Let’s look at some cold hard facts in the world surrounding us. Many of us live in comfortable lives—plenty of food, a car for every member of the household, a roof over our heads, parents with steady jobs, etc. Thus, America’s comfortable bubble is formed. That is a fact, right? Well since we all know about America, we should take a step outside of that cozy bubble around us and look at the rest of the world. We will soon see the reality of the world surrounding us.
So many of us know the typical stereotypes such as starving children in Africa, or the overworked children of China, or even the uneducated people of South America. However, how many of us have been face to face with the reality of the everyday lifestyle that these people endure? Not many of us have encountered the estimated 15 million children that have lost a parent due to AIDS according to Compassion.com. We have not faced food-borne diseases to the extent that our country has 1.8 million people die annually, most of which are children. This reality is heart breaking, but it has also inspired some to fight for those affected by these worldwide crises.
History of Compassion
How do we respond to such an unforgiving reality? According to Compassion.com, in 1952, an American evangelist named Everett Swanson was in South Korea during the Korean War. As he walked through the streets of Seoul, he watched citizens stack bags containing the bodies of dead homeless children that were killed during the previous night. Swanson left the country with a heavy heart for the children in Korea. A certain passage in biblical scripture ran on in his mind—Matthew 15:32—where Jesus says, “I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing...
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... will be forced to leave the program.
Ending the Battle
We see a harsh reality that we cannot escape, but we can continue to fight it if we choose to. Compassion has done just that. Therefore, the choice to step outside that cozy bubble is ours. In Philippians 4:13, Paul states that we “can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.” Whatever our final decision is could change the world if we are ready.
Works Cited
“Child Sponsorship.” Compassion.com. Web. 27 Feb. 2012.
“Facts About Poverty.” Compassion.com. Web. 28 Feb. 2012.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008. Print.
“Mission Statement.” Compassion.com. Web. 28 Feb. 2012.
“Our History.” Compassion.com. Web. 27 Feb. 2012.
“What Makes Us Distinct.” Compassion.com. Web. 28 Feb. 2012.
www.Compassion.com. Compassion International, 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2012.
The ideal action we would take as God’s people would be to help those in need, but like the Good Samaritan parable in the Bible, many would not help those in need. It is not always easy to see Christ in the people around us because we are human and we are not perfect. Dorothy explains this statement when she says, “It would be foolish to pretend that it is easy always to remember this” (Room for Christ 2). We need to make room in our hearts for Christ, and also the people that presented to us as Christ.
The Bible does not say that money is bad. However, what it does say is
The United States is divided into three different classes when classifying a group by their income. The classes are the High class, the middle class, and the low class. People who live in the high and middle classes have every day struggles similar to people living in the lower class have; but one thing that fluctuates is the types of struggles people in poorer class have to face proceeding on an everyday basis. For example, not knowing if they will have food on the table for their children, heat for their house in the winter, or have a roof over their head by the end of the month. Unfortunately to every difficulty there is always a gray area over looked. When dealing with poverty, children are often the ones left in that gray area with no
Is it wrong of the public to stop what they are doing and rush to aid those in need, or is it more sensible to think of oneself for the sake of self preservation? Nobel Peace Prize-winning author and survivor of WWII, Elie Wiesel, stated in his acceptance speech, “When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must-at that moment- become the center of the universe.” For centuries that have come and gone, the human race has always been at the center of conflict. Whether it be the Hundred Years’ war, the American Revolution, or WWII, the human race have, and always will, fight for what they believe to be true ;however, those
Poverty is an important issue to discuss and know more about for many reasons. More than 48 million Americans live in poverty and 15.9 million of those are children. More than one for every seven people currently lives in poverty all across the United States. A full time working parent working for minimum wage earns $14,500 a year and the official poverty line for a family of two children and one parent is $17,568 a year. 20 million children receive free or reduced priced lunches every school day and only half of them get breakfast those days. Only ten percent of those kids have access to food during the summer. 14.5 percent of families can’t even afford to put food on the table. Over 8,200 people are infected with HIV/AIDS all over the world and can’t afford the treatment. More than 2.6 billion people over 40% of world do not have basic sanitation and more than one billion people have unsafe sources of drinking water. Because of this five million people mainly children die every year from water-borne diseases.
Christian Response to Third World Poverty and Injustice b) Every disciple, every authentic Christian, must be on the road: not yet arrived or perfect, but moving, striving, falling and restarting in hope, and this ethos applies to the tackling of Third World poverty and injustice. Over one billion people are living in poverty today. The gap between rich and poor is getting wider. All over the world, disparities between rich and poor, even in the wealthiest of nations is rising sharply.
