Brilliant

From Shaun Groves post today, about an 18-year-old orphan, Eliud. Shaun asked him "what does it mean to be rich or poor?" Here is the boy's response.

“Well,” he said, “I think it is true that a rich man has great wealth and a poor man does not have his basic needs. A rich man has new cars and a big house. The poor do not have basic needs.”

We passed a small opening in the sea of rusted metal. Inside, pornography played on a television for men with a few shillings. “Cinema” the sign read.

“In my country,” Eliud said, “to be rich requires corruption. I would rather be poor with God than rich with a corrupted life.”

We turned a corner and walked down a driveway onto church property where lunch was being prepared. Brad and I stopped under an awning and drank in Eliud’s last words of wisdom.

“A poor man can see forward. A rich man becomes blind until he cannot see good and wrong.”

Maybe bloggers who make "a lot, a lot, a lot" should be learning from these children about Jesus, and not the other way around.

Out of curiousity, I looked up "corrupted". It was...enlightening.

cor·rupt

  [kuh-ruhpt]

–adjective

1.

guilty of dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked: a corrupt judge.

2.

debased in character; depraved; perverted; wicked; evil: a corrupt society.

3.

made inferior by errors or alterations, as a text.

–verb (used with object)

6.

to destroy the integrity of; cause to be dishonest, disloyal, etc., esp. by bribery.

7.

to lower morally; pervert: to corrupt youth.

8.

to alter (a language, text, etc.) for the worse; debase.