It's been hard for me to get a real clear picture of what exactly the protests are about, but hearing the facts about the 1% making 1/3 of Americans' income made me start thinking.
In the US, I felt poor. I had a masters degree and a steady teaching job and yet our family qualified for WIC (Food aid for low-income moms and children), our heating bill was subsidized through LEAP (again, for low-income families), and our kids qualified for free (but nearly impossible to use) state medical care - all because we were considered a low-income family. From that perspective, it's easy to agree with the occupy movement - income distributions in the US are not fair.
Here, I feel wealthy. We end up giving a lot of money away, lending money to people with hospital bills, buying antibiotics for people... We 'bring home' even less now that we're missionaries but here in Kenya it's a lot easier to see how wealthy we really are. I feel guilty when our house-helper sees avocados growing nasty molds - especially on days she has no lunch. When the crippled guy peddling flowers asks if he can have a ten-dollar loan to buy his weekly batch of flowers to sell because he spent all his capital on medicines for his son who has pneumonia I see how richly we've been blessed.
Because I was curious, I looked up some facts about incomes worldwide - here's one that really hit home for me: over 50% of the world's population lives on under two dollars per day. (Over 80% live on under ten dollars per day.)
My parents visited last month and we celebrated an early Christmas with them - ham, cranberry sauce and all. After eating, I took some of the traditional meal to our yard-worker, Edward. He had a great time trying all the foods. He really liked cranberry sauce, enjoyed the ham. His favorite part was the stuffing; he didn't care for the olives. NONE of it was familiar to him. After he'd eaten it and had seconds of the stuffing and that precious cranberry sauce he asked, "You eat like this every Christmas?"
"Yep." I couldn't admit to him that I would have normally eaten twice the amount he'd just had OR that we'd had a meal like that only a month ago when we celebrated Thanksgiving or that we'd probably do it all over again when Easter came around.
"Wow!" Wonder filled his face. That he couldn't really fathom being wealthy enough to eat one meal like that was obvious - and Edward's a guy living on MORE than two dollars per day - better than over 50% of the world population!
I'm rich. I use the internet, own a car, buy health insurance, have running water (hot water, no less) and listen to an ipod. Maybe I'm not the one percent - but I eat until I'm full.
I'm not sure what to make of all this but reading Luke 16 has a different feel now.
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| Visiting Edward's House for Christmas. |
I love this perspective. I love that we as a country have the freedom to speak our feelings but it's sad to me sometimes that our feelings as a whole are so trivial and often selfish.
ReplyDeleteNicely put, Jim.
ReplyDeleteI feel more wealthy just reading this. I am inspired to work harder to choose to want what I have and figure out how to want to give more away. Thank you.
Randy, I totally understand what you mean by choosing to want what you have and figuring out how to give more away. It's STILL a challenge for us every single day even while looking into the eyes of the destitute on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteKari, it seems to me that material wealth tends to keep our feelings and thoughts focused on our own physical comfort (or lack thereof) causing us to ignore our acute spiritual poverty.