I remember the Ethiopian famine of
1983-85. I had just graduated from high
school. The Christian Children’s Fund
was routinely running TV commercials and placing ads in magazines of little
Ethiopian children with hollow, begging eyes and bloated bellies sitting in the
dirt covered in flies holding an empty bowl.
Those ad’s bothered me but not because they were real pictures of real
famine. It was that they played on our
emotions by exploiting the suffering of real human beings. There was also the suspicion that the CCF was not
getting the money where it needed to go because they were spending a whole lot
on advertisement. Getting aide for
Ethiopia was a difficult sell because of the common belief that their government
officials were hoarding the grain to sell it and get wealthy from it.
Well, Bob Geldof to the rescue. You rock and roll fans may remember Bob
Geldof organizing the Band Aid project and recording “Do They Know It’s
Christmas?” and also the Live Aid
concerts. In total some 900,000
Ethiopians died in that famine, mostly children, but it is no secret that the
money raised by Geldof’s projects saved the lives of 6,000,000. The famine was that bad.
No one ever mentioned why this famine
was happening. Everyone just assumed the
myth that famines are caused by droughts or blight in poor countries where
there are too many people for the land to produce enough food. Henry Kissinger once said that it is nature’s
control on population.
I, the typical teenager with the
bright ideas, thought the reason was obvious.
“You can’t grow food in a desert.
Move the people!” I did not know
that Ethiopia was undergoing a civil war where US-backed rebels were trying to
overthrow the Soviet-backed government.
The civil war was destroying agriculture in Ethiopia which had until
then been having record crops. In
1982-83 there was as drought, but astonishingly there was still food production
in the region throughout the whole event.
There was food being grown in Ethiopia that could have prevented the
starvation.
So, if there was food available, why
were people, children starving to death?
Well…it was because the people couldn’t afford to buy the food because
they had lost their jobs and been displaced because Ethiopia was a pawn nation
of the Cold War. Even though food was around
there was still a shortage of it. So,
the people who grew it were demanding higher prices for it. That’s Economics 101, the Law of Supply and Demand. When supply is scarce and there is high
demand, the price goes up. But...when
the supply of Xbox’s or Elmo dolls is short around Christmas time retailers
don’t start price gouging. That’s bad
business, right? So why is it that when
food is the commodity in short supply that the prices sky-rocket? They’re doing it right now. We are right now in the midst of a global
grain crisis? Famines in poorer nations
will start occurring in the next few years if the price-gauging of food grains is
not stopped. But, hey, that’s free
market economics.
Back to Ethiopia, another reason for
the famine was that the Ethiopian government was refusing to let food aid into
areas that supported the rebels.
Starving your enemy is nothing new.
You might remember that Stalin let the people of Ukraine starve in
1932-33 because the farmers were refusing to turn their family farms over to
the government to become collectives.
Refusal to follow the economic
policies of the rich and powerful is another reason people starve. Food shortages today are greatest in
developing countries that do not want to base their economies on the global
free market system. Did you know that the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund place stipulations on the loans
they make to developing nations that cause these nations to turn their home
grown food into a commodity to be sold on the global market so that it can be
guaranteed they can pay off the loan. Since
the home grown food is being sent elsewhere, food to eat has to be
imported. This causes food prices to
skyrocket in those nations and it won’t be long before the people of these
nations will not be able to afford food and famine will set in even though
those nations are food producers.
You, like I, are probably saying
“that’s stupid” and it is, but it is the reality of the world we live in and in
the least it allows us to eat cheap bananas and drink coffee and tea. To wrap this up, I’m trying to make the
argument that famine is not what happens when there are too many people and not
enough food. Famine happens when people
can no longer afford to buy food and what causes that?...the greed and
powerlust of the rich and the powerful.
I’ve used the Ethiopian Famine of
1983-85 as an example because I think it is an event within our memory that
illustrates quite well what was going on in the days of Amos. The Ethiopia Famine is what it looks like
when the needy are trampled and someone is trying to do away with the poor of
the land. It’s what it looks like when
people have to pay for the sweepings of grain with the only pair of shoes they
have and the only reason for it is the greed and powerlust of the rich and
powerful. To the rich and the powerful
and those who were benefiting from their actions in Amos’ day the LORD said, “I
will spare them no longer.” “I will
never forget anything that they have done.” In addition to sending them into exile, he
adds, “I will send a famine, not a famine of hunger or of thirst, but of
hearing the words of God.”
What is it to hear the words of
God? Hearing in ancient Israel was not
simply a matter of hearing sounds or hearing words. It was hearing those words and taking them to
heart and living according to them. I
cannot imagine what it would be like to pick up my Bible and read or to come to
church on Sunday and listen to the Scripture readings – forget the sermon, just
the Scripture readings – and not hear and understand what these words have to
do with me. Let me rephrase that a bit, I
can’t imagine reading my Bible or hearing it read in church and not caring to
understand what these words have to do with me.
Or even worse, understanding what they say but not caring to let them
apply to me. It’s like being above the
law, but rather above the words of God.
I know these words have authority over me for my benefit. To disregard them or to selectively choose
what applies to me is like telling the LORD “Shut up! My life is my own and I’ll live it according
to what seems best for me. So, here’s my
twenty bucks in the plate just bless me with good fortune and I’ll be on my
way.”
Imagine living in a world where there
is a famine of hearing the words of the LORD, when even those who claim to be
God’s people won’t hear and take to heart and obey the words of the LORD they
hear every Sunday. That was Amos’ day,
the day when God said “I’ll take my words away and let the chaos of the
consequences of your idolatrous greed and powerlust rain down upon you.”
But, looking at our own day, I wonder
if we live in such a time when there is a famine of hearing the words of the
LORD, a time when the consequences of our materialism and consumerism are about
to rain down upon us because we aren’t hearing, indeed can’t hear, our LORD
screaming at us about our complicit participation in a very unjust global
economic situation. We willingly obey
the Law of Supply and Demand but disregard God’s Law of Justice.
Our Creator has built into the
ordering of his creation that human beings are supposed to live according
justice, kindness, compassion, sharing with one another all the while enjoying
a peaceful relationship with God that spills into our relationships with one
another. If someone has too much it
should be shared with those who have to little.
Why does the Christian church in the Western world not hear God’s demand
upon us to act justly with our wealth and prosperity? Why is it that ministers are afraid to and
rarely preach sermons from the prophets that talk about justice? Particularly now when it really does seem
that the consequences of our idolatry of wealth and prosperity is about to come
raining down upon us.
Globally, we’ve exceeded the limits of
this planets ability to sustain us and our lifestyle. Globally, we are on the verge of a global
food crisis. Globally, clean fresh water
is becoming a rarity. Globally, natural
disasters are increasing in number and severity. Globally, we are warned of a pandemic
flu. Globally, the free market economy
is one panic attack away from collapsing.
The global situation of today doesn’t look all that different from the
microcosm of Israel in Amos’ day.
Indeed, we can look at every disastrous thing I just mentioned and say
that human beings are responsible. These
are the consequences of our actions in the pursuit of wealth and prosperity.
Yet, in the midst of all this
“impending doom” is anybody really hearing the LORD’s demand for justice and
equity in his creation and saying this means me, I’ve got to change; we’ve got
to change? Are we in the midst of a
famine of hearing the words of the LORD?
Amen.
