Liberation Theology
via robot-heart-politics: azspot:
“It’s not hard to see what Beck has against “liberation theology.” It’s the same reason people are often against “social justice.” Both ideas ask us to consider the plight of the poor. And that’s disturbing. Some liberation theologians even consider the poor to be privileged carriers of God’s grace. In his book The True Church and the Poor, Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit theologian wrote, “The poor are accepted as constituting the primary recipients of the Good News and, therefore, as having an inherent capacity of understanding it better than anyone else.” That’s pretty threatening for any comfortable Christian. For not only do we have to help the poor, not only do we have to advocate on their behalf, we also have to see them as perhaps understanding God better than we do. But that’s not a new idea: It goes back to Jesus. The poor, the sick and the outcast “got” him better than the wealthy did. Perhaps because there was less standing between the poor and God. Less stuff. Maybe that’s why Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew, “If you wish to be perfect, sell all you have, and you will have treasure in heaven, and follow me.” Like I said, pretty disturbing, then and now. It’s hardly “the opposite of the Gospel,” as Beck said. The opposite of the Gospel would be to acquire wealth and fail to work on behalf of the poor.”—Glenn Beck vs. Christ the Liberator
I remember reading this type of Christian belief in something about Mother Theresa, she held the thought that helping the poor was the way to heaven, that through them you got closer to Jesus. This left her open to criticism because her methods seemed to focus on comforting the poor rather than trying to decrease actual poverty. In the article, Rev. James Martin also points out it’s problematic to box the poor as poor.
Anyway, it’s not as simple as love thy neighbor and the complexities vary based on who you talk to. If you talk to Glenn Beck however, a little dash of insanity makes it into the conversation. Besides the fact that it’s highly suspicious this new Beck tactic follows on the heels of increasingly loud anti-Muslim rhetoric, he assumes enough people are going to believe he’s got a line into Obama’s personal religious beliefs because Obama certainly isn’t talking about it or going all out to help close economic gaps. I can’t even imagine the mess he made on his chalkboard coming up with this one.


