Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
I read a terrific books a couple of months ago, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, but never went into much detail about it on the blog. I want to pull an excerpt from the book that paints a picture of how much of the world lives today — including a large percentage of the population of Nicaragua — living on less than a dollar day. I won’t elaborate go into the strategies and suggestions the book goes in to — every Christian needs to read it. But read the excerpt below, let it sink in, and begin to ask the question: What am I doing to help?
To help us imagine what poverty means, a prominent economist itemized the “luxuries” we would have to abandon if we were to adopt the lifestyle of our 1.2 billion neighbors who live in desperate poverty:
We begin by invading the house of our imaginary American family to strip it of its furniture. Everything goes: beds, chairs, tables, television sets, lamps. We will leave the family with a few old blankets, a kitchen table, a wooden chair. Along with the bureaus go the clothes. Each member of the family may keep in his “wardrobe” his oldest suit or dress, a shirt or blouse. We will permit a pair of shoes for the head of the family, but none for the wife or children.
We move to the kitchen. The appliances have already been taken out, so we turn to the cupboards…The box of matches may stay, a small bag of flour, some sugar, and salt. A few moldy potatoes, already in the garbage can, must hastily be rescued, for they will provide much of tonight’s meal. We will leave a handful of onions, and a dish of dried beans. All the rest we take away: the meat, the fresh vegetables, the canned goods, the crackers, the candy.
Now we have stripped the house: the bathroom has been dismantled, the running water shut off, the electric wires taken out. Next we take away the house. The family can live in the tool shed…
Communications must go next. No more newspapers, magazines, books — not that they are missed, since we must take away our family’s literacy as well. Instead, in our shantytown we will allow one radio…
Now government services must go. No more postman, no more firemen. There is a school, but it is three miles away and consists of two classrooms…There are, of course, no hospitals or doctors nearby. The nearest clinic is ten miles away and is tended by a midwife. It can be reached by bicycle, provided that the family has a bicycle, which is unlikely…
Finally, money. We will allow our family a cash board of $5.00. This will prevent our breadwinner from experiencing the tragedy of an Iranian peasant who went blind because he could not raise the $3.94, which he mistakenly thought he needed to receive admission to a hospital where he could have been cured.
It is difficult to obtain precise statistics, but the World Bank estimates that 1.2 billion people live in that kind of grinding poverty — trying to survive on one dollar or less a day. In addition to these 1.2 billion who live in almost absolute poverty, another 1.6 billion are very poor, living on two dollars or less a day. That means just a little less than half of the world’s people (2.8 billion) try to survive on two dollars a day or less.
