Brian’s Perspective - Old Blog

If someone started handing you $20 bills and told you that they would keep placing another bill in your hand every 5 seconds until you said, “Enough,” how long would you stand there? When would you ever have enough money to say enough?

As a young boy, I remember in the 1980’s how many commercials would come on the television requesting funds to help feed starving children in Ethiopia. They would show children with their hugry, distended bellies and that blank look of starvation on their face. They were detestable pictures and you instantly wanted to help that child. I also remember being with the church on Sunday and hearing a woman, ignorant of what hunger is, say, “Well all those babies look like they are getting enough to eat. Look at the size of their bellies!” It wasn’t that she hated children, she was just woefully ignorant of hunger.

When I was in college at the University of Oklahoma, my wife and I were shopping for our monthly groceries. We had $80 to feed ourselves with on our small budget (she was a school teacher in a fledging private school and I was a graduate student). On that hot, miserable summer Saturday, while we were on the canned vegetable aisle, I saw a man come up the aisle with a carton of yogurt he had snatched from the dairy, open it and proceed to eat it with his hands, licking the food off of his fingers. I would like to say that my first reaction was, “This poor man, let me buy him some food.” Sadly, I was angry. Here was a man stealing from a store. And we all know that stealing is wrong–my Sunday School teacher had taught me that. I remember looking at him with such contempt and anger in my heart that it must have shown on my face, because when his eyes caught mine, he fled in fear. And I thought of myself as a hero having averted a would be thief. But in my defense, I had never known or had never seen hunger.

But now, I have no excuse. I have seen hunger, though I have never been hungry. Even in college I always managed to find at least 30 cents to go and get a Taco at Taco Bell. I have never in my life missed a meal. I do know that other people are hungry and have (and I am not patting myself on the back) helped people get a meal when they were hungry. But, until this morning, I never realized how I contributed to the problem of world hunger.

On BBC, I read this article this morning:

BBC NEWS | Health | Overweight ‘top world’s hungry’

There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts.Professor Tony Barnett, head of the diabetes and obesity group at Birmingham University, said: “It is becoming increasingly clear that the number of overweight outnumbers the malnourished.

It goes on to say that over 1 billion people all over the world are obese, not just overweight, obese. Obesity is a growing problem in the world–no pun intended. The article goes on to blame cheap food:

He said food prices could be used to manipulate people’s diets and tilt them towards healthier options.”For instance, if we charge money for every calorie of soft drink and fruit drink that was consumed, people would consume less of it. “If we subsidize fruit and vegetable production, people would consume more of it and we would have a healthier diet.”

This person’s solution is to charge more for food. That way we would consume less. The underlying assumption in the solution is that people will buy as much food as they can afford to do so. So by limiting what they can buy, then they will eat less. But then that gets us back to people who are hungry or only marginally provided for become even more hungry. When someone cannot afford to get all they need, and food costs more, they get even less. With a global economy, you cannot have one price structure for fat countries and another cheaper structure for thin ones. This won’t work. It is a nice idea, but social engineering with taxes and politics has yet to solve a social problem. Look at drugs in this country!

Changing the cost of food is not really a solution because it doesn’t really attack the problem. The problem is not cheap food, the problem is that we never get enough to satisfy ourselves. We are overweight (and I am!) because I have never learned to be filled and to be satisfied with eating less. I am part of the world’s hunger problem. If I would spend the same on food, eat less and share the rest, someone else who needs food, would be filled, also. The solution to hunger begins with the realization that I am part of the problem. To the extent that I covet and jealously guard all of my resources to be used on me, then I am the problem. We don’t need more taxes, we just need to learn to serve others and love others.

God’s solution to hunger has always been for those who have to share with those who have not (Deuteronomy 15:4). But God’s solution can only happen when we learn to share.

When we will be filled?