Theology for the Masses

From Julia Esquivel in Threatened with Resurrection: Prayers and Poems from an Exiled Guatemalan (Elgin: The Brethern Press, 1982), 79-91.  I love how it uses Biblical language and themes to remind us at what price our comfort comes.  I’m thinking hard this holiday season about the intersection between religion, politics, exploitation, and thankfulness.  I pray that we can slow our lives down to the point that we loose our lusts of luxury.

In the third year of the massacres
by Lucas and the other coyotes
against the poor of Guatemala
I was lead by the Spirit into the desert

And on that eve
of Thanksgiving Day
I had a vision of Babylon:

The City sprang forth arrogantly
from an enormous platform
of dirty smoke produced
by motor vehicles, machinery
and contamination from smokestacks.

It was as it all the petroleum
from a violated earth
was being consumed
by the Lords of capital
and was slowly rising
obscuring the face
of the Sun of Justice
and the Ancient of Days

Each day false prophets
invited the inhabitants
of the Unchaste City
to kneel before the idols
of gluttony
money
and death
Idolaters from all nations
were being converted to the American Way of Life

The Spirit told me
in the River of death
flows the blood of many peoples
sacrificed without mercy
and removed a thousand times from their lands
the blood of Kekchis, of Panzos
of blacks from Hati of Guaranis from Paraguay
of the peoples sacrificed for “development”
in the Trans-Amazonic strip
the blood of the Indians’ ancestors
who lived on these lands, of those who
even now are kept hostage in the Great Mountain
and on the Black Hills of Dakota
by the guardians of the beast…

My soul was tortured like this
for three and a half days
and a great weariness weighted upon my breast
I felt the suffering of my people very deeply!

In tears I prostrated myself
and cried out: “Lord, what can i do?
Come to me Lord, I wish to die among my people!
Without strength, I waited for an answer.
After a long silence
and heavy obscurity
The One who sits on the throne
to JUDGE THE NATIONS
spoke in a soft whisper
in the secret recesses of my heart:

You have to denounce their idolatry
in good times and in bad
Force them to hear the truth
for what is impossible to humans
is possible for God.

A while back, after reading Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, some friends and I decided to stop dumping and start investing the in poor.  We (well, I) had (ve) always bemoaned the idea of dumping aid.  I really felt like giving a man a fish every day kept him dependant upon me for the fishes. 

He’d become my slave.

My slave to my generosity.

It was almost as though my guilt was fueling my giving so that my conscious could be satisfied.

Oh my, “My” showed up a lot in those sentences, didn’t it? That’s just the problem.  While we have the most abundant educational and monetary resources on earth, we want to free people, both from poverty and aid.  (We don’t want a newer, nicer, colonialism, right?)

What Christian have done in the past is turn to education.  If we empower people with knowledge, they can build a better lives for themselves and  their communities. What we found was that people, once educated, left their impoverished homes and went West.  There was no credit, no opportunity in their homelands. Our education was actually a brain drain on the poor!

You can teach a man to fish, but if there is no pond and no fish in that pond, he’ll go find such a pond.

Opportunity International builds ponds and stocks them with fish.:

Opportunity offers a mix of loan products, including individual loans, group loans, and loans tailored to clients in areas such as education and agriculture. A typical first point of entry, the Trust Group brings together 10 to 30 entrepreneurs who elect leaders, receive training and pledge to guarantee each other’s loans. Because the group guarantee replaces the need for collateral, credit becomes available to those previously locked out from formal financial services.

Libier Flores Lopez opened a sewing buisiness near Guadalajara, Mexico, with no White Savior ^TM in sight.

Because they lend to a group of people, they become accountable to one another and to the group itself.  This, in my opinion, is the genius here.  Not only are the opening credit to people who can’t get it through other means, they are creating trust and accountability in these communities.  Furthermore, because the individuals have to pay back the group, and the group, Opportunity International, the gift of 1,000 to the organization is given time and time again.

While other aid organizations do good work, I encourage you to take a look at microfinance institutions such as Kiva and Opportunity International.  They don’t dump, and they don’t exploit.  The teach people how to fish and give them the tools to succeed.

From the article:

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It was at that point that Saima signed up with the Kashf Foundation, a Pakistani microfinance organization that lends tiny amounts of money to poor women to start businesses. Kashf is typical of microfinance institutions, in that it lends almost exclusively to women, in groups of 25. The women guarantee one another’s debts and meet every two weeks to make payments and discuss a social issue, like family planning or schooling for girls. A Pakistani woman is often forbidden to leave the house without her husband’s permission, but husbands tolerate these meetings because the women return with cash and investment ideas.

Saima took out a $65 loan and used the money to buy beads and cloth, which she transformed into beautiful embroidery that she then sold to merchants in the markets of Lahore. She used the profit to buy more beads and cloth, and soon she had an embroidery business and was earning a solid income — the only one in her household to do so. Saima took her elder daughter back from the aunt and began paying off her husband’s debt.

When merchants requested more embroidery than Saima could produce, she paid neighbors to assist her. Eventually 30 families were working for her, and she put her husband to work as well — “under my direction,” she explained with a twinkle in her eye. Saima became the tycoon of the neighborhood, and she was able to pay off her husband’s entire debt, keep her daughters in school, renovate the house, connect running water and buy a television.

“Now everyone comes to me to borrow money, the same ones who used to criticize me,” Saima said, beaming in satisfaction. “And the children of those who used to criticize me now come to my house to watch TV.”

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Other great microfinance institutions: Kiva and Opportunity International.