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J.K. Granberg-Michaelson The United States is one of the richest countries in the world. And yet, more than 10 percent of Americans live in households where having enough nutritious food for everyone is far from guaranteed. For nearly 4 percent of American households, the problem is even worse: They suffer from such low food security that “normal eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake was reduced at times during the year because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.” While adults in these households will sometimes go without food to try to shield their children from going hungry, last year more than half a million children in the U.S. lived in households where they did not always have enough to eat. The Bible is unambiguous about our duty as Christians to feed the hungry. In the Hebrew Bible, God provides manna from heaven to feed the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 16). God’s abundance is a theme throughout the Scriptures, including Jesus feeding the 5,000 and telling us he came so that all “may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). From that abundance comes a responsibility to share what we have with the less fortunate. As Sojourners president Adam Russell Taylor recently wrote: “The prophet Isaiah exhorts his listeners to respond to God’s abundance with acts of justice and compassion, including sharing our food with all who hunger and dismantling systems that produce hunger in the first place (58:7). Our own access to wholeness and abundance is explicitly tied to seeking the wholeness of others.” Perhaps most significant of all is Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 25 that how we treat people suffering from hunger, thirst, and other vulnerable situations is how we treat Christ himself (31-46). And yet, far too many Christians cling to a stubborn belief that individual acts of charity are sufficient to fulfill their obligation to help all those experiencing hunger and poverty. While acts of charity like donating to a regional food bank or volunteering at a local soup kitchen are commendable and indeed necessary, they are not sufficient. Christians not only have a duty to do good works through individual charity, but also to urge their political representatives to do what is in their power to end hunger in the U.S. and around the world.
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