A Biblical Vision of Development

A Biblical Vision of Development

by Rev. Everett Mendoza, D. Theol.Silliman University Divinity School

Introduction. Development is a post-World War II concept. As such it has no equivalence in the pre-modern era, much less in the age of antiquity. But the biblical literature, especially the prophetic and apocalyptic books have plenty to show about visions of a new world, a new age, or a new cosmic reality. These visions may be taken as building blocks for constructing contemporary models of development. Thus, a vision of development may be considered biblical to the extent that it incorporates elements that belong to the biblical repository of ideas.

An exploration of biblical visions must begin with a critique of development theory and practice. Visions, biblical or otherwise, basically consist of standards of excellence that derive their content from a critique of present conditions. Like religion, visions are the sigh of the oppressed that expresses a profound longing for relief, vindication and liberation. Visions are the engine that propels a people bound together by common misery to break out of the environment that circumscribes them. And from that critique, they conjure a new reality that promises to overcome the forces behind their misery.

I. A Biblical Critique of Development

Development emerged as a strategy devised by the leading Allied countries led by the United States to rebuild the world from the rubbles of the Second World War. Ostensibly supporting the aspirations of colonies for independence from Western colonial powers, they set aside a portion of their economic and financial surplus for the reconstruction of these countries war-ravaged economies. The prescribed blueprint of development was designed to keep their economies market-friendly and complementary to the major industrial centers of the world. That sets the agri-mineral based orientation of the newly independent countries and their near total dependence on the highly industrialized countries for machinery, agricultural inputs, industrial raw materials, tools and heavy equipment was well as for capital and technology.

Development was, in short, another word for the recolonization of young independent nations without the use of armed occupational forces.Endnotes

Edward Goldsmith, Development as Colonialism, The Case Against the Global Economy, Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, eds. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), pp. 253-266. Development was in truth a re-envelopment of these nations burgeoning productive forces, confining them to selected areas of the economy and binding them to traditional and backward social and economic relations. It is essentially for that reason that there was never enough food and other basic necessities for the entire population. Poverty was not the result of a lack of development as conceived by its authors but rather its logical consequence. Although it was not explicitly designed to make people poor, it presupposed for its success the perpetual impoverishment of its target beneficiaries.

In the Bible, visions of a new age are provoked by internal and external conditions that threatened national survival. Internally, the social fabric is being torn apart due a breakdown of social responsibility. The poor who have nothing to depend on are not simply left to their own devices but also used to support the lavish and wasteful lifestyles of the rich, Amos 6:1-6. and from the outside, there loomed the threat of foreign invasion.

One of the loveliest and universally adopted biblical visions is the one found in Micah 4:4. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. The prophet envisions a time of total and final cessation of warfare and of a universal refocusing of human energy to productive endeavors. The crucial point here is the dialectical opposition between destructive warfare and constructive production. Violent conflicts constitute present reality that is negated by a vision of productive peace. The visionary projects a vision of peace and prosperity from and through the sight and smell of battle. In other words, the biblical vision of a new reality cannot be appreciated in its fullness and truth unless it is also recognized as a comprehensive critique of present reality. In its biblical context, it is the concrete reality of social breakdown and national peril.

The biblical vision has relevance to contemporary theories of development not only in terms of its content but also as a principle of criticism. It appears that current theories of development used in the Philippines are merely extensions or variations of certified failed models. Least of all, they did not come out as critique of contemporary Philippine reality. Hence, they fail to address the basic problems that keep Philippine society backward, its people poor and the government anti-people. These development models merely aim at making some of the poor less poor rather than attack the problem of poverty. Without addressing the roots of rebellion, NGOs that adopt these models end up trying to get the poor away from the struggle for liberation, which makes them witting or unwitting agents of the status quo.

The Micah passage says, they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. As an instrument of criticism, the biblical vision exposes Governments proclivity to use armed violence against those who seek alternative solutions to social problems. It is plain to all that the Philippines armed forces, and even part of the police, are employed not against foreign invaders but on Filipinos themselves contrary to what the Constitution and the National Anthem say. The State does not seem to make a distinction between the rebellion of the poor and armed foreign aggression.

The passage in Micah is more than a text for universal peace, as obviously intended in that famous sculpture at the entrance of the United Nations. It is more than a call for nations to settle their differences through diplomatic means and only employ war as a last resort. It is, first of all, a critique of the States use of armed might against its own people. The prophet Micah implies that the nations swords and spears are stained with its own peoples blood. Rather than instruments for the defense of the weak and innocent, they have turned into instruments that make widows and orphans of its own people.

In the light of that critique, development work in the Philippines comes out as a cruel irony: it has come to serve as adjunct of the militarys counterinsurgency program, in effect, an instrument of war. It comes to no surprise that development efforts are concentrated in areas where armed rebellion is most active. Many an NGO get financial support from ODA funds that require direct link-up with government agencies. In fact, government offices involved in land reform, agriculture and labor are engaged in bidding out development contracts with government-accredited NGOs.Development Divergence: Reformism in the Philippine NGO Community, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, May 1999. This material provides a comprehensive critique of the role of non-government organizations work in the country.

