Sad but what to do and how to help in so many places where political situations just won’t allow food in to those who are starving. We can’t solve all the world’s problems. But the Lord can. I suggest to Bp Marc and others like him who like to worship MDGs that they focus as much on the Lord as MDGs and sees what happens. And using class warfare, like Bp Marc’s pictures so readily infer, is really not going to help the situation of the poor, but it will tick people off, who might otherwise help.
Since there’s so little commentary attached to this, I’m not sure that it’s fair to dismiss it simply as an exercise in class warfare. There are a fair number of readings of these images that could be made, besides the obvious disparities in quantity and expenditure.
If nothing else, it might help all of us not to take food for granted and to remember to express suitable gratitude to our Creator for the way in which he provides for all our bodily needs.
But it definitely is an exercise in class warfare. Otherwise, why have the comparisons from the highest to the lowest. Why not just show the lowest and talk about the need and the Lord’s call to feed the hungry. The comparision is obviously designed to make the haves feel guilty in the face of the have nots. It’s classic class warfare. And it does not work and never will.
Did anyone see the news article on the food rotting on the docks in Haiti? It’s all political, while people are starving, the ruling junta won’t release the food, claiming ‘red tape’.
[blockquote]CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti – While millions of Haitians go hungry, containers full of food are stacking up in the nation’s ports because of government red tape — leaving tons of beans, rice and other staples to rot under a sweltering sun or be devoured by vermin.[/blockquote]
If TEC is serious (which they are not) about these issues, they will close 815, sell all of the real estate, and move to St Louis or Memphis where office space and cost of living is reasonable, and they are centrally located to serve the US.
In addition, they will close their Washington office, fire all of the people there, and utilize that money to relieve human suffering directly. As it is, the TEC vision of feed the poor is to lobby Congress to use the power of the state to take money from those who have earned it to give it to others. Feed the poor is wonderful, but let TEC feed the poor with our own money.
It is also important to understand that it is a free market economy, with property rights, and rule of law, that creates the abundance that we enjoy here in the US. The most wretched places are also the least free, with the greatest government control.
All of the above make a case for microcredit programs and encouraging foreign governments to liberalize their political economies with which I’m in full agreement. I’m just of the opinion that what was posted allows one the freedom to make that inference, regardless of the fact that it was Bishop Andrus who posted it.
This group is great: http://www.fmsc.org/ (feed my starving children). volunteers pack up a nutrition supplement (looks kind of like rice a roni) they use already existing missionary/ Christian groups, not governments, to get the food to people who really need it, and they don’t have an advertising/solicitation budget to speak of. I don’t like Bishop Andrus, either, but there are people who need help and Jesus told us to help them.
This was originally run in Time magazine and there were a lot more pictures. What I find interesting is that most of the people who are paying the least are eating the most healthy natural foods while those who are spending obscene amounts are eating prepackaged processed junk. Also, some of the people on the low end had huge bags of grain, etc, that would cost a lot more here than it does there.
I was feeling bad that we had spent over $500 on groceries (family of 5) in a month since we haven’t recovered from the birth of our son and had been getting more convenience foods. I can’t believe some of these people are spending that much in a week.
Indie, I was thinking the same – all that lovely produce, and I bet they got it at a fraction of what it would cost us here. People wonder why Americans don’t eat healthy foods – it’s even more expensive than the junk. 🙁
An interesting photo-commentary. I scrolled around his blog and noted a marked lack of material promoting the Gospel. Having gotten to hear him and correspond with him during his time here in Alabama, this is hardly surprising.
This is guilt peddling at its crassest. The author here is a pious bully, his arrogance is very TEC-like, the sense of moral superiority intolerable. He has no interest in the poor; his interest is showing how evil the west is, and how “at one” he is with the poverty-stricken. The arrangement of the costs shows where his real point lies. Ah, the glorious sense of virtue at so little cost. Larry
Billy [#1] writes: “I suggest to Bp Marc and others like him who like to worship MDGs that they focus as much on the Lord as MDGs and sees what happens.”
Billy [#3] also writes: “The comparision is obviously designed to make the haves feel guilty in the face of the have nots. It’s classic class warfare. And it does not work and never will.”
I would say that the reactions to the pictures indicate far more about those reacting than any hidden agenda, class related or not, on the part of Marc Andrus. As Indie pointed out in comment #8, these pictures originally ran in a Time article–railing against class warfare on the part of the blog author as Larry Morse does in comment #11 is more silly than anything else–Mr. Morse must have tremendous powers of insight and deduction to sniff all of that out from a series of pictures sans commentary.
