Color me Convicted
I’m going through a new book now. Hope Lives is a five-week journey of introspection and prayer. Color me convicted already, on the third day in this journey. There’s a simple chart on page 21, titled “Gross National Income per capita 2003.”
Did you know that in 2003, the average American made $37,610?* We have this idea that that’s a somewhat meager American income, and we might even say that it is just scraping by. I know that I’m somewhere close to that mark, and I’ve been personally guilty of thinking that I’m just scraping by.
Pair that knowledge with the bottom of the chart. Ethiopia is at the bottom of the GNI chart. According to the same information, the average Ethiopian made only $90 for the entire year of 2003. That’s convicting. The average American made more money than 417 Ethiopians put together.
What really got me was my wastefulness. I worked out the math today, and I spend an average of $5.38 per DAY on beverages. My typical beverage of choice is a Diet Coke. I love them. That number goes up dramatically when I pay Seattle’s Best or Starbucks a visit. So, my $5.38 per day on beverages comes out to be $1,963 per year. So, the bitter realization is that I spend more on beverages in any given year than 21 Ethiopians spend on EVERYTHING.
Action. I know that I can do without Diet Coke and Starbucks. Neither of those companies will wither and die. 21 Ethiopians might. So, I’m going to fast from beverages for at least this week. I’m hoping to make it permanent. I will consciously put money that I would have spent on them into a fund for the work that Compassion International is doing. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Compassion is an organization you can put 100% of your trust in. God is working in huge ways through them, and if you don’t already sponsor a child - do it today.
* Source: World Bank, “GNI per Capita 2003,” World Development Indicators database (New York: World Bank, 2004)
August 18th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
I have to put a little damper on those stats. I just got back from Darfur about a month ago, and one thing I learned over there was not to trust that kind of math. One US dollar here does not equal one US dollar there.
I won’t say people over there aren’t poor and don’t need our help, on the contrary, they do, but I’m a just a real stickler for accuracy. I’d say that $90 per year (in Darfur at least) would be somewhat similar to $15,000 a year in the Seattle area (where I live). That’s still well below the poverty line, but a bit more accurate of a comparison.
The easiest comparison to make is with housing. In Darfur, if you live in a village your house costs you nothing except the time it took to collect enough sticks and twine to build a one-room hut. Sure it’s no top-floor apartment, but when that’s all you’ve ever known, it’s fine. In the Seattle area it’s impossible to find a place to live that’s considered legally habitable for much less than $400 a month, and that’s a dump.
Don’t get me wrong, I went to Darfur to help, and I haven’t changed my mind, I just see a few too many of these kinds of things. The Humanitarian aid organizations over there don’t like to announce this, but they hire locals for cooking, cleaning, driving, etc, and they pay them really well. About $5 a day for some of them. That’s a fortune, and plenty to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Erik,
I appreciate your comments. Let me keep this thing going a bit longer. No matter if $1 here equals $1 there or not, the fact remains that I spend more on soda and coffee than 21 Ethiopians make in a year. You’re saying that $90 there equals $15,000 here. Here’s the beauty. By my reduction in soda and coffee, I can pump the equivalent of $1,350,000 (by your math) into the Ethiopian economy.
I don’t agree with you that $90 = $15,000, but I do understand quite well that the dollar goes farther in a developing country than it does here. I also understand that people in the developing world don’t have any of the resources that our nations poorest do, resources like healthcare, education, food, etc. You see, even the homeless in America can get free food from a number of organizations. Our poor still get educated - we believe it’s a right, not a privilege. Our poor are never turned away from the emergency room, even if there’s no hope of them ever paying for services rendered. These things ARE SIMPLY NOT AVAILABLE in the developing world.
Their lack of resources leads to some horrible statistics. Around 30,000 kids in the developing world die every day because of causes that can be prevented… a lot of them from diarrhea or dehydration caused by diarrhea. About a million kids get drafted into the sex trade every year (prostitution and pornography). Nearly a billion people in the world are unable to read a book or sign their name.
All this to say that you’re right, $1 does not equal $1, but my conviction remains that kids shouldn’t have to die from preventable diseases or be forced into prostitution or be drafted into militias or be robbed of their childhood joys. I don’t think that kids should have to run from men with guns or work 15 hour days or drink contaminated water.
That’s what this is about to me. I appreciate your shared determination to make a difference in the world - I see that in your comment. I feel the need to write this back because someone might view your comment as justification of sitting back and doing nothing.
“It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” Mother Teresa