Paidion wrote:Yes, handouts are only a temporary measure and will not in themselves solve the problem. Those hungry people need seeds, farming instruction, and a social order where they have opportunities for work.
My post deals with that (highlighted) point Paidion made. The question is, what kind of a social order? Man's or Gods.
You’ve heard the adage, “Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll feed himself for a lifetime.”
Here’s a parallel: Deprive a man of land and he’s apt to steal or starve. Make him a landowner, and he’s apt to grow food to feed himself.
I contend that historically the problem of starvation is not usually the result of drought, pestilence, stupidity, or laziness. More often than we realize, starvation results from depriving people of property rights.
Private ownership of property has been rare in history and remains rare today. In some countries, there is no private property. In other countries there are varying degrees of private ownership of property. In no country that I know of is there a consistently Biblical property system. However, even with the unscriptural elements of eminent domain and property taxes, we in the West enjoy a greater degree of “property rights” than most of the rest of the earth’s population. We take the principle of private property so much for granted, in fact, that we often fail to consider it when we contemplate why so many people in other lands are starving. Often we blame their poverty on our greed, and then put a guilt trip on ourselves for not giving more of our stuff away to those suffering people. The fact is that no one is more generous with food, and everything else, than we in western nations are.
So, why do you suppose so many people in other lands starve while we in North America have plenty to eat? Is it because our soil is more fertile? No. That’s not the reason. There is plenty of fertile soil in many places on the globe. Some of the most fertile land on earth is in Africa. Is it because the people who live on our continent are racially or ethnically superior to people who live on the other continents? Are we smarter than they are? Are we physically stronger? Are we made of finer clay? No, no, no, none of those is true. In fact, the population of North America is well represented by a wide range of races and nationalities, unlike the populations of other continents, which tend to be more homogeneous. We are proof that people of every sort can be successful.
Human government causes starvation more often than do drought, pestilence, floods, or locusts. Here’s a good illustration: Toward the end of the Czarist era in Russia, private property ownership began to be allowed. Consequently, the Ukraine region became so productive that it became known as “The Bread Basket of Europe.” Then the communists captured the nation in 1917 and abolished private ownership of land. The Ukrainians fiercely defended their farms and resisted collectivized farming. Nikita Khrushchev earned the infamous title, “Butcher of the Ukraine” by squashing the Ukrainian resistance. Estimates of the number of Ukrainians murdered range from 4 to 12 million! The abolition of private property in Soviet Russia transformed the once productive Ukraine into an agricultural disaster area. Decades of chronic food shortages resulted, requiring routine importation of food. Here’s a link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
The basis for private control of property rests in at least two Scriptural principles
1) “The earth is the Lord’s.” It does not belong to man individually or collectively. When God parceled out Canaan, He made families/individuals the stewards over His property. There was no provision made for control of the land by either a civil or a clerical bureaucracy. God knew that private stewardship (not collectivist ownership) would guarantee the most consistently productive economic system for people. It is self-evident that privately controlled property is more productive than centrally controlled property.
3) “Thou shalt not steal.” By forbidding stealing, (individually, or collectively through the state) God provided families with a high degree of economic security in their property. The Jubilee also worked in terms of this protection of private stewardship of the land. Property taxes are unbiblical, and are a violation of God’s system of private stewardship because they are a declaration by the state that it owns the land. Those taxes are a means of stealing from God, and they put every property owner in economic jeopardy of losing his property. As private stewardship of the land diminishes, the invariable result is an increase in poverty, shortages, and famine.
History is a record of civil governments declaring that the land belongs to them. Where Christianity has advanced, however, we see an increase in the Biblical principle of private stewardship of property, and a diminishing of the pagan principle of state control of property. That is why we see more prosperity and fewer famines in the West. Clearly, Western Civilization has been more influenced by the principles of Christianity than has the rest of the world.
Salvation is of God, and it includes more than life in the sweet by-and-by. It includes benefits for the here and now, if we live in terms of His will. We know that spreading the Gospel yields spiritual rewards, but sometimes we forget the wonderful terrestrial benefits it produces as well.
Rather than feeling ashamed of the blessings that have resulted from God’s system of private stewardship of God’s property, let’s give God the glory He deserves. And as we send the starving masses temporary relief, we should realize that the best thing we can do to help feed them is to advance the Kingdom of God, which provides not only spiritual bread, but physical bread as well.
Candlepower