Do you ever find yourself watching the news and then scratching your head about something you see, but then just going on about your day? No…OK well, maybe I am the only one. But up until recently I would always be mildly curious about meetings like the WTO and other various globalization entities and I would wonder why the protesters for these meetings were always so passionate. There would be so many young people who were willing to get tear gassed and shot at with rubber bullets and I would always wonder why. But recently I believe I have started to understand their frustration. For those of you not familiar with the term globalization, it is simply defined as the streamlining of the worlds’ various markets and economies into one system in order to alleviate trade and currency issues on a global level (please don’t take this simple definition as gospel truth, as I am a novice to the discussion). And at first glance, this could appear to be a good thing, right? Let’s get the whole world on the same page economically then all of our problems will be solved…

But this is not what is happening. We instead are seeing an increasing gap in the wealth classes of the world. There are more millionaires then ever before in world history, but there are also more people destitute and dying in poverty than ever before. Almost one billion people on the planet still do not have clean drinking water, but one of my colleagues mentioned to me the other day that he heard of some celebrity who spent $100 million on a yacht. This is the tragic result of globalization…not that we are healing the worlds financial problems, but rather we are increasing oppression, poverty, human-trafficking, sweatshop production etc. So what do we as Christians do? How do we voice our concern in a world that keeps spinning in the wrong direction?

Fortunately for us, we know what it means to be globalized. We have a faith community that transcends global and cultural lines. We belong to a Kingdom that is not of this world, but seeks to heal this world. So we get moving (Matthew 25:31-46).

In the spirit of information, here are some global organizations/resources that are making a difference in the right direction: http://www.charitywater.org/ http://www.kiva.org/ http://www.ijm.org/ http://www.relevantmagazine.com/reject-apathy