Who's Hungry?

While the Great Leap Forward is a fascinating study in the systemic failure of communism as a functional governing system, I do not mention it here to critique it for its untenable ideological underpinnings.  I bring it up because it offers us a unique perspective on hunger.

In the history of bad ideas, there are few worse than the Great Leap Forward.  The plan, implemented by the Communist Chinese government in 1958, was targeted at increasing the production of the agricultural and industrial sectors of the Chinese economy by taking advantage of the seemingly endless labor pool of the Chinese peasantry. By the time the plan was scrapped and grain imports began in 1961, some estimates put the death toll from starvation at more than 40 million people. 

It has been reported that many of the people who died during the Great Leap forward did not die from simple lack of nutrients.  They were poisoned.  Finding no suitable food source, many peasants had begun looking for any alternative, going so far as to consume the very dirt they farmed in an attempt to gain any form of nutrient they could possibly find.  Not surprisingly, eating large amounts of soil, an activity the human digestive system was never designed for, quickly proved fatal. 

I first heard this from a Chinese history professor in college.  What was meant as an illustrative anecdote has stuck with me ever since.  That was the first time I was exposed to the idea that starvation is not simply the lack of something to eat.  It is the lack of  something that nourishes. 

As an example, look no further than our own chronically obese population.

There are some in medicine today that suggest that one of the major causes of obesity in America is not, in fact, overeating.  For many people, losing weight has less to do with quantity of food consumed and more to do with quality. 

There is medical evidence that shows if the body is not provided adequate nutrients, it will begin storing anything it can process as fat, thinking that lean times are at hand.  As a result, the person trying to lose weight by simply cutting the number of  Diet Cokes they drink and eating one less Big Mac a week is actually fighting upstream.  By simply providing the body with less junk food, they may be raising the rate at which the body is storing fat, thus abrogating much of the potential weight loss purchased with their lowered caloric intake.  Sadly, this is not the sort of weight loss news to get headlines.

This notion of starvation as a lack of nutrients has broader application than understanding why America is morbidly obese, why we care what kind of gas mileage we get, or what will happen to the poor Somalis that can no longer buy grain with their devalued currency. 

Beyond these more visible, tangible forms of starvation lie the emotional starvation of orphans and those widowed by war and other tragedies.  There is also the relational starvation that can be found in the most affluent American suburbs where busy parents throw money at the increasing angst of their children who are crying to be noticed and loved.  We see the same principle at work in porn addicts, adrenaline junkies and alcoholics; all trying to squeeze some feeling from their empty addiction.  The list of hungers of the human spirit is nearly endless.  Beyond, or perhaps beneath, even these forms of hunger lies the spiritual starvation experienced by nearly everyone on the planet.  It is not a starvation that many would admit to, or even notice. 

Hunger occurs when a basic need, be it physical, emotional or spiritual, is not met.  I believe every human has a hunger within them for the Divine.  Opinion may vary on this point, but I believe the preponderance of evidence throughout history is in favor of this claim.  Throughout time and across the world, people struggle to find higher meaning, greater significance; some kind of transcendent knowledge that satisfies the mind and soul.  Whether it is Buddhism, Christianity, Secular Humanism, Islam, Money or a host of other alternatives; all of us are looking for something.  We all have souls that need to be fed, and even the best human relationships and most ideal physical conditions fall pitifully short.

It is on this point that the experiences of Chinese, peasant farmers becomes salient for me.  That they would resort to poisoning themselves by eating dirt in an attempt to avoid starvation reminds me that when hunger becomes great enough, any alternative, no matter how foolish and empty, will become a viable option.  Similarly, the frustration of the overweight fast food junkie reminds me that abstaining from an empty, unhealthy thing does not always equate to filling myself with something valuable and substantive.

When I wake up each day, I am faced with a question common to all mankind.  All our souls our hungry; what are we going to fill them with? 

1 "Come, all you who are thirsty,
       come to the waters;
       and you who have no money,
       come, buy and eat!
       Come, buy wine and milk
       without money and without cost.

2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
       and your labor on what does not satisfy?
       Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
       and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

3 Give ear and come to me;
       hear me, that your soul may live.
       I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
       my faithful love promised to David.

                                                    Isaiah 55:1-3

There is no promise more glorious than God’s.  There is no food so satisfying to the soul as His love. 

There are no reasons but fear or pride to refuse that which is given for free.

Comments

[Terryll]

This drive for feeling or for significance can lead us into the arms of God Almighty where we find solace or into the arms of evil which will twist and distort. May the voice of God pierce through and ring out.