Poverty doesn’t end by everyone Having MORE.
When we say that the poor need more, what we tend to think is that they should have something closer to what we have. Can’t work. Thomas Friedman, in his book Hot, Flat and Crowded, discusses a unit of measure first developed by Tom Burke, called the ‘Americum.” It is any group of 350 million people with an average income greater than $15,000 and a growing penchant for consuming. It is an America. There are now approximately 2 Americums in the world. One in North America, and the other in Europe with some help from spots in Asia and South America. But by 2030, with economic growth and the development of a middle class around the world, Friedman tells us there will 8 or 9. The problem is that this planet doesn’t have enough resources to support that much consumption.
If the world is going to level off, it isn’t going to be at the energy intense, hyper-consumption mode we have here in the U.S. And besides the resource impossibility, if we stop and think about it we also know that it isn’t our ‘ stuff’ that fulfills our lives anyway.
This is Step 1 because it is an illusion we all just have to get over: we aren’t going to save this world by helping them become wealthy in the fashion of the west.
What is ironic is that while the earth isn’t nearly big enough for us all to share in the American dream, it is more than big enough for us all to share in God’s dream for us. It’s time to look elsewhere for what will satisfy our and everyone else’s needs.
Precarious Pastor 