I will lift up my eyes to the hills-
from whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord
Who made heaven and earth.
(Psalm 121:1, 2)

Face of Man

Face of Man
Jacqueline du Pre

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Christian missionaries can help eradicate poverty

Efforts of several luminaries to get the rich nations to write off the debts of the poor nations are a wonderful gesture. In spite of these efforts, poverty will prevail if people do not have access to financial and business management knowledge. To give alms to the poor is a noble thing, but it is never enough to cover the face of poverty. Not even for one short single day. It will show up again soon. It is sadly true though, as some one wise once said, we will always have our poor. But we can reduce it to a manageable level. Western missionaries provide valuable social, educational and medical services in the poor countries of the world. Perhaps, these missionary teams may also consider including team members with financial and business skills who can teach, the people they are trying to help, how to run profitable small business and even make microloans to help them change their economic conditions. When given such knowledge, people tend to be more enterprising. Entrepreneurial spirits, together with good government-policy, can result in a vibrant economy.

3 comments:

Catherine Nolan said...

This is definitely true, but should always be prioritized correctly... I know you would probably have your priorities straight, but I spent some time with a mission in a third-world country where they had begun to ignore the spiritual for the sake of the economic and educational. Once the spiritual focus goes, however, the respect for human persons is lessened, and there were a lot of problems... The people in charge began to focus on their own economic benefits, they were more interested in having a large number of people involved than helping the individual people, etc. But that's not a necessary result, definitely.

Are you thinking of doing mission work?

Gabe said...

Am I thinking of doing mission work?
I wish I were as brave as guys like St. Ignatius Loyola or Matthew the tax collector.

Gabe said...

On second thought missionaries loaning money small or big is a bad idea

FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed