Believing in helping and assisting less privileged people than ourselves is one thing but putting these beliefs into practice is another. Many people often have these ideas of how they may be able to help people but a lot of them never actually do it and at the most may put five pounds into a collection tin. There are many things that can be done where you can personally help and experience the cause you are helping.’ Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven’ this quote represents the most basic thing people do for charity; giving to charity. Most people do this but not to the lengths this quote encourages people to do. People nowadays would not be willing enough to give up all their possessions to help the poor. There are a few exceptions.
People like St Mother Teresa gave up everything and went and lived in poverty with the sick and the poor to teach them about the bible and to teach them English, maths and skills to ease the hardship on their lives. Another very basic thing people do where available is buy fair trade products. A lot of the time farmers are unable to break even in their farming so they spend more money on the actual farming as they get in return for their products. Because of this, people often get drawn into the cycle of poverty. There are hundreds of fair trade products available. For example you can buy fair trade chocolate which is often a lot nicer than unfair trade chocolate from a producer like Nestle who are being investigated for encouraging exploitation of the poor in LEDC’s.
Overall fair Trade is not about charity. It’s about paying a fair price for the products that we use, eat and wear. It ensures that you get top quality goods and the people who produce them get paid fairly. It’s a practical solution to many of the problems that keep the world’s poorest people in poor. One of the more involving activities people do to help the poor and less fortunate is to go and be an aid worker in another country.
Either to go and help as a medical worker or as one who delivers aid to the needy and helps to teach new skills to help people in life.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy and drive out demons.’ I think this reading emphasizes the need for able people to go and help the poor and the sick nowadays. As much needs to be done to stop the suffering of people all over the world. Aid companies often advertise for people to become aid workers abroad or to become missionaries. Carrying on from the last reading, I think that becoming a researcher or scientist to do with discovering new cures for diseases and finding ways of developing crops that will grow and survive in certain climates is another very good but complex way of helping people. If someone wanted to do this then they would probably have to have a career in it and that way it is not the easiest way to help people but it would be very effective if a new cure or a new genetic modification was discovered and could save countless lives all over the world.’ A generous man will be blessed for he shares his food with the poor’ this is a quote that in practice also happens today but in slightly different ways. For example: buying less luxuries and giving the money saved from this to the poor is a very easy and thoughtful thing to do.
In the reading it tells of men who share food will be blessed. This is virtually what’s happening nowadays by people doing this there are other ways of helping in this manner. Tithes are set aside from a person’s income to go to the needy. A Tithe is a tenth of some ones annual salary or it can be out of their monthly income. The first tithe recorded in the Bible was given by Abraham to Melchizedek, king of Salem.’ …
Then Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.’ The absence of a command for tithing does not relieve Christians of the responsibility to give. Rather, Christians are held to the higher law of stewardship – acknowledging that everything we have is a gift from God and being willing to give it all up at any moment that Christ commands. The Bible specifies two main reasons for Christian giving: To help a fellow Christian or human in financial difficulties or to help Christian leaders to give back all what they have given to you. One of the political things you can do is to vote for cancelling 3 rd world debt.
Debt is a major problem for 3 rd world counties because they cannot afford to pay back them. The reason for this is that the products these countries produce rarely ever break even on their exports. They have to pay more for their imports to keep the country running than they get back form their exports. This is mainly because of the western world buying products very cheaply and selling for often 10 times the price they are bought for. Recent disasters like the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the conflict in Darfur has seemed to jog people’s memories about how serious the problem of war, disease and poverty is in the world.
Shops like Oxfam, and the British Heart Foundation charity shops always are willing to take in volunteers to help in a shop. You can also donate to a charity and buy from charity shops where all the money goes to the chosen charity. There are also street collection tins you can give money to. You could become a liberation theologists that involves fighting for human rights. Many women and children in LEDC’s are being exploited and are very vulnerable. Many of them work in sweatshops where they make clothes and shoes.
They get paid very little and they work very long hours. Some even work up to 18 hours a day. The Universal Declaration of Human rights have been around since the 10 th of December 1948 and yet they are still not obeyed throughout many parts of the world and they have shrugged aside by thousands of people in the fight for money and power. This links up with the quote:’ For the love of money is the root of all evil ” This is the reading that accounts for many of the world’s problems.
The obsession with money and power is what has caused poverty in my opinion. People conning innocent people out of hard earn t money. This happens all the time and it needs to stop. This is where all the people who have actually done the things I have talked about in this essay come in.
they are helping to do as much as possible to stop the suffering of 4+ billion people worldwide. This final reading from Matthew 6: 2-4 says it all about this essay:’ So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, to be honoured by men. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your father who sees what you have done in secret will reward you.’.