Searching for God # 80

I feel a little ‘cheeky’ this morning….as I have reflected on the information that Vatican sources considered Liberation Theology too ‘Marxist’ and therefore too ‘political’ to be fully respected and supported.

Has the embeddedness with capitalism and the money ‘interests’ also been too  political? Or, has the association with the political, economic, corporate and academic ‘elites’ been just a natural affiliation with all ‘sorts’ and ‘degrees’ of men and women? Is the prohibition of abortion, from the church’s theological position, a political or ideological interference, or merely a strict adherence to the notion of refusing to insult or sully God’s sacred gift of life? And, if that is so, what about the life of the circle of the infant? Just as war implicates both the deciders and those who carry out the orders, whose life matters, the Ukrainians, or the Russians, or both? The Palestinians or the Israelis or both? Formerly in Northern Ireland, the Roman Catholics or the Protestants, or both?    Language, after all, is how we paint, erase and re-paint the epistemological landscape as well as the place in the landscape for our theology.

Just as it is no longer acceptable to consider the voiceless, homeless, poverty-stricken, illiterate, unemployed, and mentally disadvantaged as an ideological issue, it is also important to refuse to link any legitimate attempt, including the theological, to lift up those millions as an exclusively political, economic, or ideological issue. It is the human condition we are talking about and we must bring the whole of the human being, and our shared capacity to integrate, respect and deploy various ‘academic’ and ideological theories and practices (praxis), to the table. And that smorgasbord of talent and experience is and always will be necessary if we are to carry out our shared responsibilities.

Given the blatant disregard and contempt for any ideology, except their own self-aggrandizement, of the oligarchs, tyrants, and despots, perhaps the rest of us can bring ourselves ‘out of the closet’ of our own myopia. Mass media, saturated as it is with the vocabulary and the principles of politics and political ideology, and pitting democracy against oligarchy, despotism and tyranny, has locked the public discourse into another binary, black-white, zero-sum oscillation.

Either-or, whether in political or even ethical or moral questions, begs and inevitably results in ‘reductionisms’….there is no other legitimate or reasonable or conventional position, and for both sides, the presumption that ‘God is on our side’ is part of the script. Combatants in wars have for centuries invoked the support of the, or more than one, deity. However, invoking God as a lawyer/advocate/leader/hero of a political ideology, is nothing short of a reduction of God, for human satisfaction and glorification.

Theology, belief in and discipleship with God is not reducible to such a cognitive, psychological, philosophical, sociological, scientific and certainly not political ‘equation.’ Just as human life cannot be reduced to any one or any combination of these modes of thought, also modes of operating, so too, neither is God. One of the implications of this premise is that the church too has to ward against falling prey to the many and various charlatans who would attempt to marry their personal political agenda to and with God. And the challenge of such a temptation, given how unconscious one’s (everyone’s) vulnerability to such a ready invocation of God as political ally, is no mean matter. Indeed, resistance to such a temptation will inevitably require the questioning of all forms and iterations of authority, power and public acclaim. While the church and Christian theology generally has taken the position and view that its adherents can and do see and separate the secular from the sacred, at least in one’s personal and private existence. The larger question of salvation for the whole world, and its interpretation, application and expectations and demands remains freighted with many questions especially those of a theological nature.

The conventional vernacular, and its proliferation among the masses, premised as it is on the dominance and absolute authority of the literal, the empirical, the scientific perception and mind-set, leaves the imagination out of the cognitive, perceptual and psychological as well as the theological equation. What also escapes any and all of the classifications of human thought and cognition is something humans have, it seems from the beginning, considered ‘evil,’ harmful,’ ‘abusive,’  ‘intolerable,’ inexcusable,’  ‘constricting,’  ‘imprisoning,’  ‘dehumanizing,’ and ‘excessive,’ and ‘worth fighting to limit, erase, minimize or even eliminate.’

Given that the concept of God is and always will be fraught with the limits of human imagination, it seems more likely, if not predictable, that most of us humans can more likely agree with what constitutes, comprises and demonstrates itself as ‘evil’. So the both philosophic and pragmatic question for each of us, irrespective of our denominational adherence, or our religious tradition, but certainly for those espousing Christianity, is to summon the courage, and the faith and the humility to seek to find, and then to reflect and to imagine how best to non-violently, creatively and unequivocally to confront the evil we see, experience, and even anticipate with force (borrowing a simple, yet profound, epithet from Tolstoy.

For most of us, we can and do see and react to what we consider ‘evil’ from another human being, especially if and when their behaviour impacts us directly. As we learn about being disregarded, as one of the more prevalent iterations of being ‘hurt,’ we also attempt to discern whatever we can about the reasons, motivations, or even the lack of awareness of the perpetrator, and then decide whether or not to confront, and how and when. When a mother or father abuses his or her child, we now know that such abuse says more about the parent than it does about the behaviour of the child. Similarly, in schools, some teachers have such an overriding need for classroom control that, while they may have constructed a military boot-camp, students will eventually ‘quit and stay’ which happens to be another of the more passive-aggressive approaches to what we consider ‘unacceptable,’ or in our view ‘evil.’

