Hunger Lunch

Notes for Remarks by Hon. David Kilgour, M.P. Edmonton – Mill Woods – Beaumont

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church

Wellington St. Ottawa, November 21, 2004

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.

Hunger, of course, is lack of basic food necessary to meet daily nutritional and energy requirements.  More than 800 million of six billion plus people alone in the world today are estimated to be continuously hungry.

Dismayingly, 24,000 people die from hunger or hunger-related causes every day – three quarters of whom are children under the age of five.  This figure equates to the entire undergraduate student population of the University of Ottawa.

Every 5 seconds a child dies from hunger or hunger-related diseases, and yet it only costs and an average of 19 cents a day to feed a child in school.

According to some estimates, malnutrition is an important factor among the nearly 13 million children under five who die every year from preventable diseases and infections, such as the measles, diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia, or from some combination of these.

Malnutrition is one of the prime causes of low-birth-weight (LBW).  LBW survivors are likely to suffer growth retardation and illness throughout childhood, adolescence and into adulthood.  Growth-retarded adult women are likely to carry on the vicious cycle of malnutrition by giving birth to LBW babies.  An estimated 30 million infants are born each year in developing countries with impaired growth caused by poor nutrition in the womb.

Malnutrition

Malnutrition in the form of deficiencies of essential vitamins and minerals continues to cause severe illness or death in millions of people worldwide.  More than 3.5 billion people are affected by iron deficiency; two billion risk of iodine deficiency and 200 million pre-school children are affected by insufficient vitamin A.

Even mild forms of these deficiencies can limit a child’s development and learning capacity early in life, which can lead to cumulative deficits in school performance, resulting in higher school drop-out rates and a high burden of illiteracy in our future populations.

Many of the most severe health consequences of these three leading micronutrients deficiencies could be greatly alleviated by ensuring adequate food supplies and varied diets that provide essential vitamins and minerals.

Hunger, then, is an enormous threat to the creation of healthy productive individuals and vibrant communities.  How is it possible that hunger still exists when our planet produces more than enough food for every man, woman and child to live healthy, productive lives?

Internationally, famine and wars cause about 10% of hunger deaths, although these tend to be the ones we hear about most often.  The majority of hunger deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition.

Malnutrition results from a breakdown in the distribution of food from producers to consumers.  In Canada, these can take the form of restrictions on marginalized persons’ ability to provide for themselves, or they can result from inadequate safety nets for individuals who fall through the cracks of our system.  From short term shortages in cash flows to chronic poverty, hunger is not only an international concern.

National Capital Problems 

Here in Ottawa, 36,000 per month receive food assistance through the food programs that The Food Bank alone supports.

44% of those receiving food assistance program are children.  This hunger is not seasonal.

It costs surprisingly little…but is needed by the many organizations combating hunger and malnutrition, including the Ottawa Food Bank, the various shelters for the homeless in the National Capital Region and a host of international bodies and NGOs.

The Concordant in the Thompson Chain Reference Bible has various references to “Hunger” – many of which we’ve all familiar with.  I thought that you might appreciate some references to Philip Yancey’s perhaps best-known book Where is God When It Hurts?

Yancey on Suffering 

The book deals with the problem of suffering and pain – physical, emotional and spiritual.  The book jacket puts the issues well:

“If there is a loving God, then why is it that…?  You’ve heard that question, perhaps asked it yourself.  No matter how you complete it, at its root lies the issue of pain.”

“Does God order our suffering?  Does He decree an abusive childhood, orchestrate a jet crash, steer a tornado through a community?  Or did He simply wind up the world<s main spring and now is watching from a distance?”

Permit me to share some thoughts from Chapter 5 of Yancey’s book, The Groaning Planet, which strikes me as useful to what we are talking about today.

“Consider earth, our home.  Let your eyes savor the brilliant hues and delicate shadings of a summer sunset.  Tunnel your toes into wet sand, stand still, and feel the dependable foam and spray of an ocean tide.  Visit a butterfly garden and study the abstract designs: 10,000 variations, more imaginative than those of any abstract painter, all compressed into tiny swatches of flying fabric.  Belief in a loving Creator is easy among these good things.”

“Yet the sun that lavishes dusk with color can also bake African soil into a dry, cracked glaze, dooming millions.  The rhythmic, pounding surf can, if fomented by a storm, crash in as twenty-foot wall of death, obliterating coastal villages.  And the harmless swatches of color fluttering among the wildflowers survive on average two weeks before succumbing to the grim ferocity of nature’s food chain.  Nature is our fallen sister, not our mother.  And earth, though God’s showplace, is a good creation that has been bent.”

