It’s difficult to imagine that people living in Toronto are actually hungry. We’re living in one of the most affluent countries in the world, with our government boasting surpluses in the billions of dollars, and yet people are having difficulty finding food.
After spending the bulk of my adult life working with people who are far below the poverty line, I have concluded that poverty issues in our society have almost nothing to do with money and almost everything to do with our culture’s almost complete lack of understanding of what the word ‘community’ really means. As a result, vulnerable people are being left behind.
One of the symptoms of this epidemic is hunger. According to the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto, 175,000 people access food relief programs each month; 66,500 of those are children. This is a number that should evoke a righteous outrage. And yet we often find ourselves complaining about the price of gas more than we do about the fact that children are going to school hungry. As Christians, we often vote for governments who seem concerned about issues of personal morality (like same-sex issues, etc.) but forget that a moral and just government needs to take seriously the plight of the poor. They can’t be let off the hook when they choose to cancel programs that care for people who are vulnerable (like opening more day care spaces, especially for single mothers trying to get by).
At The Salvation Army Gateway (downtown Toronto) in 2005, we served close to 120,000 meals. Most of those meals were for men who are experiencing homelessness. 15,000 of them were for people who have their own place to stay but don’t have enough money left over after they pay their rent to buy groceries.
Why is this ok? Why are so many people homeless? Why is it that people have to choose between paying the rent or buying groceries? Could it be that something is flawed in the way we function? Have we perhaps in our own insular individualistic approach to life forgotten that justice is bigger than just voting for governments who are against abortion and homosexuality? Have we bought into the lie that people are poor because they are lazy? Have we sold out to an ideology that suggests that life is about getting as much stuff as we can and then doing whatever it takes to protect that stuff; even if it means turning a blind eye to people slipping through the cracks of our communities?
Here are some practical suggestions:
· Maybe when we all start getting our $100/month for every child we have under the age of 6, we decide to give it away to a group that helps support hungry people. (Most of us don’t need that money.)
· We think of ways to employ the poor. Maybe when we hire our janitors at our churches we decide to hire someone who actually needs a job rather than a kid who’s trying to make enough money to buy an ipod.
· Maybe a group of ‘stay-at-home’ moms at our church can decide to run a day care program for single moms in the community for free.
· Maybe we rethink who we vote for in terms of their thoughts on community justice rather than personal morality.
· Maybe we should take seriously the two great commandments; love god and love your neighbour.
If we did some of those things, maybe, just maybe, we’d start to see some change in statistics like those that the Daily Bread food bank or the Salvation Army Gateway have to publish every year.
Article by by Dion Oxford
Dion Oxford, 36, is the founding director of The Salvation Army Gateway Hostel