How each of these early encounters impacts us, (and we have all had some of them) can and often does generate a counter-response, whether that response is contained in thought, feeling and attitude, or expressed openly in conflict with others. And, just as in a car accident, it is the second-impact that is the most ‘telling’.

If we can approach a man or woman who has, willingly and overtly, or unconsciously and imperceptibly, hurt us, and begin a conversation about our experience, depends on an assessment or discernment of both of the person’s adaptability to listen, reflect, remain open to criticism and also to conciliation or reconciliation.

Given the churches’ preference for defining and implementing sanctions on sin, considered as a private and personal act, the matter of institutional ‘evil’, including the feasibility and likelihood of the church’s own culpability, has been left primarily to opposing politicians, the law and the media. Here comes the monster of such public approbrium, something today that is called ‘structural evil’….meaning that it is baked into the cake of the culture, institutions, and traditional and conventional perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes.

Of course, at this point we are envisioning the intersection of what we call politics with the perceived systemic ‘evil’…and the often disregarded prospect of whether and if this specific abuse can or will be ameliorated by those political actors and structures whose purview includes the ‘evil.’

From Britannica.com, we read, under the definition of Liberation Theology:

Liberation Theology, a religious movement that arose in late 20^th century roman Catholicism and was centered in Latin America. It seeks to apply religious faith by aiding the poor and oppressed through involvement in political and civic affairs. It stresses both heightened awareness of the ‘sinful’ socioeconomic structures that cause social inequities and active participation in changing those structures.

Liberation theologians believe that God speaks particularly through the poor and that the Bible can be understood only when seen from the perspective of the poor. They perceived that the Roman Catholic church in Latin America was fundamentally different from the church in Europe—i.e.. that the church in Latin America should be actively engaged in improving the lives of the poor. In order to  build this church, they established communidades de base (base communities), which were local Christian groups, composed of 10 to 30 members each,  that studied the Bible and attempted to meet their parishioners’ immediate needs for food, water, sewage disposal and electricity. A great number of base communities, led mostly by laypersons, sprang into being throughout Latin America.

The birth of the Liberation Theology movement is usually dated to the second Latin American Bishop’s Conference, which was held in Medellin, Columbia in 1968. At this conference that attending bishops issued a document affirming the rights of the poor and asserting that industrialized nations enriched themselves at the expense of developing countries. The movement’s seminal text, (Teologia de la liberacion) A Theology of Liberation, was written by Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian priest and theologian. Other leaders of the movement included the Belgian-born Brazilian priest, Jose Comblin, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, Jesuit scholar Jon Sobrino,  and Archbishop Helder Camara of Brazil.

Now 58 years later, who can argue persuasively and convincingly that the industrialized nations have not enriched themselves at the expense of developing countries? Who can argue persuasively that the poor have not been categorically and deliberately ignored, demeaned, left homeless, and hopeless in our streets, and social policy and social philosophy has neither improved or even given prominence to their individual and collective lot? And ‘the poor’ cannot be limited to those failing to meet the poverty line of socioeconomic statistical determination. It must include the indigenous, the migrants, the refugees, the victims of war, the victims of either or both a failed health care system or the complete absence of such a system, the victims of refused education, the victims of racial conflicts and effectively those considered ‘non-persons’ in our affluent and insouciant elite culture.

Of course, the Canadian Blood Services commercials proudly declare that ‘giving helps both the giver and the recipient’…and philanthropics are hourly begging, pleading and praying for checks. And the Good Samaritan continues as the image of the Christ, when, as we have been reminded by John Klopeborg and the Jesus Seminar, the Jew taken for dead in the ditch is more emblematic and representative of the Christ, in their shared, collective view.

There is no ideology in any nation, developed or developing, that does not consider and perhaps even enacting policies that might lift some of the burden of the dispossessed. And yet tokenism, political dilettantism, posturing, and in the words of a local politician who considers advocating for nuclear disarmament ‘virtual signalling,’ the world, especially among the oak board rooms of the rich, and the political backrooms of the political operatives, continues to pay lip-service to the dispossessed.

They suffer most the ravages of climate change and global warming; they suffer most when social programs are eliminated; they suffer most, as does everyone, when an ethical and moral moron such as Elon Musk declares the single trouble with contemporary culture is its embrace of empathy.

Please help this scribe be even more convincing and effective in making the case that it is time for radical, prophetic Christian discipleship! Time for mere statements has to give way to time for putting bodies on the line.