Complicity in Poverty and the Goodness of God

I read this great article this morning from The Other Journal at Mars Hill. Author, Christopher Heuertz put into words the philosophy undergirding our BUILD groups based on many of the writings of Paulo Friere.

Practically speaking, after our community passed around copies of Education for Critical Consciousness, we set out to implement what we had absorbed from Freire. In part of the book, he shares from his experience of "culture circles" of dialogue, which are methods used to reflect on one's reality and move one toward a reshaping of that reality.

By forming friendships that are characterized by true mutual reciprocity, we are granted the courage to engage in the pain of our shared realities, and this unity is itself a gift of grace, a hope that human dignity thus realized can transform society.

The courage to admit our complicity in poverty, embody this grace, and struggle to overcome this reality is, as Freire notes, real education.