Global Health and Liberation Theology

[Eaten1990]

Liberation theology is based on the idea that people should struggle with the injustice of poverty and help those in need. Liberation theology, especially its interpretation by Father Gustavo Gutierrez, had a great influence on the anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer who is famous for his humanitarian work in Haiti and other countries.

In their joint lecture on global health and liberation theology in 2011, Farmer and Gutierrez indicated the main points of the liberation theology, its importance, and application in contemporary life.

Being a student, young Paul Farmer watched the adverse conditions of the medical practice in the overcrowded hospital, the lack of the room and medical equipment for examining patients. He did not understand why people were socialized to scarcity, why they protested so much and vented their anger on the other people equal to them. It seemed to him that he had found himself in another world differing from what he was accustomed to seeing. In his aspiration to understand and help people and somehow change their minds, he found and read the work on liberation theology written by Gustavo Gutierrez. Farmer understood that poverty was the evil that should be eradicated by all the people uniting together against it. However, Gustavo Gutierrez stated that it was not the poverty that was the evil but the set of the problems, which promoted the development of poverty in the society. A farmer found the links between poverty and global health in general. The poor are more subject to diseases than those who are not poor. They are the first subject to tuberculosis, cholera, and even AIDS. The poor cannot get sufficient medical service thus incurring different kinds of diseases and unjust and premature death. Gutierrez said that “poverty is death”.

One of the main ideas of the liberation theology is the preferential option for the poor, which consists in creating the conditions for the poor not to be ignored and to be respected as equal as they are the first and the weakest before the face of God. The poor person has the right to be recognized as a person through this right is hardly followed today. The problem of the contemporary situation in the world is that people do not pay attention to the poverty though it is an economic and social problem they can solve. Liberation theology is aimed at emphasizing that people should not accept the poverty, and the existence of superiority of some people over the other but struggle against it as poverty is contradicting the Bible.

In his lecture at Notre Dame, Farmer gave 3 main points on the way to struggling against the evil of poverty and regulating the situation in the world.

Firstly, “the real service to the poor involves the understanding of global poverty”. People should learn and understand that the poor are not the lowest class that has always existed but the result of certain historical and economic changes. The awareness that something is wrong with the society will lead to further actions. Listening to the poor and sympathizing with them should be the first step on the way to fight the global poverty bringing the needs of the poor into the masses. People should cultivate the feeling of compassion in them, be close, humane and friendly with all people as if they were brothers.

Secondly, “understanding poverty must be linked to the efforts to end it”. With the simple understanding of the history and the needs of the poor, people will not be able to help the people in need somehow. All of us have to take the efforts by all means to create the options for the poor. Compassion and self-sacrifice are the necessary weapons here, as well. The doctors can bring medical science to those most in need of it; can heal the sick while other people can contribute to the special funds and charitable organizations.

Thirdly, speaking about the example of the diseases widely spread among the poor, people should be shamed for the failure to bring all the possible medication to the people in need in time and find the way to sponsor the medical services for the poor. Today, with the developing science and technology, people can enjoy the discoveries in modern medicine and an increased level of medical service. However, “as the effectiveness of medical intervention increases, we fail to use such interventions justly, fail to make a preferential option for the poor in medicine” (Farmer). This results in the worsening conditions for the poor and the increasing number of the diseased and dying of simple illnesses.

Admitting being a physician, not a theologian, Farmer found how he could implement the teachings of theology in his medical practice. He founded an international organization Partners in Health, which provides medical services to the poor. He worked for the UN and wrote several books on health care and human rights. Farmer gives a lot of lectures all over the country, and his main purpose is to explain the mechanisms of poverty and bring more people into the struggle against it.

Gutierrez added that the aim of the liberation theology is to understand how to tell the poor person that he or she is loved by God, and they are first for God. However, as Gutierrez admitted, it is a too wide question and the current impossibility to answer it makes people search ardently for the decision.

Together, people can change the world’s structure and get rid of the social difference between the poor and the rich. It is not only the doctors who can contribute directly into eradicating poverty. People of other professions should take into account the existence and special conditions of the poor, be caring and try not to reject the people in need. By all means, distributing the good and showing an example of virtue to the people around and the rising generations, people contribute to their future and the future of their countries.

It is unfair that the poor should suffer because of the conditions imposed on them by world society. However, in my opinion, people should differentiate the concept of poor people who exposed themselves to poverty and those exposed to poverty by society or the situation. People suffering from famine in the Third World countries differ from the idle people in Europe and America who enjoy the unemployment benefit through life hardly making both ends meet. I was amazed by the Farmer’s story on how he found himself in another world when moved to Haiti. There are big differences in the societies’ structure and condition in different countries. If one comes out of his/her own country and explores the world, he or she can be shocked by the poverty and certain ways of life people are accustomed to. It is called culture shock and it is difficult sometimes to understand and learn the reasons for it. Nevertheless, I am quite sure that the impression from the pictures people see does not leave them indifferent.

About the author: Eaten Turner is a bachelor in English philology and literature at California University. Eaten is currently working as one of the best writers at the essayswriters.com He also studies feminine psychology.