Written by: Stefania Tarasut on May 15, 2014

Reading through Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond this week was refreshing and humbling.  The book can be described in one sentence: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.” (25) All though this is a common sense way of thinking, I’m surprised of how often people think differently. Yes, the story of why some have a lot of cargo and others don’t might be a little bit different today based on globalization and exploitation, but it’s refreshing to look back in time and to realize that it wasn’t soo much anything people did, but rather it was the sovereignty of God at work that allowed some to accumulate cargo, and others to go through extreme poverty. This is not a very popular view. To “blame” things on God’s sovereignty feels not only like a copout, but it feels like I’m accusing God of not being fair or good… but that’s not it. It allows God to be God and human to be human.

Reading through this book made me wonder what our definition of poverty really is. I think living in America, and being surrounded by sooo much great stuff and not lacking anything has skewed my perception of what it means to be poor. We in the West are rich in cargo and poor in spirit. I think about the people that Diamond talks about in New Guinea and wonder if it’s not the opposite for them. They are poor in cargo, but rich in spirit. I wonder who’s better off.

I’m reminded of Proverbs 30:8-9, where is says: “Give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.” Riches causes us to denie God by relying on ourselves and poverty causes us to steal and insult God’s holy name… Where is the balance? How do we achieve it? Is different depending on what continent we live in?

About the Author

Stefania Tarasut