~ Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology. . . GG’s theological focus was oriented toward connecting salvation and liberation through the preferential option for the poor. He connected the Gospel to the human / Christian responsibility to improve the material conditions of the impoverished by working for justice. Gutierrez exposed and challenged a notion of salvation that was excessively idealized, individualized, otherworldly, and divorced from efforts to bring about the Reign of God on Earth.

The two books above were pivotal in my life. Gutierrez’s On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent in particular made a huge impact and a lasting impression on me and I continue to refer to it as a resource.

Romans 2:11 which says, “For there is no partiality with God” has been grossly mistaught and misunderstood as has Leviticus 19:15.  Of course, God is partial. Read the Bible in its entirety without cherry-picking verses. Read the prophets. Look at Jesus’ life and listen to his words. Ask, as the incarnated presence of Divine love and compassion, who did Jesus accompany, with whom did Jesus associate, side with, and advocate for—the occupying Romans or the subjugated folks? God IS partial to the most vulnerable, oppressed, exploited, and marginalized represented in the bible by the widow, orphan, and stranger. Yes, God’s love is inclusive as is God’s mercy. But as Gutierrez says below, God favors—sides with—all those who suffer unnecessarily and unjustly at the hands of other humans and human-made systems that favor the power-wielding few at the expense of the masses who lack power or privilege and the many disenfranchised poor because God is good.

God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of God’s agapeic love.

I humbly submit that “the Vatican” missed the boat on liberation theology. A white, eurocentric theology and hyperactive anti-Marxist reading of liberation theology unfairly portrayed what was a movement of the people with a heart for justice for all. Liberation theology came out of real human-created problems and is especially concerned about those vulnerable ones for whom Jesus was most concerned.