dispensers of false generosity

Sunday January 17th, Psalm 96: Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. Both High and Low find refuge in the shadow of your wings,….Thank you Lord. It is easy for those on the bottom to point to the ones on the top as the problem but mostly today what you hear is the ones the top pointing to the ones on the bottom as the problem. The reality is that one group does not liberate the other or save the other or give the other meaning, but that the children of God working together help liberate one another. The first thing to be recognized is that everyone has been given gifts from God. Failure to see the “other” as your brother or sister in Christ is to “cut off your nose to spite you face.” The ones at the top however will seldom if ever see this as an area to pursue and thus the task of liberation falls most often on those at the bottom. “This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power; cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to “soften” the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source.” (the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire)
In God’s world, we need one another and when we begin to recognize that, we begin to recognize the glory of God’s creation.