Change of heart or of society?

Luke's parable today of the rich and poor men puts in an eschatological scenario the one big old and new issue which we call the social question. In an imaginative 'dialogue of the dead', Luke is stating the dramatic reversal of fortunes: the one who had enjoyed good things in life is now tormented; the one who had only evil things has now a consolation.

Luke's discourse here is not moralistic. As is commonplace in the Gospel, it is a proclamation, it is God's prophetic word. Prophetic in the sense that it is a word that unveils the crude reality of human nature and discloses the need of redemption.

The so-called reversal of fortunes, or the divine reversal, may even for many be something that stands to reason. Many argue for God's justice purely from this standpoint. But here the message is deeper, particularly if we consider the entire context of what precedes this parable in the Gospel of Luke. This man's wealth, at the end of the day, had made him insensitive not only to his brother's needs, but also, as the context suggests, to the demands of the Law and the Prophets.

The rise of new forms of poverty today, even in the industrialised and affluent Western world, is normally attributed to globalisation. To some extent, there is truth in this. But it's not all the truth. It may also be very superficial to just point fingers to what after all may be the symptom rather than the cause.

The prophet Amos in today's first reading, combined with Luke's parable, demonstrate that the issue of poverty, on a much deeper level, is in the first place a spiritual issue, before it is social and political. How often do we blame God for the havoc in the world around us where the poor are becoming poorer and the rich richer even in the world we consider civilised? Atheism itself, to a certain extent, was born out of this pointing of fingers at God.

On a global level, social analysis may surely help in identifying the true causes of poverty and the real dynamics of an opulent culture. But the bottom line remains greed. St Basil, one of the Greek Fathers of the Church of the fourth century, writes: "Do you think God is so unjust as to will an unequal distribution of the necessaries of life? Why are you rich and your neighbor poor? Is it not that you may receive the reward of generosity and faithful distribution, and he, that of patience? Yet you fancy that you do no one an injury by gathering all things into the fathomless recesses of your greed."

In these last centuries, the social question came to form part of the Church's doctrine and awareness. The struggle to come to terms with, on the one hand, the suffering and exploitation of the poor, and on the other, God's deafening silence, found its classical formulation in the so-called 'theologies of liberation'.

In her mission to proclaim Christ's salvation, the Church cannot lose focus from what fundamentally continues to hold ground in human nature and consequently in the dynamics of society: what traditionally we used to call "sin" and what in our culture we avoid speaking about.

It's easier to point fingers towards the world around us to find reason for all unjust distribution. But it's more challenging to dig deep down in human nature, to speak about the needed change of heart in order to understand what we see happening before our very eyes. Many ideologies in the historical past and present sought to revolutionise how society works, but to no avail. Jesus in the Gospel takes the longer journey, which is more challenging, that of changing our heart.