Guess how much money you, I, the kids in our ministries, and every other American spend each year on Mint Chocolate Chip, Strawberry, Jamoca Almond Fudge, Rainbow Sherbet, just plain Vanilla, and all other ice cream flavors? Go ahead. Take a guess.$20 billion. [1]For those of you who like to see a lot of zeroes, that’s $20,000,000,000. Compare that with figures recently released by the United Nations. Providing clean water and basic sanitation for the entire world would cost $7 billion a year for the next ten years. An additional $4 billion a year for the next ten years could finance basic health care that would prevent the deaths of 3 million infants each year. [2]For $11 billion a year for the next decade—just over half of what Americans spend on ice cream—we could give the world clean water and basic sanitation and prevent the deaths of millions of babies. But since there is no Give-Up-Ice-Cream-for-World-Health movement, odds are good that we’ll keep eating mint chocolate chip while much of the world lacks water and basic health care.Does that sound like justice?On September 11, 2001, the terrorists who hijacked four U.S. planes claimed 2,792 lives. Our entire nation—and much of the world—was glued to radios, televisions, and the Internet, desperate to find out why and how so many had been killed. Yet on that same day nearly three times as many people were killed by HIV/AIDS worldwide. And that same number of people died from HIV/AIDS on September 12, 2001. And on September 13. And that many people have died because of AIDS every day since then. Yet as AIDS rips apart children, families, villages, and entire nations, the world remains disengaged. Tragically, so do our churches and youth ministries.
Does that sound like justice?
Many of us slept on comfortable mattresses last night, and with a flick of a thermostat switch, we kept our homes at temperatures we considered ideal. Last night, approximately 600,000 homeless people sought shelter on U.S. streets. [3] Making matters worse, an estimated 38 percent of those homeless persons were children. [4]
Does that sound like justice?
Perhaps the most alarming statistic of all is that this injustice and poverty is happening in a world in which 2.1 billion of us, or 33 percent of the world’s total population, claim to be followers of Christ. [5]
Does that sound like justice?
No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t sound like justice to us and it doesn’t sound like justice to author Ron Sider, who writes, “The church should consist of communities of loving defiance. Instead it consists largely of comfortable clubs of conformity.” [6]
A growing number of youth ministries are alarmed by the brokenness of our world and are determined to restore justice. Some of you are partnering with faith communities of different ethnic and economic backgrounds to create job centers, food co-ops, and college scholarship funds to counter the injustice in your towns. Others of you are mobilizing kids and families to mentor under-resourced kids at your local school as well as serve as advocates at your school districts for increased funding. Still others of you are raising up groups of kids who care about the AIDS pandemic—in the United States, in Africa, and in Asia. The good news is that our hearts are in the right place. The bad news is that many of us are novices who might be doing more harm than good.
