the full extent of the job Democrats tasked him to do. The campaign hoped Walz would appeal to Midwesterners, “white dudes” for Harris, and — in a surprise twist — to Christian voters. How else can one explain Walz’s misuse of the Gospel of St. Matthew in favor of the Harris-Walz campaign’s illegal immigration policy?

“I don’t talk about my faith a lot,” said Walz as he spat out a series of disconnected sentences in staccato during the immigration section of the CBS News debate. “But Matthew 25:40 talks about, ‘To the least amongst us, you do unto Me.’” Walz makes no attempt to tie the Bible to his policy except by brief assertion. The disembodied proof-text remained unconnected with the rest of Scripture, and the rest of his argument, which ranged from falsely accusing Vance of “blaming migrants for everything” to falsely claiming that most Americans support mass amnesty; they “simply want order to it.” Only granting the gift of U.S. citizenship to untold millions of lawbreakers from across the globe, Walz said, would allow Americans to “keep our dignity about how we treat other people.”

Walz did not explain how the Left’s open border policies treat anyone with dignity, foreign or native-born. No immigration policy that loses 32,000 unaccompanied minors and facilitates the sexual trafficking of young children can be said to serve “the least of these.” The Biden-Harris administration’s intentional illegal immigration crisis more closely resembles a biblical curse rather than a blessing. Nothing quite so literally illustrates the curse of Deuteronomy 28:43 — “The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower” — than seeing New York City spend $77 million to house illegal immigrants in high-rise hotels, while senior (American) citizens had to cling to their grandchild atop their hurricane-ravaged North Carolina home waiting in vain for help from their government until their roof collapsed and they all drowned. Yet despite his failed political eisegesis, the Harris-Walz campaign felt the moment significant enough to post the video clip on social media.

Neither a chaotic border nor welfare state spending can be justified from any traditional reading of Matthew 25 — specifically Matthew 25:40, which reads: “And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, in as much as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’” Unfortunately, the Left — which prides itself on diversity — has increasingly centered its entire faith outreach on misuse of this verse alone, and its alleged fidelity to this verse rings hollow through repetition.

Most recently, Evangelicals for Harris rested the Democratic Party’s entire command-economics program on a shallow interpretation of Matthew 25:40. “The Bible calls us to care for the ‘least of these,’ and this expanded Child Tax Credit is a tangible way to support new parents,” calling her entire agenda “biblically inspired, pro-family policies,” proclaims the group’s website. In reality, Kamala Harris’s $6,000 “Child Tax Credit” amounts to a welfare state payment that would discourage marriage and family formation, according to Heritage Foundation welfare reform expert Robert Rector.

The Left has repurposed Matthew 25 over and over to fit its current agenda. During the 2019 primaries, candidate Joe Biden cited this verse to support “a higher minimum wage” and “collective bargaining rights.” Of course, when the minimum wage rises, and businesses pare down the payroll, the first to get fired are the least experienced, the least skilled, the least connected workers — the least of these.

Additionally, experts forecast that Biden’s vision of “collective bargaining rights” may see the longshoremen’s strike shut down American ports and inflict potentially devastating long-term effects, “including rising prices, product shortages becoming more severe, job losses in key industries increasing significantly and an acceleration in global trade patterns with Chinese-owned ports in Mexico,” since manufacturers will begin “diverting more goods through Mexican ports instead of U.S. ones.” Helping union bosses and the Chinese Communist Party hardly benefits the least powerful elements of society.

Somehow, over the years, Matthew 25 became an all-purpose citation for the Democratic Party’s agenda. In a 2017 extended editorial in Christianity Today, former vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) proof-texted his government-focused health care policy with Matthew 25. Kaine also referenced 1 Corinthians 12, “strangely redirecting Paul’s teaching about the church and applying it to Congress,” as John Stonestreet of the Colson Center noted in a Breakpoint commentary.

Democrats are not alone in their attempts to smuggle statist economics into Jesus’s words about the final judgment. During the Obamacare debate, then-Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) invoked Matthew 25 to justify expanding Medicaid coverage. “Now, if you ever read Matthew 25, I think, ‘I wanna feed the hungry and clothe the naked,’” Kasich said at one time. He later stated, “When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not gonna ask you much about what you did about keeping government small, but he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor.” The expansion helped ransack the state budget, costing nearly $1.5 billion more than estimated.

None of these ill effects can be laid at Jesus’s feet. Wisdom begins by placing the words of the gospel into context. Jesus never encouraged His followers to institute a single government program to combat poverty, homelessness, or hunger. Instead, when Jesus encountered the hungry, He told His disciples, “You give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16; Mark 6:37; Luke 9:13). Christian charity is administered through the church, not the government. As the late Dr. D. James Kennedy noted, when the early Christians sold all they had, they “brought the money and they laid it at the feet of — Caesar? Pontius Pilate? No, they laid it at the feet of the apostles.” Jesus commands each of us, individually and as part of the Christian church, to help our suffering brethren in His Name and on His behalf. If any need arises that the church as a whole cannot solve, that speaks either to our stinginess, disunity, or inner focus.

Further, the Bible makes clear the welfare state cannot fulfill Matthew 25’s charitable mandate. Christian charity is funded by voluntary tithes, not compulsory taxation. Even in the short-lived and singular communalism of the early church, the Apostle Peter upbraided Sapphira, who sold her land, held back part of the proceeds, and lied about it. “Was it not your own? And after it was sold, was [the money derived from the sale] not in your own control?” he asked (Acts 5:4). The Apostle Paul makes clear that, even in church, each Christian must give “as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion” (2 Corinthians 9:6-7). The IRS takes a significantly less lenient position.

Most critically, Christians must understand that government programs are not meant to fulfill or supplement Christian charity — they are meant to replace it. The Messianic State has no intention of preaching the gospel; it has its own religion to spread at our expense. Secular progressivism is a jealous god seeking to cast all other faiths into the void, as it has everywhere the State began to encroach on the prerogatives of the church.

This process played out decades ago in Sweden, where the left-wing Social Democratic Party used its government power to transform the state Lutheran church’s theology into “an atheistic general religiosity.” Far from understanding the moment, Rodney Stark wrote, “many Swedish clergy became strong supporters of state socialism.” In England, too, church officials acquiesced when control of the Church of England passed into the hands of avowed atheists. “Christian leaders failed to appreciate the consequences of endorsing a collectivist secular world without redemptive purpose,” recorded one chronicle of the event. “[R]arely has a British institution so willingly participated in its undoing. The [b]ishops blew out the candles to see better in the dark.”

If Matthew 25 does not, and cannot, endorse secular-progressive welfare state policies, why do statist politicians repeat it so much? A faith adviser to numerous Democratic candidates (including Ted Kennedy), Eric Sapp, explained to the Associated Press that quoting Matthew 25 is an “exceptionally effective” way for left-wing candidates to “convey a deep truth and faith positioning.” In other words, it is a cheap way for secularist (and secularizing) candidates to position their rhetoric as more friendly to evangelical voters without embracing the substance of the Bible.

In truth, anyone seeking to lift up “the least of these” would begin by protecting defenseless, unborn children from the horrors of abortion. Yet Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rhetoric and policy treat them as non-persons, undeserving of lifesaving treatment or even a dignified burial.

The good news is, the tactic appears to have failed this time, more due to execution than anything else. And unlike Harris, apparently Walz will not be repeating his speech. When a reporter asked Walz on the day after the debate if he would speak more about his faith, Walz replied, “We’re Lutherans. We don’t talk about religion much.”

Apparently, only in election years. And only to serve his political interests, not the interests of the gospel.

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.