Developing a Healthy Society

THE deputy editor of New African magazine wrote recently: “Go to any African country today and you will find a small elite living in luxury while the masses are suffering in grinding poverty. . . . How can we escape this poverty trap? The simplistic solution is: remove the elite and share the wealth. In practise this doesn’t work. To begin with, there is just not enough to go around. Secondly, remove the elite and they will immediately be replaced by another. Thirdly, experiments in socialist ideals have only [succeeded] in distributing poverty equally.

“There is only one solution to development that has worked in all countries in all ages: the development of the individual. It is people who create societies. Well educated, healthy, positive and inventive people will inevitably produce healthy, vigorous societies.”

Had the deputy editor been looking for an example, he would have found one in Jehovah’s Witnesses. In Africa, indeed throughout the world, the Witnesses are working to help people to become educated, healthy members of a global society. Among other things, they teach illiterate adults to read and write. Through their publications, they offer instruction in hygiene, health care, and family relationships. At their meetings as well as on an individual basis, the Witnesses encourage one another to conform to Bible counsel to be honest, hardworking, and productive.

The result is a strong, vibrant society made up of nearly five million people worldwide. But the Witnesses do not take credit for this. They attribute their spiritual prosperity to the living God, who says: “I, Jehovah, am your God, the One teaching you to benefit yourself, the One causing you to tread in the way in which you should walk.”​—Isaiah 48:17.

If you would like more information about the Bible and its practical counsel, please contact Jehovah’s Witnesses at your local Kingdom Hall, or write to the nearest address listed on page 5.