Huff Post
I was sitting on the dirt floor with about a dozen of my seminary students. Bugs crawled along the walls of the shack constructed of discarded wood, cardboard and plasterboard. Empty plastic bags and trash littered the flimsy structure, hugging the hut as if they were adornments. The “owner” of the house, an indigenous woman who had been aged prematurely by the ravages of poverty, patiently engaged us in conversation.
Routinely, I bring my students to Cuernavaca, Mexico on missionary trips. Usually, the purpose of missionary trips in these parts is to evangelize “non-believers”; to convince them to accept the doctrines of the missionary, worshiping and believing like North Americans. My missionary trips are somewhat different. We go to be evangelized by the poor; to learn from the disenfranchised and dispossessed who God is. We go to “get saved.”
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When we all get to Heaven, we will discover how wrong we all were. No group has a monopoly on truth. So in a sense, orthodoxy — correct belief — is not that important (I say as a working theologian!). What should take precedence is orthopraxis — correct action. Calling oneself a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, curandera/o or santero/a is less important than living one’s faith, and each of our traditions instructs us to care for the poor and marginalized members of our societies
Categories: Charity, Faith, Religion, Spirituality