An eight or nine year old boy with dirt in his face, wearing ripped jeans, shoes and a dirty shirt doing his best to stop one of a thousand cars in order for him to wash the windshields of a car for a miserable wage. This young man was struggling to carry a large container with soap and water and a small red rug which he held with his small, left hand. His facial expression revealed fear, doubt and resignation. The inside of me wanted to cry and at the same time, I wanted to take him with me and give him a warm cup of milk. He looked as if he had not eaten anything for days. As he approached our car the other drivers would curse him and tell him to disappear from this world. With a sad glimpse, he kept his journey towards our car. His big and dark brown eyes expressed pain, dismay, and despair. Heartbreaking stories similar to this one are most commonly occurring in the urban metropolis of Mexico and Latin America. These children suffer from the abandonment of their family and the economic issues of the country; moreover they are deprived to health care, exposed to violence, drugs, and HIV through sexual promiscuity. Street kids are not choosing to live in abandoned buildings, cardboard boxes, parks or on the street itself; they are forced to take on the challenges of life that no other human being experiences in many years. Therefore, street children should be helped due to the constant marginalization.
Nearly 50,000 people, including 30,000 children, die each day due to poverty-related problems and preventable disease in underdeveloped Countries. That doesn’t include the other millions of people who are infected with AIDS and other incurable diseases. Especially those living in Sub-Saharan Africa (70%), or “the Third-World,” and while we fight to finish our homework, children in Africa fight to survive without food, or clean water. During the next few paragraphs I will give proof that poverty and disease are the two greatest challenges facing under developed countries.
Everyday children’s’ needs are not met, and they are forced to suffer because they are living under the poverty line. “The United States, with the world’s largest economy, has the shameful distinction of having the second highest relative child poverty rate among 35 industrialized nations “; this is something that is affecting 1 in 5 children being born (Children’s Defense Fund, 2015). Children are not in a place that they can stand up for themselves and fight for the rights that they do not currently have. The adults that are in a position to defend them are also at a disadvantage because, statistically speaking, they probably grew up in the same environment and do not have the assistance to rise above the adversity themselves. With the governments help in passing new laws and providing resources children can be given a better chance in order to succeed as successful adults.
INTRODUCTION Poverty and human deprivation have been recognized as the most central challenges to the development of human society ever since the dawn of history. Alongside them is the issue of wealth, its creation, possession, distribution and our attitude towards it. Poverty is considered a major constraint to any form of development of human beings. The ways and means of eradicating it are now intensely studied and researched in several academic disciplines like economics, politics, history, sociology, religion, theology, ethics and even law.
America needs to fund more of its own child hunger issues, but we still however are avid contributors to “third-world” hunger issues. The burden of hunger and malnutrition are mainly in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. According to Sally Raphel (2104), each day in the developing world, 30,100 children die from mostly preventable and treatable malnutrition. Global recessions also cause higher food prices and foreign aid reduction. Statically, these developing world countries see child hunger the most; about 89% of undernourished people (including children) live in developing countries. The bulk (more than 70%,)of the world’s hungry are in the rural areas and villages in Africa and Asia. From a national standpoint, women and children suffer the most, and malnourished mother, and expecting mother soften give birth to underweight babies (ESchoolToday 2010). The global hunger problem is closely related to poverty, the economy, malnutrition, health conditions, unemployment; and it’s going to take a global change to totally eliminate
Poverty, also know as the “silent killer” (Causes of Poverty), exists in every corner of the world. The death rate of poor children is a staggering number; about 9 million die each year. Some view poverty as people not being able to afford an occupational meal or having to skip a meal to save money. This isn’t true poverty; poverty is where people live on $1.25 or less a day. According to Causes of Poverty, 1.4 billion people live like this. Even more shocking than the last statistic is that half of the world’s population lives on $2.50 per day.
Every fifteen seconds, another child becomes an orphans in Africa. Over twenty million children loose one or both of their parents to AIDS/HIV each year. Adults in Africa are dying rapidly, due to poor living conditions and bad health, leaving their children behind to care for themselves and each other. The number of vulnerable orphans in Africa can be significantly reduced with the help of others.
As I sat on my couch, in my nice home, watching TGIF on channel 12 with my family moving about the house, a “Save the Children” campaign came upon the screen during a routine commercial break. I had seen this campaign run many times, and never thought twice about it; I never really cared to pay attention to it. That night, though, I kept my eyes on the screen and listened as the woman explained the life of a young boy who was sporting tattered clothes, and wearing his skin so thin that you could see his bones. My insides started to squeeze me, as if someone had punched me directly in the gut. I continued to watch as she explained how his mother and father had died, leaving only him to care for his siblings. His siblings were so small, I noticed their skin was so thin everywhere except their bellies. Their abdomens were big, round and bloated. The feeling of sadness consumed me, I could feel a hard ache in my chest. I know now, other experiences, that at that moment, it was the feeling of my heart breaking. Thoughts raced through my mind for days, and weeks. Images of these kids, and the thought of them starving, living outside, and with no one to care for them; while I am lounging in my home, with the light on, in my bed. I was sad, stressed, and seemingly depressed. I didn’t want to eat, how could I? Knowing that there were people- children- in this world, suffering. I barely slept and when I did I
As we sit in our homes, watching images of bone-thin children half way across the world materialize on the television screen, we feel sad for the children but we are more relieved that this plague is not here. Though poverty is spreading globally, as programs, organizations, and people band together in an effort to combat this growing virus.