Christians are in the world, but they are not of the world, they don’t live like many, immersed in pure worldliness, but they understand life as a pilgrimage to the Father’s house – we don’t have a permanent address here, we are on our way to the true homeland (Hebrews 13:14).
This is the revealed truth and as such is indisputable. However, since the early Christians were convinced that Christ’s second coming was at hand (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17), or perhaps under the influence of Greek philosophy, they stood accused, in their time, of not being good citizens and not participating in social life, of living apart with a ghetto mentality.
The individual and social project of Jesus of Nazareth
This was definitely not the life philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth as the synoptic Gospels describe it. Jesus came into the world not to condemn it, but to save it (John 3:17). This salvation, which we must understand as health, appears in the Gospels under two spheres: individual and social.
At the individual level, Jesus presents himself as the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), as the model and reference of what is truly and genuinely human. Jesus is indeed true man and true God: 100% man and 100% God. Therefore in this world, anyone who desires to be authentically human must have Jesus as the reference, the model and paradigm. Jesus spent much of his life healing and restoring spiritual, psychological, moral and physical health to all who crossed his path.
Universal brother, adopted children
Still at the human level, Jesus sanctified and purified humanity by becoming man, and by his resurrection, he made death not a destiny but a passage to eternal life. By his ascension, he raised humanity, purified by him in his incarnation into Heaven. Before Jesus, we were simply God’s creatures, for God had only one son, begotten not created, while we are created not begotten. Jesus became our universal brother by giving us his Father as our Father, and by directing us, in the prayer that he taught us, to his Father as our Father. Jesus made us adopted children, and therefore co-heirs to eternal life.
Transforming the world into the kingdom of God
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:9-10
It is the first petition in the prayer that the Lord taught us, not least because He had already instructed us on another occasion to seek first the kingdom of God in our work in this world then the rest would be given to us as well (Matthew 6:33), that is, the rest should not occupy or worry us.
And for those who do not know or at the moment may have forgotten what is truly the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven for Matthew, his definition is already found in the same Our Father prayer: it is a society or world where God’s will is truly done on earth as it is in heaven. Like much of Jesus’ preaching was done in the context of a meal, using the banquet as a metaphor for the Kingdom of God, many Christians may have interpreted Jesus’ parables to the letter, even thinking that the Kingdom of God was a feast. Saint Paul came to correct this idea by saying, “For the Kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17
At the social level, we see Jesus fully integrated in the society with the project of transforming the world into the Kingdom of God. All the synoptic Gospels mention it, especially the Gospel of Matthew which contains the largest collection of parables about the kingdom of God, which he prefers to call the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is true that we are not of the world, that we have no permanent address here, but while we are on our way towards Him we can be like the broken clay pot that leaks water wherever we pass leaving a trail of flowers growing behind us. We must not be like the other clay pot without any holes that keeps all its energy intact and immaculate and does nothing with it.
“…I am among you as one who serves” Luke 22:27
“…the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve…” Matthew 20:28
Jesus is not oblivious to the problems in the world and is not only interested in saving the redeemed, while letting his disciples and the rest of the world perish. Jesus came to save the whole world and outlined for that purpose a social project that is the Kingdom of God. In the Sermon of the Mount, chapter 5 to 7 of Matthew’s Gospel, he writes the constitution, that is, the fundamental law by which this kingdom should be directed.
Already… but not yet…
But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. Matthew 12:28
Jesus’ actions, as seen by his behaviour, words and deeds, are the beginning of this Kingdom of God. He kicks it off, although he understands that the Kingdom will not reach its fullness in his own human lifetime. He knows this from the very beginning and therefore chooses 12 out of his many disciples to continue his work.
These disciples constitute the Church which, in itself, must be the yeast that will leaven the entire dough of the world and turn it into bread for all (Matthew 13:33). The Church does not exist for itself, it has a mission: to bring the Good News of the Kingdom to the whole creation (Mark 16:15).
In this sense, it should not engage in confrontations with other religions or men of good will. On the contrary, since all religions seek to humanize Man and society, the Church should join forces and efforts with those who seek to make this world a more dignified place, and this society a kingdom of justice, peace and integrity of Creation.
The Church has a mission, the same as its founder: to continue his work, his project of transforming this world into the Kingdom of God. The Church does this in each and every Christian who lives committed to the struggle for justice and peace, some even to the point of giving their lives like the Master. But it also has a doctrine consisting of writings and papal encyclicals, which have been written by popes throughout the ages on social issues; the entire body of these writings is called the Church’s social doctrine.
