The critical thing to understand, however, is that poverty is relative. When we discuss poverty in the United States, we're often talking about families whose children qualify for free school lunches or government-run health programs.
But such is not the case in many countries of southern Africa. Poverty there means watching your children die from a disease that a few cents worth of medicine could cure. Poverty there means being thankful to have a bowl of thin gruel with a couple pieces of rotted vegetable floating in it.
As Americans, our concept of poverty is skewed. We base it on what we see around us and how society defines it.
If someone drives a 15-year-old clunker, they're poor. If they buy their clothes at Goodwill or the Salvation Army, they're poor. If they "eat out" at McDonald's rather than Outback, they're poor. If they only have basic cable instead of all the premium channels. they're poor.
Yet, if we judge these people to be "poor," what term would we use to describe the Malawian farmer who toils all day in the hard packed dirt in order to raise a few vegetables for his family... if drought doesn't kill the plants first.
The next time you're tempted to consider yourself "poor" -- as you sit down to eat one of your three meals a day, not counting the multiple snacks you've enjoyed -- consider this: the average Malawian makes about $650 ... per year. That's just 1/72 of what the average American earns in the same amount of time.
And while we spend about 15 percent of our income feeding our families, in Malawi it takes a full half of what a farmer earns to provide food for his family, leaving little for housing, medical care, clothing, or education.
In fact, the rampant poverty in which Malawi finds itself directly leads to poor medical care, one result of which is that nearly 12 percent of the people between the ages of 15 and 49 are HIV positive. This is a major reason why the country's life expectancy is only 48 years compared to America's almost 78 years.
So while Americans complain of poverty -- the lack of things we want, not necessarily the lack of things we need -- we must view the problem through God's eyes, and see where the real need is.
