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This may have been of our best investments ever.
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How did Germany and Japan, our bitterest WWII enemies, become some of our strongest allies?
Prior to the devastating war that claimed the lives of over 50 million people and caused unbelievable destruction, our relationship with these two nations had been highly conflicted for decades. One of the factors that contributed to our former enemies becoming friends was the willingness of the U.S. to invest billions in relief and rebuilding efforts after a war that had left both economies in ruins.
Meanwhile, the U.S. chose not to offer that kind of aid to the Soviet Union, our actual ally in the war, choosing instead to engage in an arms race that has been unimaginably dangerous and costly for all concerned.
Looking back, which has proved to be the more effective way of maintaining peace and developing valued world partnerships?
In his book, "Strength to Love,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., cites Abraham Lincoln’s famous words, “Do I not destroy my enemies by making them my friends?” and adds, “we get rid of our enemies by getting rid of enmity.”
When will we ever learn that it is better to negotiate win/win agreements and work toward just and mutually beneficial relationships rather than relying on the threat of force or annihilation?
More recently, many of us have regretted seeing the decimation of the nation’s USAID program, an imperfect but life-saving and friend-making effort, in favor of putting ever more trust in a death-dealing trillion dollar Pentagon budget. In addition we have cut spending on the Peace Corps by $20 million, largely defunded the Department of Peace, and renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War.
Is this making the world safer?
Dr. King writes, “Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love our enemies is an absolute necessity for our survival.” And he might have added Jesus’s equally strong words about laying up lasting treasure by investing in the needs of our world neighbors, actions equally necessary for our safety and survival. Injustice and inequity inevitably result in enmity and war rather than creating durable peace.
With our nation gutting its investment in the needs of the world’s desperately poor it becomes ever more urgent for individuals, congregations and people of compassion everywhere to double and quadruple their help for the world’s homeless and hungry, not as acts of charity, but as forms of redistribution that are signs of God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Just a few examples of widely trusted aid agencies are Doctors Without Borders, Mercy Ships, UNICEF, World Vision, CARE, Oxfam America, Catholic Relief Services, Islamic Relief Worldwide, and World Jewish Relief, to name but a few.
In my own faith community Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) partners with relief agencies around the world to help relieve malnutrition, aid refugees and offer hands-up kinds of help in the spirit of Jesus and the prophets. Last fall the annual Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale at the Rockingham Fairgrounds raised nearly a half million dollars for worldwide friend-making through MCC, over ten percent of which was in cash, check and credit card donations at the Sharing Our Surplus (SOS) table at the event.
Most of us could easily double that kind of investment in peacemaking and life saving efforts, through whatever agencies, without creating any real hardship for ourselves or our families.
In his soul-searching book, “The Hole In Our Gospel,” former president of World Vision Richard Stearns, writes, ”The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for just 3 percent of global income. The richest 10 percent accounts for 85 percent of the world’s income.” Stearns quotes St. Augustine as saying, “The bread that you keep belongs to the hungry; the coat you store in your wardrobe, to the naked; the shoes that are rotting in your possession, to the shoeless; the gold you have hidden in the ground, to the needy. As often as you are able to help others but refuse, so often do you do them wrong.”
Think about it. How can we claim the right to more than enough while millions of our equally precious world neighbors have far less than enough?
So select a cause. Make a sacrificial donation. If not at an event like the October 2-3 relief sale, invest generously through any trusted, friend-making and peace-promoting agency. Or if you want to support the MCC effort but can’t attend, make a super generous contribution online at
https://vareliefsale.com/ and mark the SOS box. Or send a check made out to VMRS to 601 Parkwood Drive, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22802, with SOS on the memo line.
Every SOS dollar given to MCC through the Virginia Relief Sale will be matched dollar for dollar up to the first $50,000 raised.
Consider it a wise investment in world peace.
