5 reasons I care about poverty – and you should too

1. Poverty is unsustainable

I don’t believe that the levels of inequality that we see in our world today are sustainable. Billions of people are denied opportunities that are commonplace to us in the west. Think of all the Einsteins and Newtons who starve to death at the age of 4. What a waste.

Poverty doesn’t just hurt the poor. No man, or country, is an island. What is good for our global neighbours is also good for us. I do not believe that it is a viable option for humanity to continue with such a large burden as poverty and inequality holding us back.

Injustice is never sustainable. Slavery has ended. The oppression of woman is coming to an end in the western world. Racism has been fought off. The Soviet Union fell. Apartied ended. England was ejected from India. Democracy has replaced Monarchy. Human rights are taking hold around the world.

History proves that injustice is not sustainable, and any system that relies on injustice for its survival is a system that is sure to fail. So I think we are better to begin rooting the injustice out of the system now, before the poor root it out for us.

2. God cares about poverty

It is interesting to see how Australian’s react to various social issues. It is mostly revealed in politics. Take the Australian federal Greens party. The Greens are very much the idealistic party in Australia. They support a number of good causes such as protecting the environment, increasing Australia’s overseas aid, being kind to refugees, and ending homelessness. But they are also support gay marriage, euthanasia, and abortion. This stops Christians from voting for them. We consider issues of “morality” more important than issues of justice.

Christians have really  got their priorities wrong. Depending on how you read things there are maybe 3 passages in the bible about abortion, and 6 about homosexuality. There are over 2,000 about caring for the poor.

The fact that you can’t even see the bars on this graph for abortion and homosexuality when compared to poverty is an illustration of just how wrong our priorities have been. If I am to be faithful to God and politically active, it is obvious to me where I should be investing the majority of my energy.

(That doesn’t mean voting for the Greens, but it does mean advocating for the poor regardless of who is in power.)

3. Jesus is in the poor

In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31-46) Jesus shockingly identifies himself with the poorest and most vulnerable people in our world. For a long time I thought that this was because God loves them, and thus He feels pain whenever we hurt someone He loves. But now. after working with the poor, I believe it is much more than that.

God has a soft spot for the world’s rejects. He may be unbiased, but He does take sides – He sides with the victims of injustice. The lowest people in our society are the Kings and Queens in God’s Kingdom and He reveals Himself to them, and makes Himself real in them in a way that He does not with those of us privileged to live a happy life inside the system.

The poor are God’s image in this world. That’s not to say that the poor are somehow innocent and don’t often participate in their own oppression. Its just a reflection of God’s grace. If He lives in the poor, than no one can claim to have done something to deserve Him.

It follows that if I love God I won’t just leave my worship inside the Church. I’ll take it out with me into the streets. If I love God how can I allow Him to suffer? I must take a stand on behalf of the one I love.

4. Poverty is unfair

The largest factor dictating the life expectancy of a person at birth is the country they were born in. Out of all the thoughts that this brings one feeling stands out above all the rest: this is unfair.

One of the “Australian values” repeatedly espoused by the media is that of a “fair go”. If we really care about giving people a fair go, we need to look beyond our boarders and see the millions of people who never chose poverty: they were born into it.

A fair go is an easy idea to ascribe to when you’re the one being treated unfairly. But a principal is not a principal unless you are also willing to practise it when it doesn’t suit you. In the case of global poverty it is the poor that have been denied a fair go, and it is up to us to provide them with the same opportunities that we thankfully received but did little to deserve.

5. Justice is inevitable

I’ve already stated that I don’t consider poverty to be sustainable, the flip side of that is that I consider justice to be inevitable. The only question is whether this will be an easy of difficult thing for us.

A lot has been done in the last decade to really study and understand poverty so that the money we give can be used more effectively than it ever has been. It is a very real possibility that by the end of my life extreme poverty will be just a bad memory. That this evil that has scourged humanity for so long will be gone. I would like to be part of that.

