“In the passage where the New Testament says that everyone must work, it gives as a reason “in order that he may have something to give to those in need” (Eph. 4:28). Charity giving to the poor is an essential part of morality: in the frightening parable of the sheep and the goats (cf. Mt. 25:31-46) it seems to be the point on which everything turns. Some people nowadays say that charity ought to be unnecessary and that instead of giving to the poor we ought to be producing a society in which there were no poor to give to. They might be quite right in saying we ought to produce this kind of society. But if anyone thinks that, as a consequence, you can stop giving in the meantime, then he has parted company with all Christian morality. I do not believe one can settle on how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.”
C.S. Lewis in “Social Morality” from C.S. Lewis Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. Lesley Walmsley (London: HarperCollins, 2000).