Several years ago, I participated in a weekend exercise with a group of high school students at a church in Nashville designed to teach us something about global poverty.

We fasted, prayed together and read stories that were intended to get us to think more seriously about poverty and how Christians should respond to it.

I still use some of the things I learned that weekend in my international relations and developing nations courses to illustrate the North-South gap in terms of resources and standards of living.

I think my favorite recent statistic in this regard is the $36 billion that Americans spend on weight loss products and services each year. While many of us struggle with our weight, much of the world’s struggles just to stay alive.

For most of the people who will read my blog today, the recent doubling of the cost of rice and other crops is an inconvenience but for the majority of people in this world, it’s devastating and life threatening.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life in the twenty-first century that we are no closer to figuring out why so many people are barely getting by while so may of us live in unprecedented prosperity.

Why is this the case? I struggle with the answer to that question every semester as I’m concluding my IR classes with a chapter on economic development but I’m starting to realize that the answer is not going to be found in a textbook.

It may be found in this parable I read as part of that fasting weekend many years ago. I have long since lost the original but I think it went something like this:

One morning, the citizens of a large, walled city woke up to discover a large pile of clothes and food outside the city gate. The food was enough to feed everyone in the city for an entire day and the clothing was better and finer than anything they had ever worn.

The city’s political and religious leaders quickly concluded that the food and clothing were a blessing from the Lord and a clear indication that their city was the best city in the world. So they ate all the food and threw away their old clothes in exchange for the new ones.

The next day, they discovered a new pile of food and clothing and concluded once again that it was a blessing from the Lord in appreciation for their love for him. So, they threw away their day-old clothes and ate all of the food.

This went on for several years. Eventually, the citizens of the town started to put on weight and their landfills became clogged with clothing that had hardly been worn. All the while, the people continued to think of themselves as “blessed” and prosperous because they loved the Lord so much.

One day, the Lord arrived in the town to much excitement. Everyone wanted to let him know how much they loved him for being so good to their town. “We really didn’t need all that food and clothing you left for us each day but you gave it to us anyway”, they said. “You must really love us”.

When the Lord saw how healthy and well dressed they were, he sadly said, “You are correct, I love you very much. But you never realized why I did this for you. I gave you more than you needed because I thought that of all people in this world, you would be the ones most willing to share those blessings with others who don’t have as much. In that way, you would have helped them and and really worshiped me the way I want to be worshiped.”

It seems to me that if America were in fact the Christian nation we claim to be that there would be no need for government welfare or foreign aid.

Instead, the prosperity that has made America a great nation would be unselfishly shared by the people God seems to have blessed the most with people who not been as fortunate.

God has blessed America. Let’s do more to show Him that we know the reason why.