Out of all the interesting concepts that I have heard from taking this course one of the ones that stood out to me the most was the way certain aid effects foreign countries. Our professor showed us this video where it was discussing how a church ministry group gave a village a large sum of eggs. When they already had a small business in the village with chickens producing them. The ministry messed up by giving them the eggs, because that was a resource that would run out eventually. What they could have done better would be giving them more chickens. That would provide them with a constant supply of eggs that could keep coming into the community. This is where aid messes up often as a whole. You cannot just give a nation money and expect them to climb their way out of poverty. What would be better is establishing small businesses in the area to create a constant revenue flow into a community. The same could apply for poorer communities in our own country. Money is not the fix all to everything. They need a constant stream for resources to come into areas that are less privileged as others with pre-established businesses.
top of page
bottom of page
Eric, this topic that you wrote on is interesting from both an economic and biblical standpoint. Of course, most of us would think that any sort of foreign aid is positive, without thinking of how it would affect that country’s economy. The analogy you used was perfect and completely accurate, if we are providing countries with resources that they themselves can produce then we are taking away jobs from the people living in that country. We would be taking away jobs and the money given to these countries is not sustainable in the long run, as you mentioned, setting up small businesses in these countries to promote economic growth would be much better. Making sure that we are doing what God wants us to do and taking care of our brothers and sisters in other countries is important, but doing it in an educated way is the best course of action.
Dr. Baugus also believes that aid must be temporary in order to fit a biblical standard. Providing foreign countries with a constant stream would cause that country to become dependent. The temporary service of eggs hurt the surrounding business while a constant stream would have caused dependency. I believe the best way to aid a foreign nation would not be to simply give resources, but facilitate trade allowing other nations to grow and produce their own resources.