This past week, I attended a webinar involving Miguel De La Torre, a theologian and ethicist who holds a professorship at the Iliff School of Theology. I have known of Dr. De La Torre for many years, having first been introduced to him by our former Regional Executive Minister, Larry Greenfield.
In his writing and teaching, De La Torre speaks with, to, and for the oppressed. Many of his books have in their titles or concepts doing ethics or reading a person “from the margins.” One from 2017 on my yet-to-be-read list is titled “Embracing Hopelessness.” These are not easy books to read, especially if you are not wanting to be challenged.
But as the webinar progressed, and as De La Torre responded to questions and comments from other participants, I realized another reason that his books were so challenging. A person resisted the premise of “Embracing Hopelessness,” describing how vital hope is to their expression of the Christian tradition including (and especially) when experiencing hardship. De La Torre nodded in a way that told me he’d heard this objection a thousand times, and then he simply said: “Then my book isn’t for you.”
He told of someone he was close to who was helping him editing the draft of the book before it came out. They got sent to prison, and asked to bring the draft with them. They started a book group in prison reading his manuscript. “Those guys all got it,” De La Torre said. He told other stories too.
It reminded me of something a professor of mine — Dr. Thomas B. Slater — always said of the book of Revelation (and apocalyptic literature in general: “If you don’t find Revelation hopeful, you don’t know what it means to suffer.”
Obviously, these pericopes underscore how when we aren’t the intended audience, we might not understand what the author is about.
But more than that, it occurs to me how often we assume that we must be the intended audience, or that we must understand everything no matter who its audience or author happens to be, or that we are willing to twist and distort beyond recognition what we do not understand instead of accept that it “isn’t for us” — and perhaps face the reasons why that is.
Sometimes, if we investigate those reasons, it may turn out that we aren’t the “sufferer” or the “oppressed,” but rather we are on the other side of the equation.
May God liberate us from our hubris, and from our blind complicity.
Remember, we’re all in this together.
Pastor Michael