From the first encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 (“of the new things” – on the conditions of working classes) by Pope Leo XIII to the last one Laudato Si in 2015 (“on care of our common home” – on the ecology) by Pope Francis, the Church has poured out the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ on all the social issues that afflict humanity, seeking to enlighten these concerns with this Gospel, and seeking solutions together with the rest of society.
History of the method
I have shown confidence in young people’s freedom in order to better educate that (religious) freedom. I helped them to SEE, JUDGE and ACT by themselves, by undertaking social and cultural action themselves, freely obeying authorities in order to become adult witnesses of Christ and the Gospel, conscious of being responsible for their sisters and brothers in the world. Father Joseph Cardjin, 1965
Joseph Cardjin was a Belgian priest, spiritual guide and founder of the Young Christian Workers (YCW) who aimed to overcome the dichotomy between faith and life, by bringing faith to life and everyday life to the areas in the Church in order to be analyzed in the light of the Gospel. It was in the sixties when it was said that we should be Christians in the politics and militants in the Church, that we should have the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other. The method, which was initially born as a method of reviewing the life of YCW, began to be used also by Catholic Action, an organization that also sought to bring faith to life, with the aim of transforming history according to the criteria of the Gospel.
Since its inception, the method of See-Judge-Act has been the ex libris of Christians’ actions in society. Pope John XXIII cites this method in his encyclical Mater ed Magistra in 1961. The Latin American bishops used it in the Medellin Conference in 1968 in Colombia, 1979 in Puebla, 1992 in Santo Domingo and 2007 in Aparecida. Of all these conferences, the most important was the first for giving rise to two major currents in Latin American Church: one for the militant or popular Church (the Basic Ecclesial Communities or small Christian communities as they are known in Africa), the other for the thinking Church (Liberation Theology).
Biblical foundation of the method
Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…’ Exodus 3:7-8
God is omnipresent, he does not sleep and sees well what is happening to his people. He knows the situation because he evaluates it, knows the root of the problem, knows the remote cause of this suffering: the exile in Egypt, the slavery to which the Jews were subjected. He knows the recent causes of this suffering: tougher laws, higher daily quotas with less means to meet them, and the harsh punishment by the inspectors who enforce these laws. Finally, God decides to free his people from the land of Egypt, a radical decision because in this case there were no half measures to be taken.
(...) so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it. Isaiah 41:20
After narrating all that God has done for his people, the prophet Isaiah concludes by inviting the people to see all that the Lord has accomplished, to understand this intellectually, and finally to surrender to the evidence and adhere wholeheartedly to his teachings, to do his will. A Christian sees the world and its suffering with the eyes of the FATHER, he judges by the criteria of the SON and acts under the promptings and guidance of the HOLY SPIRIT.
Seeing with the FATHER’s eyes
The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! Matthew 6:22-23
Observing without judging
It is true that the goal of “seeing” in this first stage of Christian social action does not coincide with the “observing” of the Non-Violent Communication that we have previously discussed. However, we can learn and apply here something from the philosophy of this theory. A good observation is what a video camera objectively captures and then plays back, without subtracting or adding. It simply describes what happens, leaving out any interpretations, commentaries, judgments or assessments.
This is easy to say but hard to put into practice. When we relate what is happening, we usually do it with an assessment and often even forget what really happened and just mention our evaluation. For example, we say that John is a good guy, when we should be saying that we saw John defending a colleague who was being bullied.
Seeing with a child’s eyes
A child has no prejudices or preconceived ideas, he looks at reality and relates it with extreme accuracy and sincerity, even to the point of disconcerting us adults. From a physical point of view, if we don’t suffer from myopia, we don’t preserve as adults the clear vision we had as children. Similar to eyes with cataracts, in the interior vision this corresponds to the filters we put over our eyes in order to see what we want to see and turning a blind eye to what we don’t want to see.
We lose our peripheral vision and end up with a reduced field of vision or tunnel vision, like mules that pull wagons with blinders on so not to get distracted or frightened by traffic.
We either see or we interpret
We cannot see and interpret consciously at the same time because they are two different brain functions. Seeing is collecting data, like someone harvesting a crop. In this first step, the important thing is to collect as much data as possible, without discriminating what we collect.
The moment we start analyzing something we have collected, we stop gathering new information. Our eyes may even remain open, but they no longer see. All our attention is now turned inward and fixated on the data that have impacted us and have shut us off against the rest. From this moment on, we assess, interpret, analyze but we no longer see.