Or this: “For centuries philosophers have debated the questions “is earth the best of all possible worlds?”  The debate follows from the presumption that an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God naturally would have created a wonderful domain for his creatures.  But look around at some of the features of our planet – the AIDS virus and Down’s syndrome, spina bifida and poliomyelitis, scorpions and tsetse flies, earthquakes and typhoons.  Couldn’t God have done a better job?  As Voltaire put it sarcastically in Candide, “If this is the best of all possible worlds then what are the others like?”

Or this : “Much of the suffering on our planet has come about because of two principles, both good principles in themselves, God allowed for the possibility of their abuse.  For example, water proves useful to us and all creation because of its “softness”, its liquid state, and its specific gravity.  Yet those, very properties open up its rather disagreeable capacity to drown us – or the even more alarming possibility that we might drown someone else.”

“As a result of our freedom, human beings introduced something new to the planet – a rebellion against the original design.  We have only slight hints of the way earth was meant to be, but we do know that humanity has broken out of the mold.  “We talk of wild animals,” says G.K. Chesterton, “but man is the only wild animal.  It is man that has broken out.  All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.”

“Man is wild because he alone, on this speck of molten rock called earth, stands up, shakes his fist, and says to God, “I do what I want to do because I want to do it.”  As a result, a huge gulf separates us, and this planet, from God.  Most remarkably, God allows us the freedom to do what we want, defying all the rules of the universe (at least for a time).  Chesteron again: “In making the world, He set it free.  God had written, not so much a poem but rather a play; a play He had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who have since made a great mess of it…As Milton said in Paradise Lost, “Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat / Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, / That all was lost.”

“Thus, any discussion of the unfairness of suffering must begin with the fact that God is not pleased with the condition of the planet either.  The story of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the story of God’s plan to restore his creation to its original state of perfection.  The Bible begins and ends with the same scene: Paradise, a river, the luminous glory of God, and the Tree of Life.  All of human history takes place somewhere between the first part of Genesis and the last part of Revelation, and everything in between comprises the struggle to regain what was lost.”

“It’s hard to believe the world is here just so I can party, when a third of its people go to bed starving each night.  It’s hard to believe the purpose of life is to feel good, when I see teenagers smashed on the freeway.  If I try to escape toward hedonism, suffering and death lurk nearby, haunting me, reminding me, of how hollow life would be if this world were all I’d ever know.”

“Sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting, suffering is a “rumor of transcendence” that the entire human condition is out of whack.  Something is wrong with a life of war and violence and human tragedy.  He who wants to be satisfied with this world, who wants to believe the only purpose of life is enjoyment, must go around with cotton in his ears, for the megaphone of pain is a loud one.”

“That, I believe, is the megaphone value of suffering.  This planet emits a constant “groaning”, a cry for redemption and restoration, but very often we ignore the message until suffering or death forces us to attend.  I do not say that God permits suffering because of its megaphone value.  [Nor do I believe it carries a specific message – “You’re suffering as a consequence of this action” – as the next chapter will make clear.)  But the megaphone of pain does announce a general message of distress to all humanity.”

And finally,

“Where is God when it hurts?”

“He has been there from the beginning, designing a pain system that, even in the midst of a fallen world, still bears the stamp of his genius and equips us for life on this planet.”

“With great restraints, he watches this rebellious planet live on, in mercy allowing the human project to continue in its self-guided way.”

“He lets us cry out, like Job, in loud fits of anger against him, blaming him for a world we spoiled.”

“He allies himself with the poor and suffering, founding a kingdom tilted in their favour.  He stoops to conquer.”

“He promises supernatural help to nourish the spirit, even if our physical suffering goes unrelieved.”

“He has joined us.  He has hurt and bled and cried and suffered.  He has dignified for all time those who suffer, by sharing their pain.”

“He is with us now, ministering to us through his Spirit and through members of his body who are commissioned to bear us up and relieve our suffering for the sake of the head.”

“He is waiting, gathering the armies of good.  One day he will unleash them, and the world will see one last terrifying moment of suffering before the full victory is ushered in.  Then, God will create for us a new, incredible world.  And pain shall be no more.”

“Listen, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immorality.  When the perishable has been clothed with imperishable, and the mortal with immorality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

                                    “Where, O death, is your victory?

                                    Where, O death, is your sting?”

                                                            (1 Corinthians 15:51-55)

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