When poverty is over I would like to be one of the people who has some responsibility for that. I would like to be one of the people getting thanked.

I’ve Moved

Yep. I’ve packed up and found a new home corner of the net. It is cosier.

You can change your RSS feeds to http://feeds.feedburner.com/unkingdom

Emailing my electorate’s candidates

I just emailed my electorates candidates about the issues that matter to me in the upcoming Australian federal election. I am in the seat of Dickson (turns out I am on the other side of the road to Longman). I emailed the lower house candidates for the LNP, Greens, LDP, Labour, and an Independent. There is also a Family First candidate but they have not listed an email address.

This message is very much based of another one send by a friend of mine (except I changed my questions).

Here is the email I sent to Peter Dutton (the existing LNP member for Dickson):

Dear Mr Peter Dutton,

I am an undecided voter from your electorate and are searching for a candidate who will best represent me in parliament after the upcoming election. In order to help me make my decision, I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer a couple of questions about your party’s, or your own, position on the following issues:

1) What is your position on whether Australia should raise its allocated giving to international aid to 0.7% of GNI by 2015? Are you familiar with the millennium development goals? If so how would you work to ensure that our Aid best supports reaching these goals?

2) What is your plan for supporting people who are homeless? How will you, if elected, help homeless people act as dignified members of society?

3) What is your suggested method of dealing with “boat people”? What measures would you support in order to assist genuine refugees integrate into Australian life whilst stopping exploitation by people smugglers?

Thank you very much for your time. Your answers will be very helpful as I decide who to vote for at this election.

Sincerely,

Adam Myers

I encourage you to do something similar about the issues you care for. I will let you know what responses I get.

What’s missing from Family First’s “Christian Values”

I was handed something very similar to this yesterday as an election flyer supporting the Family First party at the upcoming Australian Elections:

(click to enlarge)

I think it is a pretty sorry reflection of Christian priorities in Australia. In my view, of these issues only 2 are issues raised by Jesus himself; eight, I don’t agree with (why oppose a charter of rights or legalise discrimination?); seven are trivial. Many (11?) give a misleading indication of at least one party’s position.

Worst of all however, are the issues they missed:

• Raising Aid to 0.7% of GNI
• Improving our Aid effectiveness in line with the MGDs
• Helping poor countries adapt to climate change
• Increasing the availability of Fair Trade produce
• Improving the life expectancy of Indigenous People
• Increasing support for people struggling with Mental Illness
• Increasing availability of homes/hostels for homeless people
• Implementing policies that treat refugees with dignity
• Seeking equality for women (esp. in matters of pay)
• Spreading human rights
• Rehabilitating criminal offenders
• Tackling racism and violence fuelled by prejudice
• Rebuilding countries we have destroyed through war

These are not small issues. They are the issues that will eventually decide who I vote for. Maybe I am just not a very good Christian.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” – James 1:27

You will not leave

A poem from my journal.

I believe in a delusion
That I can reach my own conclusion
Living my life by human steam
But finding this is just a dream

I seek out what seems best to me
I worry not about what you see
And in the end I just become
Yet another hopeless blinded one

But you, O God, you placed me first
On Calvary’s hill my shackles burst
From your deep love I cannot hide
You knew one truth: I’m broke inside

By knowing this, your heart was hurt
You reached down to lift me from the dirt
Your boundless grace is where hope lies
And now I see life through new eyes

A rich new hope was in me placed
To see the world saved by your grace
And every day I walk in step
To ease the world of sin’s great debt

I do not know how to prevail
But I can hear dreary souls wail
My heart breaks like yours does also
Yet the people hurt only more so

Help me lord, to rely on you
My conscious will is shattered in two
I want to live by holy light
So give me strength for my fight

By will alone I cannot win
I am still tempted by constant sin
The deception of Hades waits
To lure me in with fresh new baits

Let me know you’re all I need
So I won’t seek any other creed
When fiend comes, let weakness seethe
For from my side you will not leave