(Tina)Theresa Hannah-Munns
Liberation Theology
Peter Bisson
January 9, 2005
In this day and age, the greatest impoverishment in the world is not of a physical substance or situation; It is not an impoverishment of doing or having. One can go through a life of action that includes the procurement of material success and still be living in poverty. The greatest poverty is of an aspect of life’s essence, anchored both spiritually and psychologically into the depths of people and creates the motivation to reach out from oneself into relationship with the universe; it is hope.
The poverty of hope is a disease that threatens all dimensions of human existence through matter, energy, space, and time. Physically, the rich get richer trying to secure a safe distance away from physical poverty whiles the ‘have nots’ wither away out of sight in society’s various institutional settings. Hopelessness weaves throughout the human population invisibly ensnaring even the best efforts for humanitarian pursuits.
Along with the physical and motivational factors, lack of hope affects the space individual’s use in life. Individuation replaces egalitarian practices with security and protection becoming more valuable than hope offered through activities that involve compassion and sharing. Space becomes individual commodities with those that have needing to defend their territory competitively while those that have not must struggle to obtain enough space in order to physically live with some health and dignity. Hope for meaning, for a foundation where faith, love, and genuineness can grow, is lost to the activities of procurement. This lack of faith creates a hopelessness that affects time processes. Rather than taking space in a distinct moment of time, the poverty of hope generically whitewashes all past, present, and future into a space of overwhelm, where a moment of now is lost to the energy expenditure of escape from past or future. A false hope that relies on possessions, and the obtaining of people and qualities that will secure possessions, becomes a false veil of hope masking the poverty of hope that kills millions even before their final breath.
