Review and Reflection on “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger” by Ronald J. Sider

The title of this book caught my attention. It seems to sum up the internal struggle I have these days — Christians claiming one thing, and then living completely different. It’s not so much the idea that rich Christians are bad people. It’s more the idea that we live in a land that is quite literally the richest nation that has ever been and yet, we are surrounded by a large population of people who lack basic necessities. It raises the question — Why? And that’s not counting the people outside of this nation who are struggling to survive. This book isn’t about individual people, but rather a rich nation that claims to be Christian and a large population of people who are poor and hungry. How is this possible? That’s what this book is about.

This is the sixth edition of this book, which was first published in 1997. This edition was published in 2015, so it’s a little dated, but really the main idea still holds.

“We still live with more than a billion desperately poor neighbors. Another 1.2 billion struggle near poverty with very little hope for a decent life. Nor has God’s special concern for the poor changed. Hundreds of biblical texts tell us that God still measures our societies by what we do to the poorest.” (Pg. xv). How do we treat our neighbors? What are we called to? None of this is new. Not by a long stretch. Scripture has been talking about all of this for a long, long time. It’s just inconvenient for a wealthy nation. Or maybe we tell…