A Hole In Our Gospel: Chapter 8 (1 of many)

I read A Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns earlier this year. I found it insightful, challenging and thought-provoking. Even before I finished, I realized that it wasn't sinking in, and I really wanted it to. So now I'm re-reading it. I will be posting here some of my favorite quotes and other related thoughts as I journey through again. Unfortunately, I'm getting to blogging about it a bit late in the game (at Chapter 8), so that's what you get first.

In Chapter 8, Stearns references a speech made by Jimmy Carter, which serves for us as a late introduction of the problem that is the primary focus of A Hole In Our Gospel. President Jimmy Carter was bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. His acceptance speech, made just a little more than a year after the events of 9/11, concluded with a striking statement:

At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them. The results of this disparity are root causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict, and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.

Stearns notes from Jeffrey Sachs' book The End Of Poverty: Economic Possibilities For Our Time that the per-capita income gap between the richest and the poorest regions in the world has grown from a four to one ratio in 1820 to the seventy-five to one ratio quoted by Carter.

Until the latter 1900's ordinary peoples' awareness of global poverty was limited, but Stearns asserts: "Lack of awareness is no longer an issue. And yet only about four percent of all U.S. charitable giving goes to international causes of any kind."

Stearns goes on to quote Bono, from the foreword to the same book:

...fifteen thousand Africans dying each and every day of preventable, treatable diseases - AIDS, malaria, TB - for lack of drugs that we take for granted.

This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our pieties, doubts our concern, and questions our commitment to that whole concept. Because if we're honest there's no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not in North America, or Europe, or Japan. An entire continent bursting into flames? Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth. 

For Bono, the key question is (emphases are his):

We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies - but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears? ...

Future generations flipping through these pages will know whether we answered the key question. The evidence will be the world around them. History will be our judge, but what's written is up to us. Who we are, who we've been, what we want to be remembered for. We can't say our generation didn't know how to do it. We can't say our generation couldn't afford to do it. And we can't say our generation didn't have reason to do it. It's up to us.

I don't know about you all, but these challenges cut straight to my heart. If they don't do the same to you, I suggest you go back and digest those two Bono quotes again. Am I doing everything I can to fight poverty, its causes, and its effects? That's what this book is about. That's the journey I'm on. You're welcome to join me.