Against facts there are no arguments, as the saying goes. Let us know the facts and put aside the arguments because the latter leads to interpretation, ideology and eyes being shut – it is more the reality that escapes us than the reality we collect. According to Aristotle, vision is the most perfect of the senses because it offers evidence; hearing has the mediation of the word. Interpretation is also not possible without words and concepts: what has been observed and reported is a translation of reality, with words and concepts foreign to what we see. As the Italian proverb says, “traitor is the translator”, they are no longer the same.
Projecting ideology into what we see
There is a short story that alludes to this point; we set out into the field of vision with our cultural baggage, our diplomas and what we do. It is not a question of seeing as a child would see, dispassionately, without putting into reality anything that is not there. We set out looking for facts to prove our arguments.
A Spanish priest with all his European baggage, after contemplating for some time the deplorable and miserable situation in which a community of Latin American peasants were living, asked them, “But are you not hungering and thirsting for justice?” They replied, “What is this about, hunger and thirst for justice? We, Father, only know the hunger for bread and the thirst for water.”
Many if not all revolutions were made by harnessing the people and their ignorance: the people did not set out after them. Instead, someone with an ideology informs the people in a simplistic and unilateral or one-sided way in order to raise their spirits. This was how the Bolshevik Revolution began and this is how the current populism works. These are revolutions which in their perspective do not start with the grassroots or address the real problems the people have.
It is said that a monkey and a fish were great friends. They played in the river every day until one day when a lot of rain fell, the river became swollen and the fish tried to swim against the current in order not to be carried away by the rushing water. The monkey seeing this went to save his friend by bringing him ashore. Of course without water the fish began to struggle for its life by thrashing and twisting; the monkey on seeing this said, “I just saved you and you are still protesting.”
Even when the social activist is well-intentioned but if what he does is done unilaterally according to his ideology, inferring and imagining what the needs of the people may be without consulting them, it will be paternalism. We missionaries have seen and done a lot of this with the indigenous peoples and as the result, the “white elephants” that we left behind remain: after we withdrew, the work had no continuation.
Seeing and questioning: the exploratory questions
According to Fr. Joseph Cardjin, as well as all those in the Church who have used this method, our gaze must be one that questions. The more we question, the more reality will open before our eyes. Once again, we must be like a 5-year-old child who questions everything with his endless whys, actively searching to know more.
- What is happening, where, how and when did it start?
- What are the causes, the consequences, who is involved, who is not involved? Isolated or general facts.
- What do those involved and affected have to say, think and feel? How do they conceptualize their experience? What have they tried as solution?
- Discover the attitudes, models, paradigms, traditions, values etc. that may be at the root of what is happening.
The center of attention is the person, not ideas or things. It is an empathic look, a look that arouses feelings; in this sense, it is not indifferent nor neutral, just like God’s gaze on the suffering of the Hebrew people in the land of Egypt was not neutral. God is a God who descends, who weeps with those who weep, as Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus and the ruin of Jerusalem.
When someone can’t make us understand his situation, he may end up saying, “Put yourself in my shoes”. God in Jesus Christ practiced this advice: even to the point of assuming our human nature, he was empathic with us, looked at reality through our eyes, donned our shoes, put on our clothes, and experienced the same suffering as us, all so that he could help us.
Despite of not being neutral, God does not take one side against the other. He takes the side of truth and justice, but still not the side of one against the other. God wants the salvation of the one who suffered the sin as well as the salvation of the one who provoked it: of both the prodigal son and the elder brother. God does not throw the baby out with the bathwater. He who makes rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous distinguishes between the sin and the sinner.
Judging with the SON’s criteria
Judging is a mental act by which we form an opinion about something. It is also the mental act by which we consciously decide that something is one way and not the other, and what to do. But before arriving at the decision, there is much groundwork to be done.
It is often that someone who is standing next to us, observing the same way as we do, ends up asking us what is going on, what is happening. It is one thing to see, and another to understand what we see, interpreting what we see, finding the meaning of what we see, what it means subjectively to each of us and objectively to all.
The Gospels have been written since the first century, and yet the Church debated the entity and mission of Jesus of Nazareth for five centuries. Finally, it succeeded in conceptualizing Jesus’ identity by defining him as true Man and true God at the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451. Just as to see a forest we need to go out of it because we only see trees when we are inside of it, so in order to truly interpret a fact – in this case Jesus of Nazareth – it took distance and time to be able to judge better. The men and women of his days did not arrive at this definition of Jesus’ identity despite having being eyewitnesses to the facts.
