Matthew 19:21
Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
“Love of neighbor is an essential component of Christian life. But as long as I apply that term only to people who cross my path, and come asking me for help, my world will remain pretty much the same. Individual almsgiving is a type of love that never leaves its front porch… On the other hand, my world will change greatly if I go out to meet other people on their path and consider them as my neighbor… the gospel tells us that the poor are the supreme embodiment of our neighbor.”
Matthew 25:40
"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for ME.'
Matthew 25:45
"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for ME.'
But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.
-- Gustavo Gutierrez
"When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises." (8/6/78). -- The Church: Called to Repentance, Called to Prophecy
Stop The Repression
"Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. ...In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression"
"Our church is an impostor, because we no longer believe the gospel we proclaim. There is a credibility gap between what we say and what we do. While we may preach sermons that affirm the church's interests in the poor and the downtrodden, what we actually do shows that we are committed to the "American way of life," in which the rich are given privileged positions of power in shaping the life and activity of the church, and the poor are virtually ignored. As a rule, the church's behavior toward the poor is very similar to the society at large: The poor are charity cases...It is appalling to see some black churches adopting this condescending attitude toward the victims, because these churches were created in order to fight against slavery and injustice. For many slaves, the Black Church was God's visible instruments for freedom and justice. Therefore, to have contemporary middle-class black Christians treating the poor as second-class members of the church is a disgrace not only to the scripture but also to our black religious heritage."
Cone is telling us that injustice itself is violence, and that we can’t get rid of violence unless we transform the social structure that creates violence. He urges us to learn how to “unpack tricky language” and take on pulling the wool off so that the world can see violence as it is.
"being black in America has very little to do with skin color. To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are...[It] does not mean that one's skin is physically black.1"
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
We do not make rational liberty, we find it. We do not create it. We allow it.--- response to Erik Weil.
Eric Weil, ‘‘What is a Breakthrough in
History?’’ Daedalus, Spring 1975;, pp. 21-36;.
1. James Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (Seabury Press, 1969), p. 151.
