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To the Editor:

According to Feeding America, around 44 million people, including one in five children, go to bed hungry in America.

Further, too many Americans–not to mention those in other parts of the world–have to choose between heating and eating. This is sad when we consider the vast amount of food that is wasted each day nationally.

According to a Gallup survey, one-third of all food in America is wasted. Therefore, people of good conscience must do more to help feed the hungry. President John Kenndey was absolutely perspicuous when, in his 1961 Inaugural Address, he said, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

The Benevolence Corps, a 501(c)3, is a nonprofit organization that I have led for many years. We sponsored not just senior citizens appreciation ceremonies and mentoring and tutoring programs (among a host of other noteworthy causes), we also led efforts to sustain food banks and feeding agencies in Eastern North Carolina. Hopefully, this realization will encourage others to go beyond the rhetoric and help feed those struggling to eat and make ends meet. We have a moral obligation to do so.

I have a sibling who references the Bible about the poor always being among us. What he fails to understand is that good Christians must rally behind causes to uplift the poor and help those Americans help themselves. In other words, we must be our brother’s keeper.

We now live in a season of giving. Let’s do something.

Churches should sponsor food drives, organize food pantries, volunteer at soup kitchens, and spread the word about Jesus being the reason for the season.

Yes, the doubting Thomases are around us. Yes, the Pharisees are in our midst. Yet, our obligations are as clear and old as the Scriptures: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” James 1:22-25

Keith W. Cooper

Greenville