Overview:
In “Faith Works: How Faith-based Organizations are Changing Lives, Neighborhoods and America”, Jim Wallis presents an incarnational manifesto; a roadmap toward genuine, relevant engagement with the most pressing social issues in America today, written across the lives of many people of faith who have themselves – in one form or another – actively engaged with these issues over the course of the last several decades. With an aim to draw the reader up into his vision of a socially responsible faith, Wallis weaves his own musings together with the stories of those people with whom he has labored alongside over the course of his own journey of Faith and Justice, formulating, in the end, a “How To” manual of sorts for faithful social engagement. The volume is broken into five major ‘movements’ within the whole, each broken down into several chapters: “Engage Your World”, “Deepen Your Understanding”, “Learn Your Strategy”, “Guide Your Steps” and finally, “Think Movement”. Given the scope of this work as a whole, there is presently only space here to reflect but briefly upon two particular aspects of Wallis’ thought which happened to stand out to me.
Listening to Those Closest to the Problem:
Under the banner of “Deepen(ing) Your Understanding”, Wallis writes this in chapter 6:
“Whom do we listen to and whom do we trust? Trust is essential to listening. Why do we continue to believe the myth that poor people don’t know anything and can’t be trusted? Where do you really find more truth about a society – at the top or at the bottom? Are the best solutions conceived in the corridors of power or in the neighborhoods? Do the poor really have no assets or resources, as most people think? Listening to the poor opens up whole new possibilities, ideas, and directions in overcoming poverty… Many youth and community-serving programs have found… they couldn’t get off the ground until they began to truly trust and engage and involve the people they were trying to serve. Many good and decent programs didn’t become highly successful until the poor themselves were given a real hearing, and became involved in their leadership.” (Wallis, p.105-106)
Why do we believe the myth that poor people don’t know anything and can’t be trusted? We choose to believe this myth (whether explicitly or implicitly) because, most times it’s simply easier to be paternalistic than it is to actually develop meaningful partnership within the communities we wish to serve. It’s just easier; more orderly, less risky, less messy to plan and strategize and scheme from the relative safety of the places and conversations within which we ourselves are already familiar and comfortable. To invite those closest to the problem into the conversation is to risk the conversation being changed in ways for which we are not prepared. It is to risk have deeper issues exposed; issues that we may not feel prepared to deal with. It is to risk becoming exposed ourselves; our mixed motives and gaps in competence suddenly and uncomfortably laid bare.
Why do we choose to operate in this way? Because a program – if we’re honest - is pretty easy to run; to genuinely come alongside real people, on the other hand, poses a much greater challenge. When we stop to listen, we acknowledge that we are entering relationship with real people, not merely crafting a program to solve a logistical puzzle. This two-way street of relationship brings to light layers of complexity that simple logistics just don’t confront us with. Which is why, given our druthers, we often find ourselves more inclined to programs than to people. Unfortunately (or fortunately), sustainable and meaningful engagement with issues of injustice cannot be found in paternalistic, programmatic sterility of this sort. Rather, it requires that we commit ourselves to people, not merely programs, and to developing functional, relational partnerships within the communities we seek to serve. It requires that we listen, dialogue, and risk the vulnerability of being laid bare in our own sin and incompetence as we engage with the real complexities of human and systemic brokenness to seek God together for the way ahead.
There is nothing easy about this. But, it is the way of the incarnation, and it is the path to resurrection that comes by way of the Cross. It is the way of Jesus, and so we must follow him into this if we are to follow him at all.
Keeping it Human:
In reflecting upon his own journey, and the lessons learned along the way, Wallis continues with the following:
“In the struggle for social change, it is very important to take care of one another – our families, our kids and ourselves. The human dimension is so easy to lose and so crucial to maintain. It’s so important to stay grounded, not to get too grandiose or self-important, keep humble, and, above all, keep your sense of humor” (Wallis, p.268-269)
If paternalism and programmaticism are the traps we fall into when we forget the humanity of those whom we are seeking to serve, there is another breed of pitfall that comes about when we, along the way, forget our own. This is, in many ways, what makes ‘activism’ so unattractive to many of us: when the only people we know as ‘social activists’ seem to be young, hard-bitten leftists with an axe to grind, a lot of spare time and very few familial constraints or societal responsibilities outside those of ‘the cause’, it can become difficult to relate or to imagine how the rest of us might fit in to the picture except as the occasional, seemingly complacent, objects of activist’s vitriol. The effect is particularly numbing because, if history has taught us anything, it is that the journey of seeing God’s redemptive justice worked out within human society is a long, tiresome, frustrating one in which success can only ever be measured by degrees. This is no sprint, but a marathon in the truest, most Pauline sense, and one which often has more to do with what God is drawing out in us than with our tangible personal impact upon society. If we are to respond to the call of justice in any sustainable way, it must be as human beings and fellow sojourners, rather than as human bullhorns and self-made martyrs. To have any lasting impact, this call must reach more broadly than merely to those naturally inclined activists among us.
While I can certainly still be impressed by the radical commitment and sacrifice of single twenty-somethings to a cause, and can still admit the ways in which youth movements will continue to play a prophetic role in stirring society at large from our places of systemic sin and complacency, I find myself in a place where this is no longer the most compelling vision for me. The bigger challenge, and the more compelling vision, lies in the question of what it looks like to take a community of those people who are just a bit further down the road, people with jobs and spouses and children – people with roots and responsibilities – and to discover with them where the journey of radical, costly discipleship might take us. Ordinary people, with all the burdens and constraints of ordinary life, figuring out how to follow wholeheartedly after an extraordinary God; a God of redemption, salvation, justice and righteousness. A God with a heart for the downtrodden and oppressed who calls us to share that heart.
What might it look like for a plumber, an electrician, a teacher, a businessman or a waitress to become kingdom-minded ‘activists’? This is the question that stirs my heart today. And, for this question to have any traction or genuine effect, we must understand our activism as human activism; we must pursue justice as people on a journey, compelled by our surrender to the Spirit of God Himself into the challenge and frustration and labor pains of this work, but also into joy and life; fullest life. This is the heart of the Gospel; may we, as followers of Jesus, be captured and compelled by it.
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