I read this blog post written by my friend, Keith Moore with World Orphans.  His blog post was well worth me posting on our blog. Please share with us your thoughts!

I will admit it upfront that this might be a stretch comparison, but do you think God might see that it all fits together.

For the sake of a comparison, using $400 a year to care for an orphan works out to be about US $ 160 Billion, for the estimated 40 million double orphans in the world. While that’s a lot of money, in the world view of things it isn’t much.

“Annual Estimate of the Cost of ‘Structures of Sin’
Money Laundering . . . . U.S.$ 1.5 trillion
White Collar Crime. . . .  U.S.$ 1.5 trillion
Financial Fraud . . . . . . . U.S.$930 billion
Gambling . . . . . . . . . . . U.S.$ 815 billion
Organized Crime . . . . . . U.S.$ 750 billion
Tax Cheating . . . . . . . . . U.S.$ 250 billion
Drug Traffic. . . . . . . . . . U.S.$ 200 billion
Shoplifting. . . . . . . . . . .  U.S.$ 100 billion
Computer Crime . . . . . .  U.S.$ 51 billion
Pornography       . . . . . .  U.S.$ 25 billion
Arms Black Market . . . .  U.S.$5.8 billion
Electronic Warfare . . . . .  U.S.$5.8 billion
Credit Card Fraud . . . . . .  U.S.$1 billion”
—Bryant Myers, Exploring World Mission, 2003, pg 47.

By this comparison the annual cost of caring for 40 million orphans falls somewhere between the cost of shoplifting and drug trafficking. It’s no where close to the “white collar crimes” that are in the trillions of dollars each year. Cutting drug trafficking and shop lifting in half, would cover caring for each double orphan.

Do you think that if the church impacts the lives of those involved shoplifting and drug use, they could turn that into a way to care for others?