Can Giving 10% of Your Income Save Lives? Effective Altruism and Jesus

John Nelson opens with the familiar thought experiment of a child drowning in a pond: most people would ruin an expensive suit to save the child, so why not spend a comparable couple of thousand dollars to prevent a child in sub-Saharan Africa dying from malaria or whooping cough? He introduces effective altruism (EA) as the movement asking how people can use money, careers, and time to do the most good. Princeton doctoral researcher Matthew Adelstein and JD Bauman, director of Effective Altruism for Christians, join him to examine whether that reasoning fits Christian and non-Christian worldviews.

Matthew defines EA as both an idea and a movement: people should make doing good as effectively as possible a major life priority, especially through career choices and donations. More than 10,000 people have pledged to give at least 10% of their lifetime income to highly effective charities. He became involved near the end of high school after hearing that a few thousand dollars could save a life, and was struck by the chance to prevent children’s deaths and reduce animal suffering. Although many EAs are utilitarians, Matthew says EA itself is only the more modest claim that effective good-doing deserves serious priority; it does not require rejecting rights, special obligations, or other moral theories.

JD says his missionary parents gave him an early interest in Christian service, but at 18 he moved to Manhattan and became a highly paid gold broker. The pond thought experiment convinced him that earning money ethically and donating much of it could prevent entire villages from dying. After calculating that his donations could save dozens of lives annually, he contacted Christians using reason and evidence in development, missions, and other causes. He says GiveWell’s researchers invest more than 100,000 hours each year evaluating global-health opportunities, so Christians who want to serve others should take that evidence seriously rather than giving only according to emotional appeal.

JD connects EA to the Good Samaritan’s command to cross one’s normal moral boundaries and help a stranger, Jesus’s teaching that service to “the least of these” is service to him, and the Parable of the Talents’ emphasis on stewardship. He cites roughly 15,000 preventable child deaths each day as a reason to act. Matthew likewise says Christianity’s concern for the poor, the global neighbor, and sacrificial service fits EA; loving neighbors as oneself should include finding the most effective way to help them. He describes Jesus as “gentle as doves and shrewd as snakes,” a combination of compassion and careful strategy.

John asks whether Jesus’s actions—such as sending demons into pigs, eating fish, or accepting costly perfume—conflict with EA’s focus on minimizing suffering. JD calls the question somewhat anachronistic, but argues that Jesus’s self-sacrificial life, his instruction to the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, and his call to deny oneself resemble radical effective altruism. On the alabaster jar, where Judas objects that the perfume could have been sold for the poor, JD says the unusual act was connected to Jesus’s impending burial. Matthew agrees that ordinary giving to the poor is good, but says anointing God incarnate was an exceptional case, not a rejection of effective giving.

The guests agree that Christians may reasonably prioritize evangelism, but reject making it the only Christian good. JD argues that Jesus repeatedly healed people, sometimes without preaching, and describes God’s kingdom as including good news for the poor, sight for the blind, freedom for captives, bodily restoration, and care for creation. Matthew says Christians should evaluate evangelistic charities strategically rather than automatically giving to a local church, while also caring about disease and suffering because Jesus did both. JD recommends church-planting efforts in low-cost regions such as rural India, where a planter can reportedly be supported for about £80 per month.

Matthew explains his controversial article, “Insects Matter More Than People” in the aggregate. There are about a billion insects per person, and he considers it plausible that insects feel pain because they make behavioral trade-offs, respond to painkillers, and display sophisticated behavior. About a trillion insects die each second, often slowly through disease, starvation, predation, or parasites; he estimates that for every second of human life, roughly 75 hours of insect dying occur. He argues that size and difficulty imagining huge numbers distort human intuitions, so insect suffering could exceed all human suffering in aggregate, even though insects are not individually as valuable as people.

JD accepts that animals matter and says Christianity supports care for them: Eden and the promised new creation are portrayed as free from animal suffering, and Jesus mentions God’s concern for sparrows. But he finds it extremely unlikely that insect suffering thousands of times worse than the Holocaust would be central to morality without Jesus or Scripture addressing it. He argues that eternal stakes could make evangelism more important than insect welfare. Matthew replies that Jesus also never mentioned germ theory, slavery, nuclear weapons, or AI risk; silence is therefore not decisive. Both agree Christians should care about animals, while JD remains unconvinced by Matthew’s aggregate conclusion.

JD says giving can be radically sacrificial but need not mean neglecting one’s family or basic needs. For a household earning about £50,000, he estimates that donating 10% to highly effective global-health charities could save two children annually, or roughly 80 children over 40 years—like stopping three buses of children from going over a cliff. Matthew says people generally should give enough to do substantial good without necessarily reducing themselves to poverty; he notes studies linking charitable giving with greater happiness. Both also recommend treating a career as an 80,000-hour opportunity to tackle major problems, while JD says Christians should test whether their vocation serves the kingdom rather than simply following personal passion.

Matthew directs listeners to GiveWell and names Helen Keller International’s vitamin-A work and malaria prevention as global-health examples; he also mentions FarmKind and the Humane League, saying some animal charities can protect chickens from years in cages for about $1. He recommends the 80,000 Hours career guide and Christians for Impact. JD offers free one-on-one advising for Christians considering higher-impact careers and points to their book All the Lives You Can Change. He recommends 500K for Christian missions, supporting rural Indian church planters, while acknowledging that a comprehensive evaluator comparing Christian charities by outcomes does not yet exist.