We must test both of these myths against reality -- demythologize them as it were. To do so is in fact a most fundamental task for anyone wanting to maintain a primary commitment to flesh-and-blood people, not ideological or nationalistic abstractions of "the people." Both myths are possible descriptions of reality, in given times and places. But both fall short when we overconfidently impose them on reality in advance.

What should be clear, however, is that it is no less doctrinaire to presuppose the second than it is to impose the first. A given party to a given conflict may represent the interests of a substantial and increasing segment of society -- and what is more, of the poorest, the ones many of us believe God favors in a particular way. We cannot predict in advance, nor from afar.

To suggest that field workers "just commit themselves to the people," rather than to any one party or movement, does not provide a way out of the inherent dilemmas. It is precisely the field worker who begins to succeed at "identifying with the people," who will have more information but less of the studied detachment that passes, in Western media, for objectivity. Far from being an easy answer, "commitment to the people" is an invitation to successively more difficult problems. In so far as we become competent to hazard a judgment as to the sentiments and interests of "the people," the question may return with greater force -- do we dare take sides?

Let there be doubt: there are good reasons to be uncomfortable about taking sides.

First, we want to be careful not to compromise our allegiance to the kingdom of God, the kingdom that offers -- and calls us to offer -- love, forgiveness and a new life to all.

Second, we are rightly wary of any alliance with violence.

And third, we probably feel we do not know enough, especially if our main access to local information comes from superficial news media, or even distant board meetings or memoranda.

Of these three reasons, the second goes deeper than the third, and the first is the basis of the second.

Near to the heart of our tradition is the call to love even the enemy. The enemy, of all people! It is hard to grasp the force of this challenge. John Howard Yoder goes so far as to speak of the "privileged place" of the enemy in the ethic and thought of Jesus. Ought we perhaps to speak of a "preferential option for the enemy?" If that comes uncomfortably near to suggesting we take the very side we are least inclined to take, does it not at least demand that we hold our alliances in reserve lest we miss opportunities to reach out to oppressed and oppressor alike?

Well, who is our enemy anyway? The fact is, we, as well-to-do North American Christians, have gotten embroiled in the problem of revolution and the taking of sides precisely because of our attempt, however imperfect, to love certain enemies.

The poor are a threat to our comfortable lifestyles. The poor are an affront to our cherished beliefs about the good will of our society and the efficiency of our economic systems. Wherever the cause of the poor threatens to justify recourse to violence they threaten to upset our nonviolent theology. And most of all, the poor are a political threat.⁴ For the poor to live out their humanity with dignity will almost certainly mean some kind of eruption, some massive adjustment in global resource management. One does not need Marxist analysis to reach such a conclusion; statistical analysis of the world's long-term energy and resource needs will do. Nor would the eruption need to be Marxist in orientation. In fact, the more creative Third World revolutions are in breaking with rigid Marxist formulae, the more viable, and therefore the more threatening they may be.⁵

The poor are, or at least were, our enemy. Imperfectly, we have attempted to love them: to seek their good, not simply as benefactors, but as those who try to understand the roots of their poverty, their cultures, their causes, their struggles, and -- sometimes -- the reasons why some feel driven to take up arms. What this means is that for "rich Christians," an option for the enemy amounts to a preferential option for the poor. Matthew 5, and the best instincts of our tradition, are precisely what has led us already to a kind of taking sides.

Notes

⁴We fear to say so, as advocates of more enlightened North-South relations, because too many phantoms from the Third World already lurk the halls of Congress and the pews of our churches. Rather than confirm anti-communist fears, it is more often wise to appeal to the best values and the higher interests of our fellow citizens.

⁵There are good reasons to believe that what has made Nicaragua so offensive to U.S. policymakers over the years is not so much the danger that it may fall into the Eastern Bloc camp, as the danger that it may not. At least until the affects of counterrevolutionary warfare and economic blockade began to take their toll, Nicaragua was an attractive, and therefore disruptive, alternative for the Latin American poor precisely to the degree that it was avoiding the temptation of becoming "another Cuba."