I believe Christians need to really re-examine their theology and recognise the cause of their social disengagement.

But there may be some good news as professing dispensationalists may be awakening to their social responsibilities. See http://weblog.wordcentered.org/archives/2006/08/31/determining_our_place_in_our_world_or_social_responsibility_vs_irresponsibility.php

Thanks for your comments! Good to connect with you after so many years =) I am not particularly fond of organized religions either – even organized Christianity.

Most of the time I’m embarrassed to call myself a Christian and part of a group which I think has fallen so short of the values we are meant to uphold. However, there are redeeming elements in Christianity and gradually I’m seeing more Christians seeing the importance of social and development issues. And you have Christian organizations like World Vision and Christian Aid doing good stuff.

Nevertheless, it is true that when things (like religions) get too organizational and bureaucratic, the spirit of how things ought to be tends to be compromised or lost altogether. Ultimately, no organization or its components are perfect. I get disappointed regularly with the Church but at the end of the day, Jesus is the person I follow and look up to, not the Church or even fellow Christians. After all, try as we may, we human beings are but a poor reflection of the one we claim to follow, a poor reflection of the kind of people we’re called to be according to whatever religion we’re from.

“If all Christians actually demonstrated love to others, absolute poverty would easily be eliminated and all the people would give praise to the Father for our good works. But of course that is not so.”

That’s exactly why I don’t believe in Religions, only a small percentage of them out there are geniunely acting consistent with what Bible says, or upholding the value of Islam (surely terrorism is not permitted under Islam?)…same flaws applies to other religions without futher argument.

I don’t make donations to any charities for that I am paying my FAIR share of contribution through centralised tax system. Whether the tax collected amount is enough to meet gov’t expenditures incl. domestic fundings and international humanility grants, I careless because there are people who get paid to do that job, people who are democratically elected by the citizens.

And with regards to the international institutions like IMF, World Bank, UN/WTO etc, my own research/understanding on them are very limited, but one thing I surely do agree with you is that much of the resources are wasted to the institution officals, $1000 a day paid to individual staff is not how these organization supposed to function, their dominance purpose should be channelling funds to the desperate needy ones, and not running it like a competitive corporation and only passing on the residual profits. Personally I think anyone who asks for $1000 a day should go and find another job in a for profit corporation.

And for the third world countries who are trapped in their growing debts, we can definitely lay some of the blames on their governments for failing to make any improvement in establishing a stable society, setting up infrastructure, limiting luxury imports to curb the foreign debt and focusing their economic abilities on low skill, labour-incentive manufactures and other basic productions. Simply they can not continuously rely on foreign grants and failing to make improvement themselves. No matter how generous the donations are coming in from rich nations, it won’t solve the problem if the funds are constantly milked away by corrupted officials and excessive bureau in the process of going to the hands of intended receipients, and lack of vision and leadership from the gov’t to build up its own nation.

Thanks for your comment. Indeed, absolute poverty can be eliminated if there’s the political (countries / international organizations) or personal (individuals) will. And yes, it outrages me more to see us Christians (rather than non-Christians) failing to live out a consistent lifestyle. After all, we are recipients of the command to love God and others. Non-Christians don’t have any such obligation.

If all Christians actually demonstrated love to others, absolute poverty would easily be eliminated and all the people would give praise to the Father for our good works. But of course that is not so.

“To help themselves decide whether or not to actually send food, the UN built a US$73.5 million conference center so that they might better discuss Ethiopian starvation.”

On first look, statements like this can sound controversial and ironical, if not downright hypocritical. But as you said, things are not as simplistic as they look; there are many factors involved in an issue. But radical left-wings are naturally opportunistic to add such statements to their rhetorical artillery. That’s the power of such polemics – simple, single-minded and succinct. It’s double-edged. Many great leaders, including Jesus, use statements like this to influence people for good. Others use it to mislead people, whether they are aware of it or not.

Personally, I believe they are enough resources, whether financial or food, to go around on our planet. No one needs to be in need. But that is not what we see in reality. There is definitely much injustice in terms of distribution.

However, I think that we should not just attribute the unjust distributions to a few items like how much we spend on the US$73.5 million conference centre or the travelling expenses of delegates or activists, although these might well channel away resources from helping the poor, whether directly or indirectly. I believe we can still pay development consultants US$1000 each a day (whether or not I agree with that exorbitant amount is another matter) and still have much left to lift people in the Third World out of their absolute poverty. I suspect that it doesn’t take much from every individual, especially Christians, in the rich nations to help if everyone were to give that small amount and channel it collectively to the Third World. The problem may be that not everyone, not even a significant proportion, is doing that, so we start to point fingers at the more obvious things like how much we spend on the US$73.5 million conference centre or the travelling expenses of delegates or activists or the US$1000 a day pay check.

I am not so perturbed when the people of the so-called “four most powerful international organisations” or some other secular organisations fail to live a consistent lifestyle. Even Jesus Himself is realistic about the prevalence of evil in this world when he says that “it is impossible that no offences should come” (Luke 17:1), so we should not be surprised about the inconsistent behaviours of people we see around us. I am more concerned when Christians and churches fail to be a testimony as we are supposed to be “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light… as sojourners and pilgrims… having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, BY YOUR GOOD WORKS which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.” (1 Peter 2:9-12)