Reality
Before and After: Due to malnutrition, Omar was admitted to Feed My Starving Children, El Salvador, at 8 y.o. weighing only 19 pounds (the weight of an average 10-month old American child). The second photo was taken 6 months later.
Source https://www.flickr.com/, Author Feed My Starving Children https://www.fmsc.org/, (CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic).
The CBS game show “Survivor” — about to begin its 45th season — has become a staple. The program isolates a group of men and women in a tropical locale, who then compete for cash and prizes. The show has been nominated for several Emmy Awards. Potential contestants vie to be on.
The Discovery Channel has a program entitled “Naked and Afraid”. An unclothed couple attempts to locate food and craft shelter. Viewers are offered titillation in the guise of “adventure” and scientific inquiry.
Meanwhile, the History Channel has a program entitled “Alone”. Survivalists live on their own in a wilderness area with limited equipment.
This is so called “reality” television. Apparently, Americans have become so bored (and disconnected from genuine risk) that we must take vicarious pleasure in the artificial challenges set for strangers in quasi-scripted settings.
While we entertain ourselves, there are those in the world who must deal with real challenges.
- Very nearly half the people on earth live on less than $2.50 per day [1].
- 21,000 children worldwide die each day from a combination of poverty, malnutrition, and easily treatable disease [2]. That is one child every four seconds [3]. Some 1.8 million children die each year of diarrhea alone [4].
- More people have access to a cell phone than a toilet [5].
These figures do not take into full account the casualties of war, or the suffering of those made refugees by war.
Greatly blessed, we are numbing ourselves to the needs of the world, to the grim reality others face daily. But that cannot last. Moses warned Israel, too, of approaching judgment.
“For they are a nation void of counsel, Nor is there any understanding in them” (Deut. 32: 28).
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[1][2][4] Global Issues, “Poverty Facts and Stats” by Anup Shah, 1/7/13, http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats.
[3] Global Issues, “Today Around 21,000 children died around the world” by Anup Shah, 9/24/11, http://www.globalissues.org/article/715/today-21000-children-died-around-the-world.
[5] Time, “More People Have Cell Phones than Toilets, UN Study Shows” by Yue Wang, 3/25/13, http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/more-people-have-cell-phones-than-toilets-u-n-study-shows/.
Originally posted 8/16/15
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A Lawyer's Prayers 
What an indictment against the “first world”! Our self-interested world elites give us bread and circuses, and we stay submissive without requiring accountability and action.
Exactly, Dora.
Seventy illegal immigrants died when fire burnt an abandoned but bolted Johannesburg CBD building to the ground a few days ago. No power, no water, no sanitation. They were exploited by a mafia group extorting the poor by renting these rooms out, some for thousands of Rand per month. This death trap has been known about for at least three years. Where were the health authorities, for one? One government official blamed Apartheid, which fell in 1994. Sometimes one despairs, apart from the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ to change people and societies. Thanks, Anna.
That is heartbreaking, Erroll.