教育为$50
写由Mark范· Steenwyk ： 2004年12月21日
这将是我的前个岗位大约一个星期。 我的妻子(Amy)和几天是出去镇庆祝圣诞节与她的父母。 从它它少许的我的前个岗位，我想要做计数…这里去…
经常，当我与某人谈话关于唯物主义或消费者至上主义时或者为什么我们的圣诞节的当前庆祝必须改变，我在反应得到有点儿沮丧和迷茫的凝视。 人们“没得到”它。 他们认为我是天真或极端的。 我保证您，我不是喜欢发怒反对机器的某一灿烂的理想主义的小狗。 我是胖的，对娱乐上瘾，深深地渴望成为更可能耶稣基督的美国人。
一个星期前，我妻子和我谈论怎么我们应该今年做圣诞节。 我们同意它是太突然和笨拙的以至于不能不买礼物为人。 反而，我们设法限制我们的消费和开始明年人为non-consumerist圣诞节做准备。 但我认为这不是足够我们必须做更多。 如此，虽然我们不可能买得起它，我们决定为我们在礼物上花的每美元，我们会给全球性贫寒。 并非，而且一个好开始。
我去是一个高度名声好的组织)的世界视觉网站(。 他们有a 捐赠编目 在他们的站点。 线上物品价目表提出某些最佳的论据为为什么我们应该反思我们的与金钱的关系。
我们采取我们的金钱为授予。 We spend thousands of dollars a year on entertainment, travel, recreational eating, and technological gagetry. And when someone comes along and challenges us to give more to the poor or to spend less money on ourselves, we get upset. Part of us feels guilty, the other feels angry. We want to say "bless you for challenging me in this area" while at the same time shouting "damn you for making me feel bad." But the simple reality seen on World Vision’s Catalog leaves us without a defense.
For $75–what many people pay for a week’s worth of groceries–you can buy a family a goat, which can provide them with a good supply of milk, or more goats.
For $50–what you might expect to pay for a text book or a handful of mainstream books at Barnes and Noble–you can send a child to school for a year.
For $1850–what you might pay for new laptop–you can provide drinking water by paying for a shallow well.
For $25–the price I pay for a new pair of jeans–you can buy clothing for 5 homeless American kids.
You get the picture. I don’t want you to feel bad. I want you to give. Start giving out of what you can give, even if it is a pathetic amount…and start giving more and more as you re-orient yourlife to maximize the amount of love you share, rather than the amount of fun you can experience. Merry Christmas.
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Mark - Thank you for sharing that. I think it is a great challenge and a great place to start. It certainly makes me think. God bless, and merry Christmas.
Mark-
My wife and I decided several years ago to make (rather than purchase) the majority of our Christmas gifts. Each year we have tackled another handicraft from paper-making to knitting to mosaics. This years was pottery. We like this for several reasons: 1)we spend much less money than we would buying gifts, 2)we learn a skill, 3) we work on them togither, 3) because it is so time consuming, we are limited to giving people one gift, 4) we never set foot in a mall, but rather invest our Christmas $ in things that we want to support, e.g., this year all our $ was invested in a local Christian-run, inner-city art studio where we took our pottery class.
Our families continue to buy us gifts, but no one has ever expressed offense or disappointment at our modus operandi.
We also support World Vision and receive the catalogue you mention here. We have considered buying things from this catalogue “in the name of” folks as a gift to them, but think this might come off as pretentious or self-righteous. What do you think?
Jeremy
I don’t feel bad. I think your challenge is a good one. We all need to be challenged to examine our lives to make sure we are being faithful to God’s commands. I think that we need to be careful though that we don’t replace spiritual motives with political ones.
Fair enough, Brett. You seem to be working with the assumption that I have a polical axe to grind. I do not. I am not involved in politics. I am not a liberal. In fact, up until I started abstaining from voting, I mostly voted republican.