Healing the poor of their American affliction.
When it comes to doing virtually irreparable harm to Christianity, no one excels at this like Christians. It is not uncommon to find that those championing the bastardization of church/state separation are self-proclaimed Christians or that those trying to prevent the public display of nativity scenes claim likewise. It therefore came as little surprise to find that Christian leaders from various countries had united under the guise of fighting poverty in order to carry out a political agenda.
It is, of course, not unusual for Christians to become involved in politics, though such involvement almost invariably incurs shrieks of indignation from liberals. When Christians unite for the purpose of spreading Socialism, however, as they did on June 29 in London, they are curiously met with silence from the Left. There were no reported protests, no cries of intolerance as church leaders from the U.K., U.S., and various African countries met to plan the “eradication” of poverty.
Though a noble ideal, aiding the impoverished seemed a distant objective when compared to that of punishing the wealthy. The poor were never addressed, only the successful. The poor were not required to do anything to change their condition, only the successful were. I don’t know if they’re chalking it up to a lack of intelligence or an abundance of laziness, but these church leaders appear convinced that for some reason, the poor can’t help themselves in any way whatsoever.
Regardless of their reasons, they spoke only to the wealthy nations of the world. Amid the baseless claims and accusations bantered about at this pre-G8 summit, one message remained salient and invariable: extreme poverty was the result of certain nations (which, for simplicity’s sake, we shall called “the United States”) obtaining wealth at the expense of other nations.
What was not discussed was the cause of poverty, which, is frequently nothing more than destructive behavior. Poor economic practices result in the indigence of the decision maker as well as all those for whom he is responsible; as true on a national scale as it is on an individual one. But no one examined the role of national leaders in the impoverishment of their own countries. No, behavior was ignored, leaving only the bleak disparity between the prosperous and the destitute. And, as with all Liberal economic policy, the proposed solutions were not engineered to help the poor create wealth but rather to redistribute the wealth created by others. It is such a policy that undergirds the church leaders’ “Millennium Development Goals”–their three-fold proposal for eradicating global poverty.
The first pillar in these goals is debt repudiation for the world’s 18 poorest countries. There was, of course, no examination into the circumstances that created the debts in the first place, nor were there any recommendations made to bring these countries into a state of fiscal viability and independence within the global marketplace. We (to use an uncomfortably inclusive word) are, in essence, not interested in how nations become poor. No, our interest is merely temporary alleviation of the symptom, not permanent repair of its cause. It is axiomatic that until someone begins questioning poverty instead of merely accepting it, successful nations will soon be in position to again forgive the debts of these very same countries.
Inasmuch as Pillar #1 did nothing to assist the impoverished in creating wealth, Pillar #2, aid increases, had to step in to make up for the inadequacy of its predecessor. Because repudiation left the debt-generating economies intact, the proposed method of warding off future deficits required further sacrifice from productive countries. Since 1963, the United States has given an annual average of $13.5 billion in aid to Africa for a current total of $568 billion. Seeing as the 42 year tactic of throwing money at poverty has done little to diminish it, we must wonder if, perhaps, throwing more is going to span the gulf between failure and complete success. If, after all, we are talking about ending poverty, the discussion should focus on a total, not an increase. Not surprisingly though, a final total was never mentioned, let alone calculated.
Not that the Socialists are asking, but the reason that aid isn’t working is because it’s not getting to the people for whom it’s intended. These countries are in a state of perpetual poverty because warlords and corrupt governments are squandering the contributions of well intentioned Westerners. If there is anything we’ve learned from observing these despots, it’s that money is used first for self indulgence and then for the expansion and strengthening of their military (incidentally making the task far more difficult on the day in which we decide to effectively deal with the cause of their poverty). Until we remove these murderous, narcissistic, money sponges, the “aid” we send will only serve to increase their stranglehold on national power.
As a final pillar, and just to demonstrate that they are not unfamiliar with economic terminology, this group of Christian leaders has proposed strengthening impoverished private sectors by mandating that wealthy countries handle them with “special treatment,” a.k.a.: “kid gloves” (unquestionably, the most effective preparation for life in the real world). The cornerstone of this position states that “rich countries must [...] prevent the dumping of [their] produce on world markets [...] so that [poor countries] are able to protect vulnerable producers and develop new industries.” They are evidently asserting that an impoverished private sector cannot compete with cheap imported goods and therefore local production businesses will fail and, in turn, stunt the development of new industries.
I cannot detect any consistent stream of logic here inasmuch as new industries are often born precisely because of such situations (something about necessity being the mother of invention seems particularly fitting here). If you can’t compete with the price of an imported product, join or create an industry that benefits from such imports. (I find it disturbing that I would even feel compelled to type something so obvious, let alone actually do it.) Furthermore, as anyone with an attention span of greater than 30 seconds will recall (this rules out all those under 20 years of age), Pillar #2 inherently mandated an increase in the “dumping of produce on the world market.” If they’re concerned about local producers competing with cheap imports, how do they expect them to compete with the free imports arriving in the form of “aid?”
Unfortunately, these “Christian” leaders appear more interested in infecting Western culture with Socialism than they do in following the words of Christ. Using such subjective phrases as “economic justice” and “the economic imbalances of the past” they imply that imbalance and injustice are synonymous; a pillar of Socialism. Jesus, however, did not see poverty as an injustice, but rather an indication of a greater need. He gave evidence of His Messianic validity to John the Baptist by enumerating the ways in which He was meeting the immediate needs of those He encountered. “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” (Luke 7.22, Mat. 11.5) Again, He quotes Isaiah “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has appointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4.18-19)
Christ knew that what the poor really needed was not money but the gospel. The New Testament outlines the church’s responsibility to care for the poor by feeding and clothing them but most importantly by sharing His love with them. Christ never called for changes in governmental policy. He called for His church to take action; not through the corrupt conduit of world governments but rather directly, one-on-one. This is not to say that churches ought not try to change their countries for the better (God forbid!) but rather that they ought to be leading by example. If the poor are not being fed, Christians have only themselves to blame.