An Obligation
“Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men and all countries—not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of mankind as civilized.”
Albert Einstein
As soon as I’ve posted this I will be going to the Jesus festival held annually in our city. It’s a time when the predominantly smaller churches get together to celebrate Jesus in a park in the centre of our small city.
We give away free food and other things without obligation to anyone who comes.
As I prepared things for it I was curious to find out what Canada’s poverty level was. I knew it was in the teens.
According to the Canada without poverty website an anti-poverty website,
“1 in 7 (or 4.8 million) people in Canada live in poverty.... Marginalized Groups: Members of society that are especially vulnerable to poverty including persons living with disabilities, single mothers, Aboriginals, elderly individuals, and racialized communities
21% of single mothers in Canada raise their children while living in poverty (7% of single fathers raise their children in poverty).
People living with disabilities (both mental and physical) are twice as likely to live below the poverty line.”
The United States is not much better, according to one source
“In 2013, 45.3 million people lived in Poverty USA. That means the poverty rate for 2013 was 14.5%.” (That’s more than the population of Canada)
The same report says,
“Poverty does not strike all demographics equally. For example, in 2013, 13.1% of men lived in Poverty USA, but 15.8% of women. Along the same lines, the poverty rate for married couples in 2013 was only 5.8%–but the poverty rate for single-parent families with no wife present was up to 15.9%, and for single-parent families with no husband present over 30%.”
These are appalling statistics for two developed countries.
Sheldon Danziger the director of the National Poverty Centre at the University of Michigan said he was especially impressed by a figure showing Canada and the U.S. have the same relative child poverty rate -- 25.1 The chart also showed that after government taxes, benefits and other social programs, Canada's child poverty rate drops to 13.1, while America's barely budges, hovering above 23.1 percent.
The thing is be it 13.1% or 23.1% this is an horrible statistic. That no civilized society should stand for.
I believe it was Saki Knafo writing in the Huffington post in 2012 quoted, Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work at Columbia University, who wrote about how the labour government in the United Kingdom approached the poverty problem, she writes
“that the Labour Government's efforts to combat child poverty in the U.K. were "larger and more sustained than in the United States." Shortly after he became prime minister in 1997, Tony Blair found himself staring at a UNICEF report similar to this new one, except that England's child poverty ranking was much higher.
So Blair's government instituted programs modelled after former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. The U.K. developed Sure Start -- an early-care program for low-income children similar to the U.S. Head Start. British families could apply for the Working Tax Credit, similar to the U.S. Earned Income Tax Credit.
The Labour Party spent more on these programs, even as the U.S. spent less, and within five years the number of children living in "absolute poverty" in the U.K. had fallen by half. According to the UNICEF report, 12.1 percent of British children now live in relative poverty -- nearly half the percentage of American children.”
Twelve point one percent is still high but a step in the right direction and it shows if there is a government will poverty can be reduced if not eliminated.
We as individuals need to be speaking to our Government representatives and urging them to do more. After all what better way to spend tax money than directly on the poorest members of our society.
I as a Christian ask Christian to heed the words of James when he wrote in his Epistle,
“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?
Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.
If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?
In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?”
James 2:14-20.
The Talmud states,
“When a man appears before the Throne of Judgment, the first question he is asked is not, “Have you believed in God?” Or “Have you prayed and observed the ritual? “He is asked: “have you dealt honourably and faithfully in all your dealings with your fellow men?”
The Talmud
Whether we are a Christians, a Jews, someone of other faiths or for that matter atheist, is not showing compassion and helping the poor anyway we can only the humane thing to do?
Is not helping the poor of our society a way of dealing honourably with our fellow man?
Please think about it.
Showing posts with label the humane thing to do. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the humane thing to do. Show all posts
Saturday 11 July 2015
Wednesday 4 February 2015
A common obligation
A common obligation
“Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men and all countries—not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of mankind as civilized.”
Albert Einstein
I read some alarming statistics the other day. Globally almost 870 million chronically undernourished. But it’s not just the developing world where this is happening.
In the Untied States according to the U.S. census, 46.5 million people were living in poverty in 2012. That’s 15% of all Americans.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 15.8 million children under 18 in the United States live in households where they are unable to consistently access enough nutritious food necessary for a healthy life.
In Canada a country with about one tenth the population of the United States Food Secure Canada estimates that almost 2.5 million Canadians live without secure access to food.
Kristy Duncan M.P. in National Newswatch October 2013 wrote,
“Tragically,... 7.7 per cent of, or 961,000, Canadian households are “food insecure”, one in four First Nations and Inuit children grows up in poverty, and over 300,000 children rely on food banks.
It is absolutely abhorrent that any child goes to school hungry in a country as wealthy as Canada, and that our country remains one of the few developed countries without a student nutrition program.”
Such poverty is not limited to Canada and the United States. It is prevalent in all western countries despite their wealth.
In Britain there is no official government monitoring of hunger. However the Trussell Trust reported in 2012 that it feeds tens of thousands of people each year, and that altogether in the UK there are 13 million people "below the poverty line": about 1 in 5 of the overall population.
A 2012 study undertook by Netmums found that one in five mothers would regularly miss out on meals so as to be able to save their children from going hungry. According to a March 2013 report, teachers in London schools said that at least five children per class turned up without having had breakfast, with 41% of teachers saying they believed the children's hunger led to symptoms such as fainting.
One report from a girl just referred to as Amy living in Britain when she was twenty recalled what it was like to live with hunger in Britain,
"I was so hungry I would even chip bits of brick off the wall and eat those"
"When I was little I was very thin and was very embarrassed about it. I had developed a tummy ache which attached itself to eating and stress, which I believe was something I inherited from my mother's stress around not having enough food.
"I would wake up starving in the night but there would be no more food. When I went to people's houses their parents would make as much food as possible for me and more for me to take home.
