via the Onion
Poverty Stricken Africans Receive Desperately Needed Bibles.
A quote: “More than 60,000 urgently needed Bibles arrived to allay suffering throughout the famine-stricken nation of Niger Friday, in one of the largest humanitarian-relief operations ever attempted by a Christian ministry.”
God, I love The Onion. Your thoughts? I have something to say about this, but I’m still too amused to put it together…
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:23 am
I can’t quite laugh at this. The joke is… misdirected, or something. Yes, Christians are to look after the bodily concerns of others, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless. But it’s making fun of something very true - that the spiritual welfare of a man is far more important than the physical. Is sending Bibles to a poor country stupid? In absolutely no way! Should we be feeding them? Yes, we most certainly should!
I get the joke, I get that some people may completely ignore the fact that people are dying of starvation and think only of the ‘holy’ act of sending Bibles (and this is wrong), but I think it also ends up making fun of the idea of sending Bibles to a poor nation altogether. Bibles are urgently needed. What is most important in the end? Anyway, it’s a bit too … something, I don’t know what… to completely laugh about. There’s a bit too much mockery of the necessity of the Word of God in people’s lives, when the Word of God is really the most important thing a man needs.
I look forward to hearing what you have to say about it.
March 29th, 2006 at 12:28 am
i agree that the importance of people’s spiritual lives shouldn’t be mocked, but i think just sending bibles is not really enough even to take care of their spiritual lives and their relationship with God. so, maybe, food, AND better international politics AND more generosity by christians in giving to programs like heifer project, floresta.org, etc. and advocating for the cancellation of third world debt (see the awesome book “rich christians in an age of hunger”), AND not just bibles, but people living in community with people who are starving, struggling with them to make their earthly lives better, and in doing so sharing their relationship with God and their path with Jesus.