This is a follow up of a recent post about eliminating hunger in the world. I’m sure there are some, and probably many, Christian organizations who say “No, no, we must spend our money preaching the Word and not ministering to physical needs. After all our spiritual life is for eternity and hunger is only of this earth”. While I don’t totally disagree with the intent of this, I believe it is very wrong headed and off the mark. There are well known basic human needs that must be met before higher level needs can occur. For instance, if a person is spending 15 hours a day trying to scavenge enough food for his family to exist he will not spend much time thinking about spiritual matters. We must feed the body before we can nourish the soul. Most Christian organizations are attuned to this since they have “feed the poor” missions throughout the world. Although funding for these organization is a challenge within the individual congregations who many times are fixated on their own needs (a bigger church, paving the parking lot, giving the staff a raise). Even Jesus made sure that people had enough to eat when they came in mass to him. Unfortunately we cannot feed thousands with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread so we need to work much harder at it. The very sad thing about the starvation in the world today is that it is totally preventable. We have the resources to eliminate it. It is just selfishness and politics that get in the way!