"At my best friend's house I would fill up on dog biscuits in between meals. I would wait at my garden fence and ask passers-by for sweets or food. I would even chip bits of brick off the wall and eat those. When I lived on my own and on the streets I would spend days walking around London, hoping to be able to find or steal some food. I would look in every bin and on every bit of the floor."
How tragic. And while the account of Amy is from the United Kingdom I have no doubt it is happening in Canada, the United States and other western countries.
The reason I write all of this is because I firmly believe we need to do more for the poor. I hear politicians in the Unite States wanting to cut social programs, do away with Obama care and it seems basically let the poor fend for themselves.
Canada’s no better the Conservative government of Stephen Harper seems to want to do nothing.
They are quick to give tax breaks to the rich but slow to help those in need.
In all of this I hear politicians that claim they are Christian. Yet they are not standing up for the basic human rights of the most vulnerable in our society. The right to good nutritious food, healthcare, and a roof over their head.
Jesus said
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 7:12.
I can only think that those politicians who claim to be Christians and are not speaking out for the poor do not agree with the words of Jesus. Either that or they like eating bricks.
Tony Campolo the American Evangelist said,
“The reason why I buy into the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party is because there are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with responding to the needs of the poor.”
Tony Campolo
The Talmud says this,
“When a man appears before the Throne of Judgment, the first question he is asked is not, “Have you believed in God?” Or “Have you prayed and observed the ritual? “He is asked: “have you dealt honourably and faithfully in all your dealings with your fellow men?”
The Talmud.
Be we politicians, princes paupers or just the average man and woman on the street we should be asking ourselves that question. “Have we dealt honourably and faithfully in all our dealings with our fellow man?”
Are we doing what we can to help the poorest people in our society?
We should be demanding our politicians help the poorest in our society no matter the cost, because whether you are Christian or not it is the humane thing to do.
Think about it.
“Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men and all countries—not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of mankind as civilized.”
Albert Einstein
I read some alarming statistics the other day. Globally almost 870 million chronically undernourished. But it’s not just the developing world where this is happening.
In the Untied States according to the U.S. census, 46.5 million people were living in poverty in 2012. That’s 15% of all Americans.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 15.8 million children under 18 in the United States live in households where they are unable to consistently access enough nutritious food necessary for a healthy life.
In Canada a country with about one tenth the population of the United States Food Secure Canada estimates that almost 2.5 million Canadians live without secure access to food.
Kristy Duncan M.P. in National Newswatch October 2013 wrote,
“Tragically,... 7.7 per cent of, or 961,000, Canadian households are “food insecure”, one in four First Nations and Inuit children grows up in poverty, and over 300,000 children rely on food banks.
It is absolutely abhorrent that any child goes to school hungry in a country as wealthy as Canada, and that our country remains one of the few developed countries without a student nutrition program.”
Such poverty is not limited to Canada and the United States. It is prevalent in all western countries despite their wealth.
In Britain there is no official government monitoring of hunger. However the Trussell Trust reported in 2012 that it feeds tens of thousands of people each year, and that altogether in the UK there are 13 million people "below the poverty line": about 1 in 5 of the overall population.
A 2012 study undertook by Netmums found that one in five mothers would regularly miss out on meals so as to be able to save their children from going hungry. According to a March 2013 report, teachers in London schools said that at least five children per class turned up without having had breakfast, with 41% of teachers saying they believed the children's hunger led to symptoms such as fainting.
One report from a girl just referred to as Amy living in Britain when she was twenty recalled what it was like to live with hunger in Britain,
"I was so hungry I would even chip bits of brick off the wall and eat those"
"When I was little I was very thin and was very embarrassed about it. I had developed a tummy ache which attached itself to eating and stress, which I believe was something I inherited from my mother's stress around not having enough food.
"I would wake up starving in the night but there would be no more food. When I went to people's houses their parents would make as much food as possible for me and more for me to take home.
"At my best friend's house I would fill up on dog biscuits in between meals. I would wait at my garden fence and ask passers-by for sweets or food. I would even chip bits of brick off the wall and eat those. When I lived on my own and on the streets I would spend days walking around London, hoping to be able to find or steal some food. I would look in every bin and on every bit of the floor."
How tragic. And while the account of Amy is from the United Kingdom I have no doubt it is happening in Canada, the United States and other western countries.
The reason I write all of this is because I firmly believe we need to do more for the poor. I hear politicians in the Unite States wanting to cut social programs, do away with Obama care and it seems basically let the poor fend for themselves.
Canada’s no better the Conservative government of Stephen Harper seems to want to do nothing.
They are quick to give tax breaks to the rich but slow to help those in need.
In all of this I hear politicians that claim they are Christian. Yet they are not standing up for the basic human rights of the most vulnerable in our society. The right to good nutritious food, healthcare, and a roof over their head.
Jesus said
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 7:12.
I can only think that those politicians who claim to be Christians and are not speaking out for the poor do not agree with the words of Jesus. Either that or they like eating bricks.
Tony Campolo the American Evangelist said,
“The reason why I buy into the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party is because there are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with responding to the needs of the poor.”
Tony Campolo
The Talmud says this,
“When a man appears before the Throne of Judgment, the first question he is asked is not, “Have you believed in God?” Or “Have you prayed and observed the ritual? “He is asked: “have you dealt honourably and faithfully in all your dealings with your fellow men?”
The Talmud.
Be we politicians, princes paupers or just the average man and woman on the street we should be asking ourselves that question. “Have we dealt honourably and faithfully in all our dealings with our fellow man?”
Are we doing what we can to help the poorest people in our society?
We should be demanding our politicians help the poorest in our society no matter the cost, because whether you are Christian or not it is the humane thing to do.
Think about it.
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