Friday Night Theology

Saving the Children

22 February 2008

On Monday, Save the Children released a major new report: Saving Children's Lives. Its most significant finding is that, as one headline put it, "Wealth may not lead to health." The report analysed the countries in which 90 per cent of child deaths occur and in the process constructed a new "Wealth and Survival Index." The index ranks countries in relation to their national wealth and child mortality rates.

What is striking is that frequently the richest countries do not have the lowest mortality rates. So, for instance, while Angola has a Gross National Income (GNI) per person which is almost three times that of Sierra Leone, their child mortality rate is almost the same. Malawi has a GNI per person which is almost a quarter that of Angola, and yet its child mortality rate is twice as good. It is not simply the case, then, that the richest countries have the best child health. Some other factors are at play.

The report authors concluded that one of the most significant of these is the fair distribution of resources within a country. The problem with Angola is that whilst certain parts, fuelled by oil wealth, are rich; too many parts are extremely poor. The result is an overall wealth that is the envy of other sub-saharan African countries, but a child death rate that is shameful. It is for this reason that the report is subtitled, Why Equity Matters. And one of its conclusions reads,

"These deaths are not therefore random events beyond our control. To a considerable extent, they are the outcome of political and policy choices taken (or not taken) by governments. They are also influenced by cultural, economic, environmental, political and social factors that governments and other actors could help to shape or mitigate."

As Christians, we have another word for this phenomenon. It's called sin. In the context of his excoriation of rich oppressors, James writes this: "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." (James 4:17) This verse applies just as much to those of us in the West who fail to give generously because we think our hard work entitles us to two foreign holidays a year, as to those in poor countries who have the means to distribute resources equitably, but fail to do so.

This report also reminds us that it's not God who is killing the children in Africa, or even standing idly by while it happens. Rather it is humans, or as Save the Children put it, "political and policy choices," that are responsible. Far from standing by, God is active in calling and equipping his church to do something about it, which is precisely why so many campaigns for global justice originated with the church, and why so many aid workers on the ground are followers of Jesus.

 It's also a reminder that money alone has never been the whole solution to a society's problems, even for those countries which are far poorer than our own. What is required is a transformation in values of the ruling elite - a point that the Old Testament prophets never tired of making, and one perhaps worth sharing this weekend.

For more on this topic, see the forthcoming book, Micah's Challenge: the church's responsibility to the global poor (Paternoster: Edited by Thacker & Hoek). Foreword by Gordon Brown, Prime Minister.

Justin Thacker, Head of Theology, Evangelical Alliance