Open Your Hearts...

On Tuesday the World Institute for Development Economics Research, or WIDER, released an alarming survey on the distribution of wealth in the world.

90% of the world's wealth is held in North America, Europe, and the rich Asian-Pacific countries. North America alone has 34% of global wealth and yet around 6% of the population according to the WIDER report. The inequality of our world is stunning, and yet we continue to fully accept the truth.

These kind of startling statistics are not new and yet the enormity and consequences fail to get through to our country and us. Recently the president of the Christian Coalition, a political advocacy group, resigned after the board rejected his ideas that the coalition include issues like poverty and global warming in its agenda. The chairwoman Roberta Combs declared that these issues "won't speak to our base, so we just won't go there." This is a group of self-professing Christians declaring that poverty isn't a vital political issue.

Intellectually we are all aware about the economic injustice of this world. That is not enough. The US is a country full of people who know in their minds that there are people out there who don't have a chance at the basic human rights of food, shelter and clean water. Yet all these people who "know" about it don't seem to be doing much to change it, this editor included.

The truth is that its time to stop pretending that our world is working. The day has come for us to say that when the poorer 50% of adults in this world own less than 1% of the world's wealth the solution needs to be revolutionary. We need to know in our hearts and souls, not intellectually in our minds, that our planet is spinning off its axis.

So what do we do as the wealthy of this world to prompt change? It is going take sacrifice. We need to change our expectations of a certain lifestyle, we need to start questioning our loyalty to our country that is exploiting a world of need and as followers of Jesus, its time to listen to those words in Matthew 25: 40, "whatever you did for the least of these..."

Shalom,

Dan