Who Should Fight World Poverty?

All Christian’s need to start fighting against poverty. A bold proclamation- perhaps- however accurate and right on with the Christian values. Consumed in foolishness for a Christian to keep distant in helping the poor, whether local or globally. For economist rock star, Jeffrey Sachs, the anti-poverty team consist not just mere Christian’s, but our entire current generation- old and young, rich and poor. Sachs unfolds this argument in the September/October 2006 issue of Good magazine, in an article entitled Falsely Accused. How can I ascertain from his article that indeed we can fight against world poverty and ultimately win?

Well I believe Sachs; for certain evidence shows once underdeveloped and impoverished countries, like Taiwan, South Korea, China, and India, having slowly but for surely climbing up the ladder of wealth and transpire. Sachs mentions, “In recent decades, hundreds of millions of people around the world, mainly in Asia, have broken the seemingly inexorable cycle of poverty” (Sachs 98). Due to massive aids by countries all over the globe, East Asia thrived to develop into one of the “world’s largest exporting regions”. In 1990, 472 million people in East Asian and Pacific countries lived on less than one dollar a day; and by 2001, the number dropped dramatically to 271 million. With continued relief, by 2015, 271 million could drop to a low 19 million people living on less than a dollar a day. Unfortunately, many parts of the world, like Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and Central Asia, experience an increase in their numbers of civilians living in extreme poverty (Katel). This is where rockstar economist and friend of Bono, Jeffrey Sachs, calls out the rest of the world, the ones living above the poverty line, to lend a helping hand in the fight against poverty- no matter the race, sex, age, or religion. In my mind though, the vision that Professor Sachs draws out in his awe-inspiring article is attainable and feasibly achievable. However, it was after analyzing a particular paragraph that brought about bitter contention within me. The wee utterance of a certain subject stood out like a right-wing Republican at a Snoop Dogg concert.

It is here that I start to diverge in Sachs’ viewpoints: “We are the first generation on the planet that can truly aim to end extreme poverty. ‘We’ includes all of us. ‘We’ includes old and young, rich and poor, Americans and the rest of the world” (Sachs 98). But I ask Professor Sachs; why must it be ‘we’? What does the population living above the poverty line acquire when lending a helping hand to the dirt poor? Besides self-gratification and having a sense of feeling well grounded, is our contribution worth the merit? Not to sound contentious or even slightly connoting opposition to fighting world poverty, but what’s in it for me? One gets nothing except temporarily feeling morally sound. However, a group of people making up approximately one-third of the world’s population is indeed expected and obligated to help the poor more than others- the Christian’s. So why exactly do Christian’s need to help out the poor more than anyone else? First off, their god is in favor of serving the poor and is even addressed with names pertaining to exactly that. In the Holy Bible, the book of Psalm 12:5 demonstrates how the god worshipped by Christian’s is a protector of the poor by stating, “For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him”. The Christian god is also characterized as a rescuer of the poor; which 1 Samuel 2:8 clearly reveals: “He [god] raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he hath set the world upon them [poor]”.