The Eye of the Needle was written before the financial crisis revealed the feet of clay of mightiest and proudest of our financial institutions. It would be uncharacteristic of Jon Sobrino to revel in the sight of the mighty being put down from their seat – and he would say that a mere change of circumstances of the mighty will not exalt the poor. That will require a change of heart, an opening up on the part of the rich and privileged to the insights that can only be gained from and with the poor. It will also require a spreading out among the poor themselves of the solidarity, generosity and spirit of forgiveness which Sobrino and others have found in the Christian base communities throughout Latin America. But, Sobrino insists, without the poor there is no salvation.
The first third of the book is a compilation of fact and quotes about the stunning inequality of our contemporary world – a world in which half of humanity lives on two dollars a day, less than the total support given by the European Union to the average European dairy cow, in which nearly a billion people survive somehow on a dollar day or less. This is also the world in which, as Sobrino points out, ‘just 4 per cent of the largest 225 fortunes in the world would be enough to give food, water, health and education to all.’ And it is not as if this inequality is diminishing, quite the reverse; the latest calculations of global inequality show that the chasm between the world’s richest and poorest people has widened so that now the richest people earn in about 48 hours what the poorest people earn in a year. The cramming together of so many similar facts and so much caustic comment makes this first part of the book seem like a rant but, readers should reflect, it is all true. Even the great breakthrough events, like the G7 summit in Gleneagles in 2005, which set aid targets for the richest countries, were only deciding on the size of the crumbs that should fall from the rich man’s table.
In the second two thirds of the book Sobrino shows how there is no salvation outside (apart from) the poor, how the poor are essential to saving ourselves and the world. His thesis is global in reach, and he cites examples ranging from Auschwitz to the Democratic Republic of Congo, but its roots lie in the terrible violence of El Salvador meted out to tens of thousands in the course of the civil war. Among the dead, murdered by government forces were four American women missionaries, Archbishop Oscar Romero and Sobrino’s close friend and colleague, Ignacio Ellacuría, Jesuit priest and rector of the Catholic University, murdered with five colleagues and their two housekeepers. Ellacuría is present throughout the book, quoted liberally as Sobrino extends his thinking about the poor.
Sobrino is not starry-eyed about the poor, recognising that they can be as venal, corrupt, selfish and cruel as any of their oppressors. But the poor, the millions of families and individuals throughout the world who are poor – good, bad, honest, crooked – just by being have-nots, hold up to the haves a mirror which reveals their collective dehumanisation. At the same time the poor, their suffering and, in the midst of their suffering, the solidarity, love and generosity which can be found in Christian base communities, for example, constitute for the rich a call to conversion which in turn can lead to truth, hope and action.
In the introduction Fr Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ, who worked alongside Sobrino in El Salvador, illustrates what such a conversion could be like by quoting from the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus:
If we have the patience and the humility and the courage to walk with the poor, we will learn from what they have to teach us what we can do to help them. Without this arduous journey, our efforts for the poor will have an effect just the opposite from what we intend. We will only hinder them from getting a hearing for their real wants and from acquiring the means of taking charge of their own destiny, personal and collective.
In the same document we find a complementary, twin passage which shows what the non-poor world of analysis and technical expertise can contribute:
We have to… overcome the fear which blocks us from truly comprehending the social, economic and political problems which exist in our countries and on the international scene … From analysis and discernment will come committed action; from the experience of action will come insight into how to proceed further.
George Gelber reviews The Eye of the Needle:
Sobrino would say that it is not a question of 'helping the poor', with its implications of the helping hand coming down from above, but of being moved by the poor to overcome our own dehumanisation. But he does mention Einstein and Pasteur as examples of the contributions which can be made from the world of the non-poor.
Climate change, not mentioned by Sobrino, provides a ‘real world’ vindication of his thesis by making clear that the ever greater consumption which is the motor of globalisation is unsustainable and threatens all life on our planet. Climate change challenges us to move towards a model based on wellbeing which values the attributes that Sobrino finds in the poor. In a sense, therefore, The Eye of the Needle puts Sobrino on the barricades of the 21st century and, 40 years on from 1968, with the message ‘Let us be realistic: demand the impossible’ because the impossible is now the imperative.
George Gelber is the Senior PolicyAdviser of CAFOD’s Public Policy Unit.
The Eye of the Needle: No Salvation outside the Poor, A Utopian Prophetic Essay by Jon Sobrino, translated by Dinah Livingstone, Darton Longman and Todd (London 2008), Pbk, 96 pages, £9.95, ISBN: 9780232527391