Yesterday I went with a church member to deliver toys and gifts we’d collected for a ministry that works alongside the poor in a particular part of our city of Oakland. Later in the day with other members of our my church community we taught English as a Second Language to recently arrived Spanish-speaking immigrants at a Spanish-speaking sister Presbyterian Church here in Oakland. Both moments left us all with great hope, encouragement and life-renewed excitement. This joy comes not simply from giving a hand out: helping someone less fortunate (which is part of it), but also from giving a hand-up, helping to transform the structure of our society. The empowering of others is connected to our own empowerment, their growing freedom from poverty is tied together with our own growing deliverance from spiritual poverty. Don’t we often feel a malaise-like frustration or darkness about how we are trapped, burdened, seeking for meaning, purpose and “magic” in our lives?
“I hope my life tries to give testimony to the message of the Gospel, above all that God loves the world and loves those who are poorest within it.”
Those are the words of Peruvian theologian Gustavo Guitérrez reflecting on his life from the point of being in his mid-80s. He’s founder of liberation theology and its central tenet, “the preferential option for the poor.” His groundbreaking work, included on all major theological reading lists, A Theology of Liberation, published in 1971, changed everything. It seemed to chart a whole new course for the church, not just for Latin America, but everywhere.
You may not know much of him, or have ever heard of him – or other Liberation Theologians (such as ) but the thoughts they articulated have resonated in your mind, and might be some of the guiding ways in which you live your faith. Many have rejected Liberation Theology, the Catholic Church included (which many of theses theological practitioners called home and mother, because of suspected ties to Marxism and communism. This was poignant during the Cold War, with fears of godless Soviet world-domination. Yet what Liberation Theology sought to articulate was not a class warfare, or a destruction of all world power, but rather articulating a pattern latent and consistent in the Hebrew Bible and Second Testament: God seems to have a preferential option of the poor, self-identifying with the orphan, widow and refugee (foreigner who sojourner among us) a phrase that punctuates the psalms, as well as the the first of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3
The roots of the Jesus-following movement, naming discipleship and doing what Jesus taught as essential (think of the WWJD shirts and bracelets) finds its genesis in this theology. The notion that all of our salvation is tied together, that when we fight with and for the poor (spiritual, physical and voluntary) we paradoxically also contribute to both our own spiritual liberation and the salvation of the world – the coming of the kingdom of God in its fullness. The recognition that everything is political: especially the teachings of Jesus and the ways that we live. These thoughts, articulated clearly in the Bible, are teased out and developed by the Theologians of Liberation, led by the ground-breaking bible study and thought of Gutierrez.
His thought has three foundational principles:
1. Material poverty is never good but an evil to be opposed. “It is not simply an occasion for charity but a degrading force that denigrates human dignity and ought to be opposed and rejected.”
2. Poverty is not a result of fate or laziness, but is due to structural injustices that privilege some while marginalizing others. “Poverty is not inevitable; collectively the poor can organize and facilitate social change.”
3. Poverty is a complex reality and is not limited to its economic dimension. To be poor is to be insignificant. Poverty means an early and unjust death. Most people in history suffer “early and unjust deaths,” they said. When they wake up, they know that because of poverty, they may die before the day is over. That is the greatest injustice, they insist. Jesus never says “blessed is poverty,” rather in the beatitudes he invites all disciples to stand in solidarity with the poor standing against inhumane poverty.”
Radically following this line of thought leads to the ways that many of these leaders lived and died, as well as the formation of subversive and transformative communities of people living together (the base communities). This practical solidarity expresses itself as voluntary poverty : a conscious protest against injustice by choosing to live together with those who are materially poor. Its inspiration comes from the life of Jesus who entered into solidarity with the human condition in order to help human beings overcome the sin that enslaves and impoverishes them. Voluntary poverty affirms that Christ came to live as a poor person not because poverty itself has any intrinsic value but to criticize and challenge those people and systems that oppress the poor and compromise their God-given dignity
Those of us who are privileged First World North Americans may bristle at this theology, in particular during the revelry of Christmas time and year end. It asks us to let go of our privileges, make that option for the poor and seek Christ in their struggle for justice. But This can only happen through the moving and power of the Spirit of God, yet this Spirit- movement among us not only hastens God’s reign of justice and peace, beginning with those in extreme poverty, it leads to new blessings. This is good news. We, too, are being liberated!
Some famous quotes from Guitérrez’s impressive oeuvre include:
[Neighbor is] not he whom I find in my path, but rather he in whose path I place myself, he whom I approach and actively seek.”
― A Theology of Liberation
“The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order.”
― A Theology of Liberation
“Poverty means death,” Gustavo writes. This death, however, is not only physical but mental and cultural as well. It refers to the destruction of individual persons, peoples, cultures, and traditions.”
― We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People 20th Anniversary Edition
“Here the church, like every human being, is faced with the choice that is most fundamental for its faith: to be on the side of life or on the side of death. We see very clearly that on this point no neutrality is possible. Either we serve the life of the Salvadoran people or we connive in their death. Here, too, is the historical mediation of what is most fundamental in the Christian faith: either we believe in a God of life or we serve the idols of death” (Address at Louvain, Feb. 2, 1980; in SVF, p. 373).”
― We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People 20th Anniversary Edition
“So true is this that if we do not respond to the demands of the present, because we do not know in advance whither we may be led, we are simply refusing to hear the call of Jesus Christ. We are refusing to open to him when he knocks on the door and invites us to sup with him.”
― We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People 20th Anniversary Edition
“In liberation theology the way to rational talk of God is located within a broader and more challenging course of action: the following of Jesus.”
― A Theology of Liberation: 15th Anniversary Edition
Gutiérrez reminds us that a key aspect of Christian life is to make a preferential option for the poor and oppressed. Reading him (specifically during the season of Advent) leads us to ask:
The Advent message spoken by the prophets and John the Baptizer, invite and challenge us to repentance (metanoia in Greek which means turning around 90˚, making a course-correction and walking in a different direction). Spend some time journaling, thinking, praying or even conversing with someone else about what this stirs up in you:
- How are we being called to repentance spiritually, materially, relationally?
- How are we living as Jesus lived today in our lives?
- How can the church more and more stand and side with the poor?
- How can we support their struggle for justice and peace?
- How is this struggle (not to minimize it) also our own struggle?
- If Jesus came to make all things new, what does that imply for our own action, reflection and behavior?
- How does this theological articulation of living like Jesus impact us in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Beirut, Paris and San Bernadino which are pushing our societies to reject and denigrate the refugees among us?