echurch

written by Stephan Joubert

I cannot but fully agree with Leonard Sweet (The Church of the Perfect Storm, 2008) when he writes the following:

“When we organize around honoring technology as our major God — it is more than crazy; it is suicide.
When we organize around business making money as the ultimate good — it is more than crazy; it is suicide.
When “Mother Nature” is fated to lose her maternal reference because of the wrath we are unleashing in her from our abuse, neglect, and matricide — it is more than crazy; it is suicide.”

There’s nothing wrong with ambition, progress, technology and the creation of wealth as such, but when personal ambition is pursued at the expense of others, it’s very wrong — end of story! It happens far too often. In South Africa, where the First World and the Third World meet and clash every day, and where you have two parallel universes living in tension and harmony next to each other, I realize how important it is to sensitize people to the circumstances of those who suffer extreme poverty.

To many people life is a daily struggle to survive. To them survival is definitely not a reality program watched by millions of others in the luxury and comfort of their own living rooms. The winner in the real African struggle of survival doesn’t walk away with the million dollars. No, the ‘winner’ merely lives to ‘play’ the survival game one more day. To make matters worse, the winners in the real-life struggle also have other family members to take care of for one more day.

Some years ago I read a shocking report on the state of poverty in South Africa. One story in this report that still haunts me was that of a single, jobless mother with a house full of children. One day she couldn’t stand the never-ending struggle for survival any longer. She decided to buy poison to put an end to her family’s misery. But at the shop she couldn’t afford the poison! What a tragic irony! This poor woman couldn’t afford to live, but neither could she afford to die. What a sad world we live in. Many of the rich just keep on getting richer and more selfish by the day, while the poor keep on getting poorer. May God have mercy on us all. May he also open our eyes and soften our hearts.