Looks can be deceiving
This is a well-known proverb, even in the context of science. Although science needs the five senses to analyze and know what’s real but even science knows that there is more to reality than what the five senses can capture.
For example, we use microscope to arrive at the extremely small world and the telescope to arrive at the extremely far world. And yet, there is more to reality than either a microscope or a telescope can capture. The same is true with sound and objects of other senses.
Another problem is that these very five senses that help us know reality can also deceive us concerning the truth of that same reality. Today we know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but what we see is the Sun revolving around the Earth.
It is necessary to go beyond appearances, to have x-ray vision to see what is behind things, to know how to interpret what happens and see what is happening in the “signs of the times”. Animals are more attentive to these phenomena, and detect storms, hurricanes, lightning, and earthquakes long before they occur, and therefore have time to take precautions.
It was in this sense that Pope John XXIII saw the modern world and the Church, and realized that the Church was out of step with the modern world. For this reason he called on the Second Vatican Council to adapt the Church to modern times. In the tradition of Israel, as described in the Old Testament, this was the function of prophets: to proclaim the will of God, denounce the behaviour contrary to it, and guide God’s people through the tortuous paths of history.
Judging, questioning oneself: questions of understanding
After the exploratory questions to collect as much data as possible on a given problem, it is time to put the data, events, facts and realities on the table, to be analyzed, interpreted and judged. In addition to analyzing, judging also means discerning what is right and what is wrong, and then moving towards a transformative action.
Questions of understanding are similar to exploratory questions, with the difference that the former were posed to learn more, to collect more relevant data, while the latter are questions that the investigator asks himself and which he needs answered to find a satisfactory solution to the problem or situation in question:
- What are the causes of what is happening in the short and long term, what are the agents involved?
- What are the repercussions of what is happening, what are the possible short and long term consequences, and who will suffer them?
- Who benefits, what are the benefits, who has the power, who abuses the power and who does not have the power?
- What are the solutions so that everyone wins, so that there will be justice, peace and harmony?
Judging with the Gospel’s criterion
We are Christians and as such we measure ourselves to Christ who is our reference, both in our thinking and in our acting. We seek to reach the point where St. Paul came to say, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” Galatians 2:20. Christ is our personal criterion, but when it comes to analyzing social problems or situations, the Kingdom of God is our paradigm or model of a society of fraternal coexistence between brothers and sisters, children of the same Father.
There are criteria that serve as a means of assessing reality, law, constitution, etc., in our case, it is the Gospel. A court also judges, sees and acts. When it judges an act, it sets it against the current law and determines whether or not the law was broken. The act is what it is, the Gospel is what it should be; the act is the reality, the law and the Gospel are the ideal.
Jesus did this even in judging, before the Pharisees accusers, whether or not his disciples had broken the law of the Sabbath for eating corn on this day that they had plucked as they walked through cornfields (Mark 2:23). He mentally opened the Bible and looked for an episode in which King David had done something that he was also not permitted to do (1 Samuel 21:6) but which he did guided by his conscience that must discern at every moment what to do and what not to do, and not just blindly obey the law.
All that the Gospel says, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, concerning the Kingdom of God is normative for us, it is our reference in social relationships and represents the path to a more just, fraternal and peaceful society. The situation that we have in front of us certainly has answers in the Bible, especially in the Gospels, and in it we can find similar situations and answers on what to do.
Judging with the human sciences’ criteria
A Christian, unlike others in civil society, is not afraid of science in general, quite the contrary. The latest discoveries, like the theory of relativity, the Big Bang, etc., seem to confirm faith rather than deny it.
In the encyclical Humane Generis of Pope Pius XII, the Church accepts Darwin’s findings, which helped many Christians not to read the book of Genesis to the letter with regard to the creation of human beings, because it is not intended to be a science book.
In the case of abortion, the Church accepts the science that determines that human life begins when a sperm cell from a man joins an egg cell from a woman. The Church, based on science, defends that human life begins from this point. It is the civil society that denies this scientific evidence and legislates based on the lie and pseudo-convenience of some against defenseless human beings in the aborted babies.
The Church even inspires social and legislative actions through its encyclicals. An example of this is the principle of subsidiarity which is now part of the Constitution of the European Union, as well as the Constitution of the United States and which first appeared in 1891, in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum.
