What if?

“For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserve.”
-Paraphrase of Matthew 25 by Richard Stearns, president of World Vision

“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.”
-Confucius

“If charity cost nothing, the world would be full of philanthropists.
-Jewish proverb

A question has been rolling around in my head since I had to passionately (albeit uselessly) defend a company I believe is doing a commendable work for our world in the social justice realm about two weeks ago.

TOMS shoes is a company that, for every pair of shoes you buy from them, gives a pair of shoes to children in countries where covered feet can mean the difference between life and death because of diseases that inhabit the soil. Millions of children in these underdeveloped countries are getting shoes every year because of the people who decide it’s a worthy cause to support

Millions more are still walking around with unprotected feet touching toxins like our generations have never known in America.

Maybe we don’t realize what’s at stake here. Maybe we don’t quite fully understand that it’s life or death.

Maybe we just don’t care.

This is not an advertisement for TOMS shoes (though if you want it be, the Web site is www.toms.com). This is just a preface to the question that’s been following me for the last few weeks.

What if we lived in a TOMS economy?

One for one.

We buy that cute, overpriced-for-the-sake-of-fashion winter jacket (that might not even be warm). We give a jacket with the same price tag (but maybe a little more functional and a little less stylish) to that homeless person we pass every day on the way to work, who’s only wearing a T-shirt with threads so old it’s almost see-through.

We buy that overpriced-for-the-sake-of-health organic chicken at the grocery store. We give an actual chicken (because they cost about the same) to that widow in Africa who could use it to sustain her and her five children for years and years and years.

We buy that overpriced-for-the-sake-of-living-the-American-dream house. We build 400 houses for the people in India or Argentina or Haiti who live in paper boxes.

One for one.

What if?

What if, for those two bottles of mosquito spray we buy every summer so our kids won’t have to deal with the inconvenience of itchy, irritating bites, we sent a bed net to one of the millions of children in Sierra Leone who die every year from malaria-ridden mosquito bites?

What if, for every bottle of water we buy, we sent the same amount to help provide clean and sanitary drinking water for the children across the ocean who every day consume disease-infested water, who are drinking their death?

What if, every time we paid the monthly bill on our vehicle or our insurance, we sent the same amount to something like the Personal Energy Transportation Project, which provides wheelchairs and the gift of mobility for those in “greatest need and with the least resources in poor and underdeveloped countries” or to an organization like World Vision, which provides small business loans (amounting to about $200—unheard-of startup costs here in America) that impact the sustainability of not just a family but an entire community?

One for one.

What if?

What if, for every penny or quarter or dollar we spent, we gave one away?

What if, for every minute we spent shopping or just playing on facebook, we spent in a homeless shelter, serving up dinner for those who don’t know when they’ll eat again or sorting clothes for those who own only the dirty rags on their backs? What if, for every hour we spent working to maintain our standard of living, we spent walking the streets with the homeless who have lost everything or caring for our forgotten orphans in the foster care systems or the ones on the other side of the world who are watching a generation of parents die from AIDs and becoming heads of households at 8 years old.

What if?

I’ve just finished reading the letters and writings of Mother Teresa, a woman who spent her entire life ministering to the poor, living as one of them and denouncing the materialism of the world by vowing to own nothing. One of the most poignant things she said in her book was, “When you don’t have anything, then you have everything.” She was a woman who believed she could only get close to Jesus when she got close to the poor, when she traded everything for nothing.

What if?

In his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, Rich Stearns (president of World Vision, a Christian relief organization that changes the lives of orphans and widows around the world) said that the total income of American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion (more than five thousand billion dollars). He says it would take just a “little over 1 percent of the income of American Christians to lift the poorest one billion people in the world out of extreme poverty.”

What if?

Other statistics Stearns points out:

Amount available if all America churchgoers gave 10 percent of their salary: $520 billion
Estimated annual cost to eliminate extreme poverty in the world: $65 billion
Annual cost for universal primary education for ALL children in the world: $6 billion
Annual cost to bring clean water to most of the world: $9 billion
Annual cost to bring basic health and nutrition for the world: $13 billion
Total to eradicate the world’s greatest problems: $93 billion (1.8% of American Christians' income).

What if?

What if we could bring an end to world hunger, solve the clean water crisis, provide universal access to drugs and health care for the millions dealing with malaria and AIDs and tuberculosis and cholera? What if we could eliminate the 26,000 children dying every day—20,000 of those related to hunger?

Maybe we’ll never get there. Maybe we’ll never even come close.

But what if?

The other night, I was talking to my 3-year-old about how some kids in certain parts of the world don’t have enough food to eat or the right clothes to wear to protect them from diseases that could kill them or how they don't even have anyone to love them. Jadon, in his innocence and of his own volition, said, “Well, I’ll give them one of my shoes and some of my food, too. And I love them."

May we all have the hearts of a child, hearts that look so much like Jesus.

“It is not our fault that people are poor, but it is our responsibility to do something about it. God says that we are guilty if we allow people to remain deprived when we have the means to help them.”
-Richard Stearns