Social Justice?

Recently I have been becoming increasingly concerned with issues relating to social justice. In a rant that he had a couple of months ago, Glenn Beck had a go at any church that had a passion for social justice and told his Christian listeners to run for the hills if their church had the term social justice, or anything similar on their website, statement of faith, or wherever. This seems pretty extreme, and it is, but is this guy really that far from where we are as a church in the western world today? To hear what he said, see the article below this one.

Very soon after the earthquake hit Haiti in January this year, Mark Driscoll took a team of people over there to see what was happening and to provide some medical help where they could. They were on the ground for 32 hours. Almost as soon as he returned home he preached a sermon to his church, titled 32 hours in Haiti. It was an empassioned plea to his congregation to stop their selfish spending habits and give to the people of the world who need it the most. This is oppsed to the viewpoint presented by Glenn Beck in his radio show.
I was very disappointed to see, however, that soon after Mark Driscoll's empassioned plea to the people of his church, he was promoting an overseas trip to Turkey on which he and a group of people would make something of a pilgrimage to walk in Jesus' footsteps.

My question then is, what does God really expect of us when it comes to money? There are some pretty plain facts that are very easy to find that give us a snapshot of what kind of a state our world is in.
80% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day.
50% live on less than $2 a day.
About 1 billion live on less than $1 a day.
Today about 25000 children will die of preventable diseases.
50c will provide enough sustenance for a person for a day.
There are about 1 billion people who are hungry all of the time. It is estimated that 80-90% of these people are women and children.

There was a woman who pointed out on Mark Driscoll's Facebook page that perhaps this trip was a little excessive in light of the facts above, and perhaps the money could be better spent on helping out the desperately poor of this world. She was called lots of names, all of which pointed to the idea that she was being judgemental and pharisaical and should keep her opinions to herself. A few hours later she removed her post, having been sufficiently abused by other Christians. I wrote a post in defence of her opinion. It was the only one.

When I look at the world around me and I marry it to the ideas that I see in the Bible, I can only come to the conclusion that our excessive lives, which are contributing to the desperation of those who are desperate in this world, are in direct conflict with the teachings of the Bible and the church of Australia, America, the UK and the rest of the Western world is, in general, living in grievous sin. In a world where James tells us that true religion is looking after orphans and widows, we are failing to practise true religion. In a world where all it would take to feed the world is 1% of the income of the Christians who are in the richest 5% of the world, we are failing miserably in our mission to love our brothers and sisters.

In my church there was a group of people who, one and a half years ago, went to Kenya to see what was happening there on a mission awareness trip. Since they came back they have started a charity and have raised over $10,000 for the people of Kenya. Yet it took the people of the group that went over less than 3 months to find the $70,000 that it took to get them there and back.

I think that there is something seriously wrong with the way that we view money and the kind of spending that we see as acceptable. Maybe we would do well to start thinking that our experience is less importand than is food on the plates of the women and children of this world. I don't want to meet people in heaven who have starved to death when I could have helped them.