Inside the human sciences – sociology, psychology, and philosophy – we must give credit to history. I don’t know to what extent it is true or a myth that history repeats itself. It is probably true, when the same circumstances occur, combined with our human nature that does not change. We do not always learn from past mistakes, thinking that this situation is new. But taking a closer look at the same facts from a historical perspective, it seems effectively that the same mistakes are being made over and over again…
Acting under the prompting and guidance of the HOLY SPIRIT
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. Karl Marx
Karl Marx, consciously or unconsciously, used the method of seeing, judging and acting in his philosophy. He had the merit of integrating practice into philosophy, which until then was a discussion of truths without any practical application. With his historical and dialectical materialism, Marx offered a philosophy that did not stop at opinions, but saw and analyzed the society of his time, more specifically the capitalism of the industrial era, and went into action.
It is true that Marx set out towards this method with a card up his sleeve: the atheistic and materialistic ideology that had been given him by his predecessor Feuerbach, that is, to try to interpret history and the current reality from a materialistic perspective. That was his mistake. As we have said previously, we should observe without any theories in mind; if we don’t, we will only see what confirms the theory that a priori guides our gaze.
The Marxist practice, both from Lenin in the Bolshevik revolution in Russian and from Mao Zedong in the Cultural Revolution in China, is the responsibility of these two men and not of Marx. In fact, in his time there were so many ideas about what Marxism was and was not that even Marx himself ironically claimed that he was not a Marxist.
From Marx we gather his good observation, therefore his gaze, and his judgment based on the generally correct analysis of the problem of capitalism. This analysis was legitimately used in some way by Liberation Theology in Latin America because, as we saw above, the Church must use human sciences in areas where they are experts.
However, the Magisterium of Pope John Paul II did not understand this, I suppose it is because of personal trauma experienced in one of the countries where communist practice failed, Poland. Liberation Theology was condemned en masse and its theologians vilely expelled from their positions.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” – It is one of the ideas that the European society benefited from Marx and on which its social security and the National Health Service are based. The action is the project of transformation of reality and is equivalent to plotting tasks, plans, projects, according to the decisions made in the previous stage. The method is oriented towards the transformation of reality according to the criteria of the Gospel: in transforming the world into the Kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit directs this work, like He directed Jesus’ ministry.
“WWJD – What would Jesus do” – Some time ago it was very popular among Christians in Canada and North America to wear T-shirts with this logo. The Christian practice is precisely this: doing at home, in any situation in life, what He would do. For He is the truth of our sight, the way of our judging and the life of our action.
We act as a Church
Jesus sent his disciples not as a lone ranger, but two by two: Christian practice is always a communal practice. Two heads think more and better than one, and community action is always more profound, more reflective, longer lasting and more transformative than individual action, based only on someone’s impetus.
We must escape the temptation of immediacy, of wanting to have immediate results. Let us remember St. Paul’s words of “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). To be an agent of liberation is to be the yeast in the dough (Matthew 13:33). In order for the group to take concrete action, it is necessary to have a project with all its details carefully thought out.
Communication and organization are crucial elements in the planning process. It is important to start with reasonable goals. People learn from the process, and become more empowered. The liberating action starts from the needs of the people, as this uncovers the root of the problem and then action is taken with the participation of all in the building of a civilization of love.
We act under the prompting and guidance of the Holy Spirit
For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials… Acts of Apostles 15:28
Jesus himself already acted under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit he did and said many things. And so too we must act like the apostles, in a climate of prayer, seeking the inspiration, guidance and prompting of the Holy Spirit. He is the soul of the Church which is the mystical body of Christ, He is God nearer to us than our innermost being as St. Augustine used to say; Jesus came and returned to the Father’s house, the Holy Spirit came to stay with us and acting within us to be our inspiration, motivation, engine and guidance of our action in the world.
See – Judge – Act – Celebrate – Review
Later on some people extended this method with two other realities: See – Judge – Act – Celebrate – Review. We regard these last two realities as redundant since celebrating can be done at each stage, especially when we discover the truth of things in judging or analyzing the problem. When we shout “Eureka, I have found it”, there can already be a celebration and not necessarily only at the end of the process or action.
Similarly, the review can and should also be done at the end of the triple process and at the end of each stage. When it happens at the end of the process, it serves to look back to beginning of the process, that is, with the analogy of recycling in mind, this process of seeing, judging and acting restarts when it ends.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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