The Global Village was originally published by a woman named Donella Meadows in 1990. Some of the data needs updating, like the stat that only one person would own a computer. With 6 billion people in the world, that only accounts for 600,000 computers.
An article at Intel states that currently 10% of the world's population either owns or has regular access to a computer.
The other stat I questioned was the literacy rate. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the world's literacy rate was 77.4 percent in 1995.
Despite my desire to see an updated and more accurate version of the Global Village, I don't want to distract from the greater truth here -- that being what Kara wrote about the importance of simple living to counter economic injustice (which Dr. King proclaimed as one of the
three evils.)
As a middle-class Christian, I read Jesus's words in Matthew chapter 19 about riches and I immediately think about all the people who are wealthy and how they need to hear those words. But then I realize that I am only thinking about America, while God views the whole world. And when God views the whole world, we middle-class Americans quickly rise to the top percentage of wealthy humans. It is shocking, but the passage in Matthew could easily read:
"Truly I tell you, it will be hard for most Americans to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a middle-to-upper-class American to enter the kingdom of God."