If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

Stephen Colbert delivered this line during his satirical tenure as host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, in the midst of U.S. political debates over poverty, social welfare, and what it means to call America a “Christian nation.” Speaking in the persona of a conservative pundit, Colbert often used irony to expose perceived contradictions between professed Christian identity and resistance to public or private obligations toward the poor. The quote functions as a pointed moral challenge: if Christian language is invoked to justify national identity or policy, then the ethical demands of the Gospels—care for the poor and vulnerable—cannot be selectively ignored without self-deception.

The statement argues that claiming Christian identity while refusing to aid the poor requires either rewriting Jesus’s character to match modern self-interest or admitting a failure to follow Christian teaching. Colbert frames the dilemma starkly to strip away rationalizations: the issue is not ignorance of the command to love and serve, but unwillingness to obey it “without condition.” The quote’s force comes from its binary logic and its appeal to the authority of Jesus’s example, turning “Christian nation” rhetoric back on itself. As satire, it also critiques how religious language can be used as cultural branding while its moral imperatives are treated as optional.