Certainly true. As for the matter of raising objections to our nice little war being merely “tiresome”, well, I can only say about that X billion dollars we’re spending every week that somebody out there is cashing those checks.

Since we have the means to become aware of what’s happening in the third world, and since we have the means to send contributions, then we have the responsibility to do so: Eph 2.10.

How am I redeeming the time? Do I use the media solely for my entertainment and knowledge and business, or do I use it to reach back to others. Do I use my blessings first for my own consumption and satisfaction, or do I use them to share among others and myself?

The answer, as I said before, is mostly for myself. That is not Christ-like. While I am not responsible for the greed of either the poor beggar or the patrician, I am responsible for my own, just as you are for yours.

Perhaps, Dan, when you wrote of how much pizza you deserved, you were saying how much was fair to consume. Even so, the question still remains: what is the standard for fairness? Is it really nothing more than if I earned the money to afford it, then it’s fair to consume it? I’m confident you would not say that. But what would you say? My answer? I don’t know.

But I do know that of course you are blessed for your gifts to African missions and local homeless.

Where you see a total disconnect, there is, in fact, perfect unity.

I can do something about the plight of my neighbors. I live in a rural community that is suffering hard from the economic downturn. Most of those people are in the lower ranges of the middle class down to the dirt poor. There’s an abandoned mobile home near where I live and it has never wanted for occupancy, mostly by transient families who own nothing. These people are crushed by even a few cents movement in the price of food.

In both posts, it is them I wrote about, and those of us who are also finding ourselves in a downward spiral making it harder to make ends meet. I care about those people because I see them all the time and they live right around me.

It is much harder for me to do something about hurting people on the other side of the world, especially when it is the entire world that is hurting in one way or another. That diffused problem makes it impossible for one man to handle all the need. Jesus Himself, during His ministry, could not meet the entirety of need of every single person in Palestine. It is a problem compounded by changes in media and communications.It has created an issue wherein the entire hurt of the world can be beamed into my house.

Are you able to solve every single problem the media thrusts into your life? Or are you forced to filter it all? How then do you filter it?

As for my dissing Africa, my wife and I give financially to a ministry called Revival Africa and have for a while. But you see, if we give to them, to whom do we choose NOT to give? Don’t you see the problem here, George? If we decide to support one essential ministry then we have chosen NOT to support the one that ministers in Fiji or in Myanmar or in Malawi or in Peru. Are we then callous-hearted people? Which worthy ministries do you elect NOT to support because you have chosen others that you WILL support?

Also, you seem to want to make more of my pizza example than what is there. You’re reading something into it that doesn’t exist. It is only an illustration. If I had chosen a single loaf of bread tossed into a throng of starving people, would that have satisfied the illustration more adeptly? Greed is greed, whether it is a starving man hoarding a dry crust of bread that can feed more than one person, or a wealthy patrician buying up all the stock of a company so no one else can buy any.

The most interesting comment — no, not Moonbeams’; that nonsense about the war being only about misguided greed is just tiresome by now — the most interesting comment was Dan’s crack about greed is taking one more slice of pizza than one deserves. Pray tell, Dan, just how do you determine how much pizza you deserve. Then tell me why those kids in Africa don’t deserve any?

Dan, for a guy with your discernment, you certainly seem to have a blind eye to personal consumerism.

I, on the other hand — I see my sin of self-indulgence and am still working on mastering it. How much faster I would progress if I wasn’t just as greedy as those who feel they deserve that pizza and those green peppers at a cheaper price!