No, Nicholas Kristof, bikes, beads and bed nets won’t save the world

It wouldn’t be exactly true to say that I spent a year and a half in Malawi, Africa, because of Nicholas Kristof, but it wouldn’t be entirely wrong, either.

I’ve been devouring his columns for years. I was an early adopter and fan of Half the Sky. I wanted to be a part of the solution, and, thanks (?) to Kristof, I earnestly believed that was both more possible and less complicated than I thought. Simply by hosting a Bead for Life party or sewing cloth pads or helping pay for deworming treatments or mosquito nets or school lunches or bicycles so that girls could get to and from school safely, I could help save the world

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Last week, at the opening session of Sojourners’ Summit for World Change through Faith and Justice, scholar and activist Soong-Chan Rah urged those present to rediscover the practice of lament as an antidote to the triumphalism that can sometimes infect those who, with the best of intentions, want to “change the world.” We should not give into cynicism, he said, but a ‘hopeful skepticism’ might be just the thing. We can lament that the world is not as it should be. We can do our bit. We can hope for big things — but be content with small things.