“Sell all that you have, and give to the poor”

“Sell all that you have, and give to the poor” is treated as a test of biblical literalism: the book asks why conservative evangelicals who insist on the Bible’s literal truth against Darwinism do not also take Christ’s command to relinquish possessions and give to the poor literally. Its force lies in the contrast between defending a doctrine and accepting an injunction that would directly challenge how wealth is held and used.

The Command and Its Challenge

The command is cited as Christ’s words in Mark 10:21. The book does not discuss a character carrying it out or describe a particular act of giving. Instead, it poses a pointed question about the gap between professed scriptural literalism and the practical demands of this specific teaching. The question challenges the consistency of treating the Bible as literally true in one controversy while leaving this command without comparable force.

Literalism and Selective Application

The passage does not offer an explanation for why the command is not followed, nor does it claim that every conservative evangelical responds to it in the same way. Its criticism turns on the contrast it draws: literal interpretation is invoked against Darwinism, but the command to sell possessions and give to the poor is not, in the author’s formulation, similarly read as a binding practical demand. The rule therefore functions less as a policy proposal than as a measure of the distance between stated belief and its consequences.

Wealth and the Book’s Economic Argument

Elsewhere, the book describes capital as a process in which value circulates through money and commodities in order to generate more value, making accumulation an end in itself rather than simply a means of satisfying individual needs. Set beside that account, the command to give possessions to the poor presents a sharp ethical counterpoint to the endless pursuit of more money. The text does not explicitly equate the biblical injunction with a critique of capitalism; rather, reading the two discussions together clarifies why the command’s literal application would press beyond an abstract declaration of faith into economic life.