Those without chips on their shoulders might have noted the differences in food type, as well as amount… but then, that wouldn’t fit into the hyper-polarized worldview that abounds in some blog comments, talk radio and those little pamphlets I used to pick up at the gun show…
I also agree with those commentors who have pointed out that much disparity is due not to any lack of generosity on the part of the west, but to a leadership that thrives on corruption and human suffering.
Good gracious! That American family spends $350 dollars on food for a week?!! We’d go broke if we spent that much. And I think that must be spending w/no restraint at the grocery store. I feed a family of 4 and rarely go over $150 a week. And that includes non-edible products such as paper towels, plastic wrap, detergents, etc. And we generally DON’T eat out over the course of a week so my groceries will feed us all of our meals in a week. And we do eat meat and we eat well. Nice meals that I’d be happy to serve to any guest. No Hamburger helper, Spam, etc. in my pantry.
I should add my point was not to brag but to suggest that what they are showing the American family would spend in a week is just a bit exagerated. To make us look like big, greedy, gluttonous consumers. I mean, I’d have to make a considerable effort to spend $350 on just groceries (not household products) for a week.
Amen Carol R. I don’t know where those figures came from but t hey match no reality I am aware of. They are only t o likely to have been taken from the top of some list so that the bottom of the list looks worse. This whole operation is a vulgar religious polemic and needs to be condemned. After all, there is no way of measuring what a dollar buys in America and what the same dollar by in Borneo. nor is there a distinction bet ween those who buy all they need and those who grow much of what they need and buy the remainder. Lmorse
They are just photographs of what people eat and how much it costs.
But they do tell us something about the system of arrangements, and that perhaps we should feel guilty.
But class warfare? Class warfare happens within a country.
But if you want to talk food economics, perhaps we might examine the impact of Nafta and the way food gets distributed. I’m no Marxist, but I do think economists like Amartya Sen have mapped out a pretty good way to address the disparity in food resources.
Like perhaps we should end our subsidies of American farmers and encouraging people in the rest of the world to eat what they themselves grow. its more expensive, but better for everyone’s body….
Sad but what to do and how to help in so many places where political situations just won’t allow food in to those who are starving. We can’t solve all the world’s problems. But the Lord can. I suggest to Bp Marc and others like him who like to worship MDGs that they focus as much on the Lord as MDGs and sees what happens. And using class warfare, like Bp Marc’s pictures so readily infer, is really not going to help the situation of the poor, but it will tick people off, who might otherwise help.
Since there’s so little commentary attached to this, I’m not sure that it’s fair to dismiss it simply as an exercise in class warfare. There are a fair number of readings of these images that could be made, besides the obvious disparities in quantity and expenditure.
If nothing else, it might help all of us not to take food for granted and to remember to express suitable gratitude to our Creator for the way in which he provides for all our bodily needs.
But it definitely is an exercise in class warfare. Otherwise, why have the comparisons from the highest to the lowest. Why not just show the lowest and talk about the need and the Lord’s call to feed the hungry. The comparision is obviously designed to make the haves feel guilty in the face of the have nots. It’s classic class warfare. And it does not work and never will.
Did anyone see the news article on the food rotting on the docks in Haiti? It’s all political, while people are starving, the ruling junta won’t release the food, claiming ‘red tape’.
[blockquote]CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti – While millions of Haitians go hungry, containers full of food are stacking up in the nation’s ports because of government red tape — leaving tons of beans, rice and other staples to rot under a sweltering sun or be devoured by vermin.[/blockquote]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23507559/
If TEC is serious (which they are not) about these issues, they will close 815, sell all of the real estate, and move to St Louis or Memphis where office space and cost of living is reasonable, and they are centrally located to serve the US.
In addition, they will close their Washington office, fire all of the people there, and utilize that money to relieve human suffering directly. As it is, the TEC vision of feed the poor is to lobby Congress to use the power of the state to take money from those who have earned it to give it to others. Feed the poor is wonderful, but let TEC feed the poor with our own money.
It is also important to understand that it is a free market economy, with property rights, and rule of law, that creates the abundance that we enjoy here in the US. The most wretched places are also the least free, with the greatest government control.
All of the above make a case for microcredit programs and encouraging foreign governments to liberalize their political economies with which I’m in full agreement. I’m just of the opinion that what was posted allows one the freedom to make that inference, regardless of the fact that it was Bishop Andrus who posted it.
