“If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to
support himself among you help him as you would an alien
or temporary resident, so that he can continue to live among
you. You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food
at profit.”
(Leviticus 25:35-40)
The message of Christianity included the poor as equals and Luke in particular emphasised this. The bible taught to help the poor in our community but now communications are so much better it is clear we should try and help everybody. It is said that it is impossible to have genuine love for god while at the same time ignoring people in need.
Christianity realises that people need to buy things e.g. clothes and food, but some people may become too greedy. If this happens people generally only think about themselves and forget about other people who may be in need. This may lead to a point where they can forget about God and their only care is money. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus taught:
No-one can serve two masters, either he will hate the one
and love the other or he will be devoted to one and
despise the other. You cannot serve both God
and money. (Matthew 6:24)
The early churches to were told:
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
Some people eager for money have wandered from
The faith and pierced themselves with many grief’s.
(1 Timothy 6:10)
In the times of the new testament people believed if god was pleased with them that hey would be wealthy as a reward. This also meant that people who were poor were treated badly. Jesus taught it was wrong to be satisfied with wealth. Even though having money may be nice, and provide you with lots of things when someone dies, no matter how rich, they can’t take their money with them in the next life.
All these things though are just the theory of what Christians should do; they are not actually what Christians put into practise. The to main areas of how Christians actually help are split into two main areas, prayer and actions. Prayer is very personal and is different for each individual person. People may ask God to give them the strength to do something or on the other hand they may pray as a sign of worship and to ask for him to help.
The actions people take can be a variety of things. They could devote their lives to working with the poor in a developing country as an aid worker or refugee camp perhaps as a doctor or nurse. An example of this is Mother Teresa. After becoming a nun she decided she could help more people by going out and being with the people so after permission to leave the convent she devoted herself to helping the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence (the belief that God as the all knowing being would help her as he is seen to be working for all things good), and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work. Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding. She also received the Balzan Prize and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.
They could donate money to a charity on a regular basis. Some Christians ‘tithe’ which means giving up 10% of all income to the poor and to the church. A popular way of doing this is by paying a regular sum of money every month into a charity. It helps charities to work out a budget if they know roughly how much they are going to receive. Christians in particular give a lot to Christian Aid. Christian Aid, unlike other charities who give the money raised straight to the poor or to the governments of the countries in need, spends their money on training volunteers. This makes them able to teach in schools or help in medical stations in the poorer countries. This also helps the poor to help them selves. The charity concentrates a lot of efforts on one particular week in May called Christian Aid Week. Throughout this week many events take place such as TV ads, poster campaigns, church collections, street collection’s and envelopes delivered door to door. This even gives people, who may not be able to give up time during the rest of the year, an opportunity to get involved with Christian Aid. Through out the rest of the year lots more work is put in with aid being given by individual donations, money left by people in their wills, sales of goods e.g. Christmas cards and local sponsored activities such as sponsored swims Other Christians support the work of charity shops such as Oxfam, by donating old clothes and belongings. These are then sold, and the money used to help the poor in the developing world. As well as donating money, Christians can donate their time and effort by doing volunteer work in these charity shops. Still other Christians may keep collecting boxes for money in their homes to remind themselves that there are less fortunate people in the world and that they have a responsibility to help them.
People could also make an effort to live a simple lifestyle, buying only what they need, the money saved could then again also be given to charity. They can try not to be wasteful by thinking about how much electricity they use and the amount of food they eat. Also when shopping they can take care to only buy goods which carry the fair trade mark (this means the product is bought under internationally agreed Fair-trade terms and conditions giving vulnerable producers a secure, guaranteed price.)
There is a claim that people in poverty are there through their own faults. There also many myths as to why there is so much poverty and hunger. People claim that there are too many people and not enough food; they feel it has nothing to do with them. They also think that nothing can grow in all the droughts. By buying tea and sugar they feel they are doing there bit to help, and some people believe it as simple as just sending over more of our food.
However these arguments tend to be myths, and have been proven to be untrue. Countries are usually poor because of either war, mostly civil war between the same country, and natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, droughts ect. Many countries are in debt, this I because to try and develop they need to borrow money from developed countries, which must be paid back at interest.
The claim that there are too many people and not enough food in totally false. Countries such as the USA contain only 6% of the world’s population but consume over 30% of the worlds resources. Does this seem fair? And there is enough food; enough food is produced to give every person in the world 3000 calories a day without counting the beans fruit and vegetables.
Secondly it has everything to do with us. Because we all depend on each other. If we expect people in other countries to provide us with such things as sugar and tea it should be up to us to make sure we provide them with enough food.
In addition it is hard for people to grow crops in droughts and floods but normally these events are expected, but as a country gets poorer they become less able to cope with these disasters leaving them more vulnerable. Countries do get some help when we buy their produce, but not nearly enough. The prices paid for their exports are decreasing and at the same time the price for their imports is increasing. This means any food grown has to be sold leaving the people of that country with nothing.
Another point is that although sending food in some cases can be a lifesaver but sometimes it can do more harm than good and rarely gets out to the poor.
Though god created the world he left people to make there own decisions. It is argued that the natural disasters e.g. floods were put in the world to test people and suffering was created so people could learn from it and become better people because of it. The story of Noah and the Ark shows this. In the story God sent down the rains as he was angry with humans for various sins and for not believing in him. The suffering could be a way of God showing his displeasure.
So to me this shows that the problems of the developing world are not their own fault. Many problems are in fact due to us and so everyone should try and do their bit to help, Christian or not!
