Make poverty history
I've been motivated in recent weeks to learn how we--the rich of the West (probably anyone reading this)--can start to make an impact to help the world's poor. I think this recent interest came after reading about what Bono and Bill & Melinda Gates are doing to try to relieve poverty. That's led me to start reading Rich Christians In An Age Of Hunger by Ron Sider, a book that originally was John's.
Especially impressive I thought were that these people had done their homework regarding how most effectively to use money to help the 1. 3 billion human beings who live in relentless, unrelieved poverty worldwide. For example, millions of desperately poor people have received "micro-loans" of $75, $200, or $500 so they could start small businesses and thus provide a better living for their family. And for only dollars per child, we could prevent the 34,000 deaths that occur every day among children because of preventable disease and hunger.
In Rich Christians, Dr. Sider says that he is confident
that the biblical understanding of economic equality, or equity, demands at least this: God wants every person, or family, to have equality of economic opportunity at least to the point of having access to the necessary resources (land, money, education) to be able to earn a decent living and participate as dignified members of their community.
posted by shane at 12:57 PM
4 Comments:
It is refreshing and challenging to read your post. Part of me thinks that the poor are poor because they deserve it, which is wrong on a fundamental level. A person born in America will probably be materially richer than someone who was born in Sri Lanka, regardless how hard the person works his or her entire life.
I think part of the solution will involve finding ways to build infrastructures to help the materially poor to become materially richer, and another part of the solution involves lump sum gifts to eleviate short term needs.
A related, and important, question is how to fulfill the material hunger of people and the spiritual hunger of people. Do they always need to go hand-in-hand? If not always, should they usually go hand-in-hand?
John from Ann Arbor
Jesus many times commanded people to give to the poor. And more than once he told people to spread his name. But I can't think of an instance where he gave both commands at once. Let alone, gave a command to do both at once.
Yeah, the infrastructure is ultimately the biggest need. It's also the most difficult part. Infrastructure relies at least partly on human competence and many of the poor areas of the world struggle with severe corruption.
If I was in abject poverty or ill health and I was given the help I need to get out of it and live life more fully, with health and dignity, I would definitely call that Good News.
Bono, who's a major part of a campaign to take on global poverty, sometimes goes to churches and talks of Christ's concern for the poor, and uses faith to persuade world leaders who claim to be Christian to give more aid. I haven't counted, but according to Bono, there are 2,103 passages of Scripture that deal with taking care of the poor. "I cannot escape my conviction that God is interested in the progress of mankind, individually and collectively."
Ryan, to follow up on the point you made about the lack of examples of Jesus commanding to give to the poor and commanding people to spread his name at once. There are three possible conclusions we can draw from your observation. One, we are to help the poor and to spread his name, though it is not necessary to always couple the two activities. Two, we are to help the poor and to spread his name, and we should always couple these two activities. Three, we can choose to help the poor or to spread his name, but we are not compelled to do both.
Literally speaking, your observation would directly support option number one. How about option number two? Maybe christians are not always called to do both at the same time, and indeed, it may not always be possible to do both. For example, there are people who are poor in spirit who have much material blessings. However, it is certainly possible to at times help the poor, and at times spread his name, and at times to do both. Your observation does not exclude the possibility of doing both at the same time.
My personal opinion is that it would be dangerous to do one or the other without thinking about both aspects. It would be wrong to withhold material care to people, but to be satisfied with providing material care alone without praying and thinking about how to address the spiritual needs of people would be buying into a materialistic worldview. The New Testament as a whole to me suggests that it is not right to think that spiritual matters are more important than material matters -- afterall, Jesus, who claimed to be the Son of God, entered into the material world by also becoming the Son of Man. By the same token, since Jesus is both the Son of God and Son of Man, it would be incomplete to address only the spiritual needs of people or only the material needs of people.
-- John from Ann Arbor
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