Liberation, structural sin and human flourishing

Sister Elizabeth Johnson's chapter on Liberation Theology has a number of fine passages, and disturbing asides. On page 72 she quotes the Puebla Document and its use of the image of the human face, the faces of the poor, as a way of demonstrating what is at stake in political theology. Vagrant children, sexually exploited minors, marginalised indigenous peoples, ill-paid labourers, women trafficked and enslaved, old people cast off as unproductive....and the list goes on, of human beings whose faces tell a story, and it is a story of those who hunger for liberation.

What Liberation Theology seeks to articulate is the outraged cry that rises to heaven, as it did when the Israelites were in bondage in Egypt. The liberation theologian believes in a God for whom bondage is a scandal, oppression a contradiction of God's intention for humanity, and poverty that leaches life of joy, meaning and fruitfulness a condition at odds with the benevolence and generosity of the Creator.

Johnson's critique of money as a divinised source of oppression, a universally sought after means to power, faces head on the capacity of finance to dominate and enslave, to dehumanise and oppress. So in common with liberation theologians she wants the focus of the Gospel to be fixed, not on the nonbeliever struggling for faith, but on the nonperson struggling for life. Life, liberation, fruitfulness, human fulfilment:

"Liberation is the signature deed of the saving action of God in history. To liberate is to give life, life in its totality. Consequently it becomes clear that God does not want humankind to suffer degradation. Far from happening according to divine decree, the sufferings of the poor, oppressed and marginal  people are contrary to divine intent. The dehumanising and death-dealing structures that create and maintain such degradation are instances of social sin. they transgress against the God of life..... (p. 79)

Speaking of the Americas, but incorporating in the same argument the impact of unrestrained economic globalisation she reflects:

Starting with the conquistadores and continuing for five centuries through successive ruling systems up to multinational corporations today, greed has divinised money and its trappings, that is, turned them into an absolute. Core transgressions against the first commandment have set up a belief system so compelling that it might be called money-theism, in contrast to monotheism. (p.80)

Bishop Irenaeus gifted to the church a four word motto I think I'd like to get put on a T-shirt in both Latin and translation:

Gloria Dei,

vivens humanitas -

"The glory of God is the human being fully alive"

Liberation theology has taught us to give important weight to freedom from oppression and establishing justice for the poor and dispossessed as definitive of the Kingdom of God and of the God whose Kingdom will come. as Holy Week approaches, and we begin to have a sense of our own individual unworthiness, it may be that God's greater requirement of us is to look on a money-theistic world, and repent of our idolatry. Structural sin is much harder to confess, and to turn from.

Comments

[Margaret]

Thanks for this. I have read a little about liberation theology in relation to disability and I know Paulo Freire’s work well but this was really interesting too. Your posts make me do so much thinking! x

[Jason Goroncy]

Jim,

Thanks for this post.

The concluding claim - 'Structural sin is much harder to confess, and to turn from' ... May I invite you to unpack this a little more? It does not seem evident to me at all that structural (or corporate) sin is 'harder to confess'. What leads you to conclude such?

Hope you're well.

Jason

[Jim Gordon]

Fair question Jason. I confess I hadn't thought to justify what still seems to me to be a valid observation. I'll try to say why, but would appreciate a wee dialogue about it.
Structural sin is pervasive, systemic, and at times its essence is downright elusive, so that it is hard to be specific about my own culpable involvement. Globalised capitalism operates within such a complex network of economic, political and cultural forces that the individual simply cannot opt out, but as an individual I cannot always know how I am implicated. So in general terms, you could say it's easier to confess we are implicated -but harder to say in specific terms how, and where personal responsibility lies and where therefore personal repenetance must take us.
Secondly, I think structural sin is a useful abstraction, but it remains an abstraction. That doesn't make it less real, but it does make it feel less personally culpable,than for example knowingly buying chocolate from companies that use oppressive production practices and pay unjust wages.
Thirdly, is there perhaps a greater psychological distance between my conscience and "structural sin" than there is between my conscience and personally felt acts, attitudes or thoughts that can be named? I think one of the features that gives structural, socially embedded sin its duracell long lasting power, is the way it presents as the status quo. In which case perhaps what I am called to do is not so much confess my implication (which is inescapable) but confess my allegiance to the values of another Kingdom, and thus call the status quo into question.
A further thought - I suppose I have always considered structural sin as our modern, slightly embarrassed terminology for what Paul would have called "the principalities and powers, spiritual wickedness in high places". In which case what Jesus calls me to, is a stance of opposition, that by confessing His reality as Lord, I do a Karl Barth, and lift up holy hands of prayer against the powers that be.
Oh, and behind all of this is the debate about sin as the tragic condition of fallen humanity,caught in the nexus of an all-inclusive rebellion against God as a disposition, and sin as the deliberate breaking of a known law so that we are 'caught as rebels with swords in our hands'. The corporate and individual dimensions of sin are not easily separated. It may be that I can see and feel the reality of my sins easier than I feel and see the reality of my sin. What do you think?