guise.17
What Is the Human Condition?
If we are commanded to help the oppressed, we need to know who the oppressed are and why they’re oppressed. Is it their own doing, or part of the wages of sin, or does oppression come from the rich and the powerful and the social structures that support the privileged?
To understand oppression, a number of theologians begin by looking at the human condition and by looking at the wages of sin. What is wrong with us? Why is there inequality and oppression? Why did Jesus come to save us? What, and how much, needs saving? Does our Fallen Nature, which is explained by the story of Adam and Eve, express why life has to be this difficult? What can be done to bring us back to the blessings of the Kingdom?
There are many interpretations of the Fall of Adam and Eve and what that Fall means for us. Some say it’s a story about the fall from obedience to disobedience, from innocence to corruption, from unity to separation. An interpretation that is particularly meaningful to me comes from Protestant theologian Paul Tillich. He points out when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, everything was in harmony and in unity. They were in harmony with each other, in harmony with the Garden, in harmony with the animals, and in harmony with God. They walked in the cool of the evening with God. Obedience was not a problem. They had what they needed. It was, truly, Paradise.
The Fall, then, was the fall into disharmony, or what Tillich calls alienation or estrangement from God. The curse Adam and Eve received, and therefore we all receive, was alienation on every level. No longer would the plants easily grow when Adam tilled the soil. After the Fall, he worked by the sweat of his brow. No longer were Adam and Eve in harmony with each other. He dominated her, and yet she couldn’t escape her desire for him. No longer were they in harmony with God. They were exiled from the Garden, where they had once walked so easily and closely with God. Immediately after the Fall came the violence of brother against brother, when Cain killed Abel. Then came disharmony in families, disharmony as societies began to form. There was violence over territory, violence over imposing one law over another, disobedience both relationally and socially. On every level, we were no longer free, complete, fulfilled, and joyful.
With the coming of Christ, we are given the opportunity to move back into harmony with God. Our alienation and separation are overcome. The atonement brings us back into at-one-ment with God, through Christ. We are moved to express our regained freedom and joy by allowing Christ to work in our lives and by responding to others, as he responded to all of us.
Every part of our lives, and therefore every part of our society, can be touched by Christ—if we work toward allowing it to be. In fact, many Christians would say when the Holy Spirit works in our lives, we are continually and naturally moved into compassionate action with everyone around us—in our relationships with others, in our relationships with our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, our country, as well as globally. Christ is not limited. In an ever-expanding circle of life, we are called into the national and international arena, to express our faith in our world, to create justice, and to bring mercy.
Fighting Oppression Within and Without
Oppression happens individually, relationally, socially, and politically. Individually, we are in bondage. We are burdened and weighed down. This can be expressed in many ways. We might feel restless, as if we can find no peace within ourselves. Everything irritates us. We are impatient; we are afraid. We feel hopeless, unloved, uncared for. We are in a state of separation. We feel abandoned and cannot get connected. We are having trouble finding our way.
Salvation begins on the individual level. In my own experience, I began to find peace through daily reading of the Bible and other spiritual works. I began to feel connected to something bigger than myself and felt a Presence that could guide me and comfort me. I found a particularly helpful Bible verse to be: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be yours as well.”18 I began to feel, unless I found inner freedom and peace, I would continue to have trouble relating to the world and contributing to the world.
As I moved my faith into relationship, I struggled with pride and envy. I competed with others. I was jealous of everyone who had more than I did, or who seemed to have an easier life. After some years, I was able (with God’s help) to see competitors as colleagues and begin relating easily to them. I began to find freedom as I entered more actively into a religious community. As a student at Colorado College, I began to attend Bible studies with the Navigators, a conservative Christian group.
Later, my Quaker community, both locally and internationally, nurtured me into moving my faith into the world. Quakers believe when we pray, meditate, and wait and listen to the Holy Spirit, we will naturally be moved into social action.
For each of us, that social action will take different forms—whether to visit the prisons, to feed the homeless, to help educate others, to help the jobless learn skills and find jobs, to build homes for others, to start recycling centers, to plant trees, to care for animals, to work for equality, to change the laws of our land to better help others—the list is, of course, endless.
For many of us, there is a point in our spiritual journey when we realize we need to make changes in our larger social world in order to help the oppressed. Oppression can come from oppressive organizations, laws, social structures, financial institutions, or governments. We might find we can’t help the outcasts and those left behind because an oppressive government has declared our interference illegal. We can’t help the prisoners who are tortured or executed, because we’ll be imprisoned ourselves. We watch the innocent victims of oppressive governments and of war, and realize we can no longer work individually, but need to do something to address the root of the problem at the political level.
Working for God’s Kingdom
A number of Christian denominations interpret the work of Jesus as being political and social work, not just work for the individual soul. This is true among the mainline and more liberal Christian churches, which have tended to be more attentive to the poor and needy. Increasingly, this has been a concern of the more conservative churches as well. In 2005, the National Evangelical Conference called for “greater Christian involvement in society including: poverty, human rights and justice.” In a paper titled “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility,” which is the paper put out by the National Association of Evangelicals, there is a list of a number of specific issues Evangelicals are called to address: “disaster relief, refugee resettlement, and the fights against AIDS/HIV, human rights abuses, slavery, sexual trafficking, and prison rape.” It goes on to list the “protection and well-being of families and children, of the poor, the sick, the disabled, and the unborn, for the persecuted and oppressed, and of the rest of the created order.”
The paper recognized we are called to work for God’s kingdom,19 which would be a kingdom marked by “justice, peace, forgiveness, restoration and healing for all.” We are to “demonstrate God’s love for all, by crossing racial, ethnic, economic, and national boundaries.”
Liberal denominations probably would add to this list, by clarifying that we are to work for gender equality and to show God’s love for homosexuals as well. Who is to address these problems? Democrats would say individuals, churches, and the nations. In the Democratic Platform for 2008 and 2012, the Platform contains around fifteen pages about the need for the government to also address the poor and the needy. Who are these people? According to the Democrats, they are workers including women who have trouble supporting their families because they do not receive equal pay for equal work. They are veterans who return from war, physically and mentally wounded, who need health care and other forms of therapy. They are victims of disasters; some of these disasters come as a result of pollutants and climate change. They are Native Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, widows, the aged, battered women and children, LGBT youth and adults. They include victims of hate crimes, the unemployed who are trying