This group is great: http://www.fmsc.org/ (feed my starving children). volunteers pack up a nutrition supplement (looks kind of like rice a roni) they use already existing missionary/ Christian groups, not governments, to get the food to people who really need it, and they don’t have an advertising/solicitation budget to speak of. I don’t like Bishop Andrus, either, but there are people who need help and Jesus told us to help them.
This was originally run in Time magazine and there were a lot more pictures. What I find interesting is that most of the people who are paying the least are eating the most healthy natural foods while those who are spending obscene amounts are eating prepackaged processed junk. Also, some of the people on the low end had huge bags of grain, etc, that would cost a lot more here than it does there.
I was feeling bad that we had spent over $500 on groceries (family of 5) in a month since we haven’t recovered from the birth of our son and had been getting more convenience foods. I can’t believe some of these people are spending that much in a week.
Indie, I was thinking the same – all that lovely produce, and I bet they got it at a fraction of what it would cost us here. People wonder why Americans don’t eat healthy foods – it’s even more expensive than the junk. 🙁
An interesting photo-commentary. I scrolled around his blog and noted a marked lack of material promoting the Gospel. Having gotten to hear him and correspond with him during his time here in Alabama, this is hardly surprising.
This is guilt peddling at its crassest. The author here is a pious bully, his arrogance is very TEC-like, the sense of moral superiority intolerable. He has no interest in the poor; his interest is showing how evil the west is, and how “at one” he is with the poverty-stricken. The arrangement of the costs shows where his real point lies. Ah, the glorious sense of virtue at so little cost. Larry
Billy [#1] writes: “I suggest to Bp Marc and others like him who like to worship MDGs that they focus as much on the Lord as MDGs and sees what happens.”
See James 2.15-18.
—————
Billy [#3] also writes: “The comparision is obviously designed to make the haves feel guilty in the face of the have nots. It’s classic class warfare. And it does not work and never will.”
True enough: with some people, nothing works.
I would say that the reactions to the pictures indicate far more about those reacting than any hidden agenda, class related or not, on the part of Marc Andrus. As Indie pointed out in comment #8, these pictures originally ran in a Time article–railing against class warfare on the part of the blog author as Larry Morse does in comment #11 is more silly than anything else–Mr. Morse must have tremendous powers of insight and deduction to sniff all of that out from a series of pictures sans commentary.
Those without chips on their shoulders might have noted the differences in food type, as well as amount… but then, that wouldn’t fit into the hyper-polarized worldview that abounds in some blog comments, talk radio and those little pamphlets I used to pick up at the gun show…
I also agree with those commentors who have pointed out that much disparity is due not to any lack of generosity on the part of the west, but to a leadership that thrives on corruption and human suffering.
[url=http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519,00.html]The original pictures[/url]
Good gracious! That American family spends $350 dollars on food for a week?!! We’d go broke if we spent that much. And I think that must be spending w/no restraint at the grocery store. I feed a family of 4 and rarely go over $150 a week. And that includes non-edible products such as paper towels, plastic wrap, detergents, etc. And we generally DON’T eat out over the course of a week so my groceries will feed us all of our meals in a week. And we do eat meat and we eat well. Nice meals that I’d be happy to serve to any guest. No Hamburger helper, Spam, etc. in my pantry.
I should add my point was not to brag but to suggest that what they are showing the American family would spend in a week is just a bit exagerated. To make us look like big, greedy, gluttonous consumers. I mean, I’d have to make a considerable effort to spend $350 on just groceries (not household products) for a week.
Amen Carol R. I don’t know where those figures came from but t hey match no reality I am aware of. They are only t o likely to have been taken from the top of some list so that the bottom of the list looks worse. This whole operation is a vulgar religious polemic and needs to be condemned. After all, there is no way of measuring what a dollar buys in America and what the same dollar by in Borneo. nor is there a distinction bet ween those who buy all they need and those who grow much of what they need and buy the remainder. Lmorse
I think its worthwhile examining the anger.
They are just photographs of what people eat and how much it costs.
But they do tell us something about the system of arrangements, and that perhaps we should feel guilty.
But class warfare? Class warfare happens within a country.
But if you want to talk food economics, perhaps we might examine the impact of Nafta and the way food gets distributed. I’m no Marxist, but I do think economists like Amartya Sen have mapped out a pretty good way to address the disparity in food resources.
Like perhaps we should end our subsidies of American farmers and encouraging people in the rest of the world to eat what they themselves grow. its more expensive, but better for everyone’s body….