Things I read on the plane (part I)

"If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: 'This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.'

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: 'How could the world let these children die?'

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world."

~An excerpt from Bill Gates' 2007 Harvard Commencement Speech

I like his approach to neediness. It only makes sense that in a capitalist democracy, the ones without market power and the politically disenfranchised are going to be the ones in need. I would add one more aspect to his approach. The US is a secular capitalist democracy, so tack on the spiritually starved to the list of the needy.

It is interesting to contrast these two types of need. Gates considers material neediness to be a systemic problem--i.e., we need to change the political and economic systems to include the poor. In contrast, the church's problem isn't the need to tweak the system (God has already provided a way to salvation through Christ). It seems that the church has a two-fold problem: people who don't realize they are in need, and people who do realize their need but have no awareness of the solution. I'm not sure what the Church can hope to do about the first problem on its own, but I do find it strange that there are still unreached people groups in this day and age. If it's just a matter of marketing (for lack of the better term), Coke has gotten out it's message (and product) to places ranging from remote African villages to the Russian steppe--the Church really has no excuse on that count.

All in all, I do like the message of Gates' speech. It has the cheery optimistic flavor that everyone wants out of a commencement speech. My one criticism is that he quoted his dying mother as saying, “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.” Surely he realized that she didn't come up with that on her own (see Luke 12:48).