This:

Their hearts are still soft and malleable. Below the wounds of their oppression they are often open to others…and open to God.

...sounds very close to what I think makes up Jesus’ assertion that the poor are indeed blessed.

Thanks for this.

Peace,

Eric

But I think it is more complex than this because although it may initially be more difficult for these oppressed peoples to be open and trust, once they do they are often empathetic. Their hearts are still soft and malleable. Below the wounds of their oppression they are often open to others…and open to God.

Then to take this a step further, I think that the wounds of oppression go both ways, afflicting the rich and the poor. Wendall Berry quotes The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “But I want to tell you something. This pattern, this ‘system’ that the white man created, of teaching Negroes to hide the truth from him behind a facade of grinning, ‘yessir-bossing,’ foot-shuffling and head-scratching-that system has done the American white man more harm than an invading army would do to him.” I think this means that we can listen to both the voice of the rich and the voice of the poor because we all have wounds that make us more sensitive to God and to each other.

I guess it really depends on what “poor” actually means. Most of the financially poor that I know actually happen to be truly poor in other ways, though: physical or mental health, screwed over by various institutions, etc.

Thoughts? From the sound of it, it seems like we hang out with similar peeps.

All that makes sense, but what I don’t yet understand is what it looks like. Anything other than a sinners-prayer for forgiveness type salvation either seems to emphasize works over grace (i.e. salvation is by living how Jesus lived) or tend towards universalism (i.e. Jesus bridged the divine-earth gap so we’re all saved). I have a feeling I’m seeing it wrong, but right now I’m having trouble picturing it otherwise…

All this thinking about how we need others to unsettle our doctrines of God reminds me of something I recently read about Gregory of Nyssa. For Nyssa, abstract formulations of God’s being don’t do much. He writes, “The divine nature in and of itself is unapproachable and inaccessible to human conjecture. He who by nature is above every nature, who is both beyond the senses and beyond the mind, is seen and grasped by some other method.” And this other method is discipleship (See Rowan Williams wonderful account of Nyssa in The Wound of Knowledge , 61). In Alex Sider’s essay on negative theology and social justice is helpful here. He shows how for Gregory of Nyssa (and other negative theologians) “there is no more determinative knowledge of God than…imitat[ing] the incarnate Christ in his acts of love, poverty, and compassion…. Negative theology is useful because it points out the resourcelessness of any Christian spirituality, ethics, or dogmatics abstracted from a tenacious following after Christ.” All this says to me that our desire to know God should make us turn to those who tenaciously follow after Christ, in the way of Jesus. Discipleship is christology , as John Yoder puts it. Our way into the reality of God is faithful living, and listening to those who are blessed to see the kingdom of God—i.e., those who Luke identifies as the poor and oppressed. Their “simple” accounts of God are more profound than the most powerful theological elite. They know what the poverty of Jesus feels like; they know what the crucifying powers of the world look like. And it’s against that stark backdrop that we can see most clearly the Light of heaven, the God who is with us.

peace,

Eric