Does Mankind Really Need a Messiah?
“WORLD IN NEED OF A MESSIAH, SAYS OFFICIAL”
That headline ran in The Financial Post of Toronto, Canada, in 1980. The official quoted was Aurelio Peccei, president and founder of a well-known think tank called Club of Rome. According to the Post, Peccei held that “a charismatic leader—scientific, political, or religious—would be the world’s only salvation from the social and economic upheavals that threaten to destroy civilization.” What do you think? Is this world really in such dire straits that mankind needs a Messiah? Consider just one of the problems this world faces—hunger.
TWO big, brown eyes stare at you from a picture in a newspaper or magazine. They are the eyes of a child, a little girl not even five years old. But these eyes do not make you smile. There is no childish luster to them, no happy sense of wonder, no innocent trust. They are filled instead with bewildered pain, dull aching, hopeless hunger. The child is starving. Pain and hunger are all she has ever known.
Perhaps, like many, you do not like to dwell on such pictures, so you quickly turn the page. It is not that you do not care, but you feel frustrated because you suspect that it is too late for this girl. The wasted limbs and bloated belly are signs that her body has already begun to devour itself. By the time you see her picture, she is probably already dead. Worse, you know that hers is far from an isolated case.
Just how extensive is the problem? Well, can you picture 14 million children? Most of us cannot; the number is simply too high to visualize. Imagine, then, a stadium that seats 40,000 people. Now imagine it filled to capacity with children—row upon row, tier upon tier, an ocean of faces. Even that is hard to picture. Yet, it would take 350 such stadiums filled with children to add up to 14 million. According to UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), that is the appalling number of children under five who die of malnutrition and easily preventable diseases each year in developing lands. That amounts to nearly one stadium of children dying each day! Add to this the number of hungry adults, and you get a worldwide total of some one billion people who are chronically malnourished.
Why All the Hunger?
This planet currently produces more food than humans now consume, and it has the capacity to produce more. Yet, every minute, 26 children die from malnutrition and disease. During that same minute, the world spends about $2,000,000 on preparation for war. Can you imagine what all that money—or just a fraction of it—could do for those 26 children?
Clearly, world hunger cannot simply be blamed on a lack of food or money. The problem goes much deeper. As Jorge E. Hardoy, an Argentine professor, put it, “the world as a whole has a chronic incapacity to share comfort, power, time, resources and knowledge with those who need these things more.” Yes, the problem lies, not with man’s resources, but with man himself. Greed and selfishness seem to be dominating forces in human society. The wealthiest one fifth of the earth’s population enjoys some 60 times more goods and services than does the poorest one fifth.
True, some are sincerely trying to get food to the hungry, but most of their efforts are hamstrung by factors beyond their control. Famine often afflicts countries that are torn by civil war or rebellion, and it is not uncommon for opposing forces to prevent relief supplies from reaching the needy. Both sides fear that by allowing food to reach the starving civilians in enemy territory, they will be feeding their enemies. Governments themselves are not above using starvation as a political weapon.
No Solution?
Unfortunately, the problem of starving millions is hardly the only crisis afflicting modern man. The rampant destruction and poisoning of the environment, the persistent plague of war that swallows millions of lives, the violent crime epidemics that breed fear and distrust everywhere, and the ever-degenerating moral climate that seems to lie at the root of many of these ills—all these global crises join hands, as it were, and affirm the same hard truth—man cannot govern himself successfully.
No doubt that is why many people have despaired of seeing a solution to the world’s problems. Others feel as did Aurelio Peccei, the Italian scholar mentioned at the outset. If there is to be a solution, they reason, it must come from an extraordinary—perhaps even superhuman—source. Thus the concept of a messiah has a powerful appeal. But is it realistic to hope in a messiah? Or is such a hope only wishful thinking?
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Cover photos: Top: U.S. Naval Observatory photo; Bottom: NASA photo
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WHO photo by P. Almasy
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WHO photo by P. Almasy
U.S. Navy photo