Unsearchable RichesChristian. Veg*n. Writer. Wife.

Richard Stearns is the president of World Vision, the organization through which I sponsored a young girl in the DR until I was fired.

I feel bad for stopping my sponsorship; where’s my faith? This is a hard book to read. It asks hard questions, and paints two equally miserable pictures: that of the poor and defenseless, which most Christians are desensitized to as we are bombarded with stories and photographs of their struggle, and a more chilling problem, the apathy that this desensitization has lead to, especially within the church.

What astounded me was not the plight the world faces. Satan is real, and he is in the world. It was the potential that could be done if Christians would wake up and do something. My ‘power word,’ or motto, for the past few years has been ‘believe,’ which is a great word. This year, I decided ‘do’ would be the word. Now I’m painfully aware of how little I am active in meaningful ways. The money that could be raised if regular church attenders all tithed boggles my mind.

But it can’t stop there. Churches have turned their faces from the pain outside their doors. It’s not intentional. Someone has to minister to believers, wouldn’t it be the Church? But something like 98% of a church’s resources are recycled internally. The book spends a lot of time plaining the problems of the poor, but it’s the problem with the church that made me weep.

I see myself in that problem, and the challenge now is to figure out how to become active. This is a hard book not because of what it says, but what it requires. You cannot avoid a response. I need to figure out what mine will be.

Technically speaking, the book does a nice job of laying out the materials. It opens with Stearns’s personal story, which is our ‘way in’ to the problem. In the middle, he acknowledges that statistics can be numbing, but proceeds to rely heavily on them. Conversely, too many stories of plights - there are so many - can have the opposite effect; we can feel manipulated and be turned of. The balance is a hard one to walk, but the book does its best. And while each chapter builds on each other, the recap is concise. You could open to any chapter, and read only one, and come away with enough to act, though I recommend getting the whole picture.