Once upon a time, a monkey and a fish became friends and spent their days playing together in and around the river. One day, while they were playing, the river grew because of the heavy rain that had fallen in the mountains.
With his agility, the monkey quickly clung to the branch of a tree. Thinking that his friend was in trouble, he threw himself into the water, grabbed his friend, and put him on a branch; but as his friend writhed in protest, the monkey said, "Yes, my friend, if it were not for me, you would have drowned."
This tale may well illustrate and help to interpret Martha's accusation of Mary in Luke's Gospel. In this case, Mary, more than Martha, was able to interpret the needs of the Master who, on his way to his death, needed calm, quiet and consolation more than a good meal (Luke 10:38-42).
The recipients of the Mission, the poor or the marginalized, know better than we do what they really need. For this reason, the Mission is nothing more than a proposal: the Mission and evangelization, more than an “a la carte” menu, should resemble a self-serve buffet, where it is the recipients who choose what they need.
Jesus, in fact, on many occasions asked the person in need, "What do you want me to do for you?" (Mark 10:51), even when it was clear to everyone what that person wanted and needed.
Jesus knew, even then, that there are people who, incredible as it may seem, do not want to get out of their misery, who have become so accustomed to it, to the point of saying, "the evil that I know is better than the good that I do not know". For example, we all know that there are beggars who would rather beg than be reintegrated into society, homeless people who almost ideologically prefer to stay homeless.
In business, we are used to hearing the advertising slogan that the customer is always right. The bottom line of any business is to sell, so advertising meets the needs of buyers or consumers rather than sellers. "The customer is always right" because it is the customer who keeps the business going, it is the demand and not the supply that drives the business.
My needs or yours?
The story goes that a missionary was sent to a remote place where the chieftain and landowner abused the peasants, renting out his land to them and charging them an astronomical two-thirds of their harvest, or having them work for him directly for a pitiful wage.
When the missionary, coming from Europe with his cultural baggage, became aware of the situation, while speaking to them in the sermon on the Beatitudes he described the injustice of their situation at the hands of the landlord and at the end, when he thought that, according to his worldview, he had illustrated well the situation of the peasants, he paraphrased the fourth beatitude (Matthew 5:6) and shouted:
Faced with your situation, do you not hunger and thirst for justice?
To which they replied almost in unison:
"We, Father, what we have is a common hunger for bread and a thirst for water.
As a general rule, sociologists and anthropologists agree on the following list of human needs: survival, protection, meaning, autonomy, interdependence, honesty, empathy, well-being, regeneration, transcendence.
Abraham Maslow places these same needs in a hierarchical pyramid from the perspective of what is most important and most urgent, understanding that the human beings do not, for example, need personal fulfillment until their basic needs are met.
The satisfaction of a lower need leads to the desire for the subsequent higher need, and so on, moving all the way to the top of the pyramid; similarly, the unsatisfaction of a need immediately below a higher need that was being met, will result in an immediate unsatisfaction of that higher need.
Thus, at the base of the pyramid are physiological needs, followed in an ascending direction by the needs for security, social needs, status needs, self-realization needs, and spiritual or transcendence needs.
This is therefore the reason why the peasants in the story cited above did not yet have a need or hunger and thirst for justice, because they were underfed. There are still those who do not understand this concept and project the image of themselves and their needs onto others – instead of seeing reality as the others see it. An example of this is the invasion of Iraq by the United States to impose democracy. This is based on the assumption that what is good for us must be, and has to be, good for others.
We forget that adults cannot be forced to do good in the same way as children. For adults, the good has to come from their own choice. The father of the prodigal son knew well that his son was going down the wrong road, but he still had to let him go.
Human and gospel values do not contradict or clash with each other; "consolation" that does not respect the freedom and idiosyncrasies of others is not consolation, but colonial paternalism.
Going back to the matter of business, "the customer is always right" because it is the customer who is the law of demand that rules the market, which kicks things off and sets everything in motion. In the same way, it is the real needs of others from their perspective that should provoke our charity. This must be a response to the cry of the oppressed and not the a priori application of schemes that have more to do with us than with the poor we want to serve.
Conclusion – There is no true consolation without empathy, that is, without putting ourselves in other people’s shoes and trying to see reality from their perspective.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
No comments:
Post a Comment