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Greed and Suffering
How we treat each other and the earth shows how broken we are
For the love of money is the root of all evil — 1 Timothy v. 6:10
People have this mistaken idea that money is evil. That’s not true. We need money to live. As someone who has been poor, I understand how hard it can be to not have enough money. Yet I have been lucky — I have never unintentionally missed a meal.
My parents were Indian immigrants to New York City and while they sacrificed many things, they always made sure their children were well nourished with healthy, home-cooked meals. My Dad wore the same coat for 10 years (which Mom lovingly patched for him) but us children were well cared for.
Unfortunately this is not the case with many of the children in this world.
And many adults too.
The culprit is greed.
We could lay the blame on the economic system of capitalism, but the reality is that without free markets and the ability to create wealth, many modern innovations would not be here.
One reason we no longer have smallpox epidemics, for example, is that modern technology has allowed us to create vaccines that have led to its eradication.
There is nothing wrong with innovation, with owning a company and saving for retirement. There is nothing wrong with providing an education for your children, for having a decent home.
However, there is something wrong with greed. There is something wrong with using the power that money gives you to exploit others.
Too often rich Western corporations take advantage of the poverty in poor countries, as the photo above shows. Here you can see young children working in the gold mine near Tiébélé in Burkina Faso, in Africa. Among the 100 workers are 30 children.
According to the United Nations, up to a million children between 5 and 17 years old work in small-scale gold mines in Africa. They earn as little as $2 a day. In some parts of Africa 30–50% of workers are children.
This is obviously child exploitation, but whose fault is it?
It is partially the fault of Western conglomorates, but it is also the fault of African…
