By Peter Hallett
Published July 17, 2001
"To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one," said John Ruskin who also lamented that only one person in a thousand "sees" in this way.
Good perspective is hard to come by when consumerism constantly attempts to make us short-sighted, or should I say, self-centred.
Many of us live as if the only really important issues are who is being voted off Big Brother, what movie will we watch on the weekend and did petrol go up a few dollars a tank. (Heaven forbid that we lose that few dollars which we could gainfully employ in purchasing a Scratchie or a cheeseburger...)
An item in a school newsletter recently caught my attention, and while I can’t verify all the figures it contains, it rings true with other research I have read. It is an attempt to help us see clearly.
Imagine that the whole world was condensed into your Canberra/Queanbeyan street of about 100 people - with all the existing human ratios staying the same. This is what your street would look like:
"There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere (North and South) and eight Africans.
"52 would be female and 48 male. 70 would be non-white and 30 would be white-skinned. 70 would be non-Christian, 30 Christian.
"Six people would possess 59 per cent of the entire street’s wealth and all six would be from the USA. 80 would live in sub-standard housing, 50 would suffer from malnutrition. 1 would have college/university education and 1 would own a computer.
"With this in mind, if you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 per cent of the world.
"If you have money in the bank, in your wallet and spare change at home, you are among the top 8 per cent of the world’s wealthy.
"If you woke this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million people who will not survive this week.
"If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
"If you hold your head up with a smile on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.
"Oh, and by the way, if you can read this message you are more fortunate than the more than 2 billion people who cannot read at all."
Take a walk out onto your front lawn or balcony and if your street looks more peaceful, more comfortable and more intact than the picture above, you know that a new perspective is dawning.
Of course, we cannot always live with a consciousness of the whole world - we must respond to situations as they arise. But there are organisations that carry that larger perspective in their work, so if we support them in word and deed we are growing our own "seeing".
Better still, God sees all people, and has a timeless perspective - free of racial, geographic or class boundaries. He sees us as we really are and so a relationship with him is the best way to develop a clear way of seeing ourselves. He will work on our perspective from the inside out - operating on our hearts to give us better vision!
That’s why Jesus, the Son of God, could say to his rag-tag bunch of uneducated disciples: "...blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."
In knowing Jesus they came to have the greatest perspective of all.