kids say the darndest things...

For the month of March, I'm doing an international emphasis with my kids, talking about different cultures and helping them to get a little more of a global perspective. Last night, I taught them about South Africa. (It feels like it was so long ago...and yet like it was yesterday...). We were looking at some of my pictures, which they enjoyed. Of course, one decided to point out that I was skinnier in the pictures than I am now. Thank you for that, kid...good thing I have a decent body image...

Anyway, I showed them one I have of a black boy playing with broken toys. I pointed out that the toys were broken, and that there are some poor people over there (just as there are poor people everywhere). One of the kids then asked, "Why are they poor?"

Good question.

I think I answered in that moment with some brief, sterilized, kid-friendly version of how apartheid created this class separation and it's hard to make things completely equal again when they didn't get the same education and opportunities for so long. (Is it wrong to tell kids about apartheid? I don't think so, if it's addressed the right way and emphasized how WRONG it is.)

But really, on a larger scale...why are there poor people? I can come to some sort of explanation of how it came to be (from where I stand right now, we live in a world marred by sin that has messed with the entire system of creation, causing inequalities and injustices everywhere). But that doesn't fully satisfy the question for me. Because it's not fair. It's not right. Yet what do we do about it? What should we do about it? The system is so broken...how do we redeem it? Or is it beyond redemption?

Of course, I say all this as I sit in my own apartment, typing on my laptop, enjoying electricity and food and a safe neighborhood. Though here I am the "poor seminary student," in most parts of the world I am rich by comparison. What I spent on lunch today could feed some families in other parts of the world for a week. That sure puts things into perspective...