The Hole in Our Gospel

I'm in the middle of reading "The hole in our Gospel" - written by the President of World Vision - Richard Stearns. I would recommend you to read this book.

Some things from the book. Things that don't make you feel good, but we all need to remember.

Former President Carter was awarded the Noel Peace prize for his accomplishments after his presidency was over. This was part of his speech:
" At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now 75 times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them. the results of this disparity are root causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict, and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS."

Later in the chapter he states that prior to 1800, the gap between the wealthiest region of the world and the poorest was 4 to 1.

Also in a speech that he quoted from former President Bill Clinton I feel like I really related. We work with poor people and I would agree that the Western mindset is that people are poor because they are lazy, uneducated, not hard workers, or just didn't want it bad enough. I disagree with that - some of the most hard working people I know are the poorest people I know.

Insert from the book (pg 118/119)
"President Clinton spoke to the issue of poverty by asking the one thousand leaders present to think about what circumstances in our lives had brought us to this very evening, where we were gathered based on our positions and our success in various fields. He then postulated that 2 things were at play: first that during our lives we had all been presented with opportunities of one kind or another, and second, that we had worked hard to capitalize on those opportunities and that our hard work had paid off. He said that each of us had seen a direct correlation between how hard we worked and the results we achieved. "Now," he said, "I want you to imagine what would have happened in your lives if there had been no connection whatsoever between how hard you worked and the results you go, because that is exactly the situation faced by more than one billion people who live on less than a dollar a day. the connection between how hard they work and the result they will get has been broken." President Clinton's observation is profound. For most of the poorest people in the world, their hard work doesn't matter. They are trapped within social, cultural, political, and economic systems that do not reward their labor. The result of this entrenched futility is devastating to the human spirit.


great statement in the book "Children are NOT statistics to God"

did you know that 26,575 children die daily from preventable diseases? I can't get my mind around that number

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." - Flannery O'Connor