Posted by Rachel on: 07.30.2007 /
The following is excerpted from an interview with Ruth Padilla Deborst in the August 2007 issue of Christianity Today. Padilla Deborst is a distinguished theologian and educator and current president of the Latin American Theological Fellowship. She will be a featured presenter at the 2007 OTM conference Hear. Listen. Connect.
What good, if any, can come from North American Christians having such a concentration of wealth and power?
I don’t think it’s very useful to say, I’m sorry I have so much power. I wish I didn’t have it. Or for individual North Americans to try to erase that inequality personally. You could step out of the grid, but the grid still exists. Rather, I think you need to say, I do have power. Whom is it supposed to serve?
The free-trade agreements between our countries are supposedly about giving people opportunity. There’s something to that: Part of human dignity is the capacity to work. But people need to be granted that option. How can free-trade agreements really be free when this country subsidizes its agriculture and other industries in order to favor its own interests? North American Christians can do something about this with their own political power - by calling for trade agreements that are both free and fair.
But there is more to life than money and comfort. The resources some of these poor people have for coping with life and for understanding others makes them very rich - in other currency. The best experiences, to me, of Americans that have joined us in Latin America have taken place when people have recognized that. They may come with wealth and education. But they encounter brothers and sisters with valuable strengths and insights they don’t have, and they are willing to learn in order to partner in God’s mission.
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Comment by: Joe
1 07/30/07 4:04 AM | Comment Link |I think it is both/and. We do have a responsibility to use the power that we have, but we also have a responsibility to reduce our own self importance and to raise up the poor and weak.
Comment by: benjamin ady
2 07/30/07 1:24 PM | Comment Link |Certainly I percive myself as a person with power. I also perceive myself as powerless. It’s a strange juxtaposition I hadn’t noticed before your question. I seem to have power when I look … outward–outside of myself, and I seem powerless when I look inward, into myself.
Trade agreement–Can they be free and fair. Seems to me if they could, then there would be concrete examples. I know very little about international trade. Are there such examples?
From cultures less economically wealthy than my own I have learned that one can be reasonably happy and feel reasonably fulfilled at economic levels well below my own. However, I’m convinced there’s a very low economic level at which such is *not* possible. Wealth and it’s pursuit seem to operate agains community, in my fairly limited experience. pursuit of wealth seems to be very connected to pursuit of autonomy and independence. “Autonomy” must mean literally “self named”. personal wealth means I can self name, and thus need not depend on my group to name me. There is a rather enormous loss there–although certainly a certain gain as well.
One thing I’ve notice more and more about myself over this summer is that I very nearly have no community outside my immediate family. This may not be objectively true–but it *feels* true. I and my immediate family could, for instance, up stakes and … more or less disappear (take the witness protection program as a for instance), and not much of anybody would be *super* bothered. My sense has been, in less wealthy cultures where I’ve interacted with people, is that this is less true for people in general there than it is here. There’s a sense of belonging and place and looking out for each other that is almost entirely absent in suburban west coast america.
Intriguing questions. Just rambling a bit in response.
Comment by: Hear Listen Connect - Off The Map Live
3 07/30/07 5:33 PM | Comment Link |[...] us on the Off the Map blog Justice and Compassion for a discussion of a Christianity Today interview with conference presenter Ruth Padilla [...]