Opinion, Volume 8 number 11, November 2006, by Neal Matson
The Missionary Position: On Hugo Chavez
I love the onset of winter. The changes in temperature, environmental colors, sounds, and smells stimulate new energies within me. I'll miss the brief hours of sunbathing, but enjoy the few seconds of snow-rolling that punctuate the sauna experience.
We fire up our sauna each Sunday afternoon and all three generations of Matsons bathe in the dry heat, have dinner, and enjoy some family time which includes a "home church" service. Faith, family, food, and fire are the elements of a good life for our Filipina-Finn tribe.
Firewood is a necessity for the sauna and a wood stove backs-up our home heating system. We learned in the bush that "wood is wealth," so I guess we're pretty prosperous this winter thanks to free construction crumbs and generous neighbors who have either cleared trees or converted to oil and no longer need a woodpile.
Many folks living in rural villages and relying on oil for home heating have a generous neighbor in Hugo Chavez. He will be giving 1.2 million gallons of heating oil to about 150 Alaska villages this winter. In the past he has provided 40 percent discounted heating oil to people in the Bronx and other poor communities. He also offered direct help to the victims of hurricane Katrina but was stopped by our own government. His gift to Alaskans was also refused by four villages because of political hatred for him. I think God has something to say about these events.
In the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus tells of a traveler who was robbed and beaten by thieves and left for dead by the side of the road. First a priest and then a fellow countryman came upon him and passed by on the other side of the road. Then a Samaritan, a foreigner, came up to him, gave him first aid, transported him to an inn on his own donkey, paid for his lodging, and guaranteed payment for any future expenses. Referring to the Samaritan, Jesus said, "Go and do likewise."
The traveler is an innocent victim, one who is exploited and harmed through no fault of his own. He represents those who are colonized and whose resources are taken without their consent.
The thieves are the powerful, the ruthless, the takers, who believe "what's yours is mine." They represent the unrestrained global imperialistic capitalism that Chavez is successfully fighting in his country. Since he regained oil sovereignty for Venezuela he has been able to spend more than $20 billion on social programs to provide food, education, and medical care to the neediest; his popularity is soaring; and the price of gasoline there is 12 cents a gallon. Alaska would do well to emulate him.
The priest, a superficial religious leader, didn't want to get his hands dirty, and the countryman didn't help because he didn't want to be delayed or spend any money helping someone who couldn't reciprocate no matter how great the need. "What's mine is mine." That sounds like the stingy creed of our Publican legislators down in Juneau who last March rejected an $8.8 million state supplement to the federal program that assists lower-income Alaskans with their home heating costs.
The Samaritan, who was hated by the priest and countryman as much as our government hates Chavez, did what Jesus would do regardless of the inconvenience or cost. "What's mine is yours," in attitude and action, is a manifestation of Christianity and makes Hugo Chavez this hemisphere's good Samaritan.
Chavez said in a recent interview (Time Magazine, Oct. 2, 2006, p. 44): "Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation of the kind of misery and inequality that destroys social values. If you really look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ—who I think was the first socialist—only socialism can create a genuine society."
The early Christian community certainly was socialistic. "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need" (Acts 2:44-45). Again, in Acts 4:32-35, we read, "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had…. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales…and it was distributed to anyone as he had need." Christianity in action is socialism, pure and simple.
As you gather at your Thanksgiving table you might give thanks for Hugo Chavez's gift to rural Alaskans. He is walking closer to God than our own misleaders. That's my position and, as a Christian, I'm sticking to it. | ||
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