The over-all strategy of Government requires first, ridding an area of rebellious elements so that development programs may be undertaken. On the other hand, the biblical vision suggest that serious development efforts should replace, if not render redundant and useless, military intervention. Beating swords and spears into plowshares and pruning hooks shows a picture wherein instruments of warfare are not simply abolished but transformed into tools of production. The biblical vision points to the principle that genuine development and counterinsurgency do not go hand in hand. Only genuine development can douse the fires of rebellion. Our own history tells us that armed suppression directed against a determined struggling poor is not only futile and wasteful but will also extinguish whatever trust and goodwill are left in the hearts of its victims. The bottom line is, any development effort that requires the suppression of the rebellious poor is nothing but a pretense to disguise the ugly and brutal face of state militarism.

Secondly, the biblical vision depicts a situation where people are devoted to creating tools of production as a condition to rebuilding their nation from out of the ruins of war. Plowshares and pruning hooks are metaphors for societys productive forces now reconciled to human producers and employed for their wellbeing and happiness. The prophetic writers did not envision a return to Eden, the mythical paradise where human beings need not toil but live solely on what nature provides. Instead of a paradise, they envision a historical future where people apply themselves on nature with tools of production made out of weapons of war. They see a society of producers who enjoy the full fruit of their labor.

The biblical vision provides a second criticism to current development theory and practice in the Philippines in regard to the countrys technological development. Current developmental efforts are apparently limited to enabling the poor to survive in a subsistence economy. They fail to equip society as a whole with the capability to advance to a higher level of development.

The Philippine Governments various attempts to rationalize Philippine education reveal its underlying philosophy and thrusts of development. Higher education has been removed from the Department of Education and Sports (DECS) and transferred to a new office, Commission on Higher Education (CHED). A new agency, TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) was put up to have oversight of the countrys middle-level skill manpower development program. These three educational agencies have a common purpose training young men and women for skilled and semi-skilled employment, both domestic and overseas. Research, especially advanced technological research, has still to find a decent place in Philippine education. Education in this country is entirely geared to enable the country to become globally-competitive, that is, compete in the world labor market, thus making the entire population into one huge labor reserve for cheap-labor-seeking foreign corporations. Perhaps, the government has not realized that by joining the competition in the worlds labor market it has only helped brought down wages to rock bottom level in underdeveloped countries.

The development of the labor force without a corresponding development of the economys technology capability only favors developed countries even more, at the expense of poor and backward economies. Our national policies reveal a mentality that has succumb to the myth of an international division of labor that grants reserve status to some country while relegating others to mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. In this scheme, countries like the Philippines hope to realize national goals simply by providing people employment in foreign-controlled companies rather than by establishing a strong and well-rounded economy. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyos promise in her first SONA to create one million jobs reflects this mentality.

Furthermore, development programs that are promoted and supported with funds from developed nations do not aim to help underdeveloped nations to become like them industrialized, efficient and technologically advanced. On the contrary, development aid is directed to activities that make no impact at all on the nations technological capability, leading credence to the observation that development initiatives by NGOs in the Philippines are meant precisely to accomplish the opposite the continued underdevelopment of Philippine society.

These NGOs appeal to the people with slogans of self-reliance and self-organization. Self-reliance is understood at the most micro-level their family or community unit. By self-organization is meant independence from peoples organizations having comprehensive political, economic and social agenda. As a consequence, project beneficiaries tend to look only after their immediate family interests and detach themselves from larger peoples movements. These pseudo-development organizations and institutions easily find a niche in government and foreign-assisted programs. Their continuing influence upon a large segment of the poor has become a wedge that is dividing the people and preventing them from forming a common front in the fight against poverty. The GO-NGO-FA (funding agency) alliance, therefore, forms a conspiracy of the elite to obscure the consciousness of the poor and prevent them from seeing a different vision of the future.

I. The Biblical Vision and Genuine Peoples Development

A prophetic vision found in the Book of Isaiah complements the one in the Book of Micah. It says, They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat...They shall not labor in vain.... Is. 65:21 ff.

This wonderful vision came to the prophet when the people of Israel got word of the good news of emancipation proclaimed by a new emperor, after more than a hundred years of captivity in Babylon. The prophetic vision was addressed to a captive people whose situation prevented them from benefiting from the work of their hands. A slave is deprived freedom not only by his master but also by an entire social circumstance. Breaking out of this form of captivity is more than an individual emancipation; it is breaking out of a social, economic and cultural enslavement. It is basically a change of social conditions that creates the opportunity for freedom. In the case of the exiled people of Israel, the imperial order allowing them to return to their homeland radically changed their situation and, consequently their status. Their identity in Babylonian society was inextricably bound to their status as booties of war. That identity radically changed as a consequence of their changed status in society. From then on, they would be living in houses that they themselves made and drink wine produced from their own vineyards.

The development of people cannot take place unless the social and historical circumstances that restrain their development are changed or removed. Peasants for example cannot develop as long as they remain peasants. Unless they achieve liberation from feudal bondage no amount of development aid can lift them out of misery. Worse, their minds will remain fettered to a peasant consciousness. Peasant people must first become non-peasants in mind, body and spirit in order to achieve development. Development work among peasants, therefore, is but a part of a comprehensive anti-feudal struggle. Or, from government perspective, a no-nonsense process of breaking up feudal conditions and relations in the countryside is a necessary component of a comprehensive agrarian reform program. In either case, the process will end up with the abolition of social conditions that necessitate peasant labor. Only then may the agricultural sector fulfill its true role in advancing the development of the whole Philippine society.

The same may be said of an entire nation. The further development of Philippine society is hindered, if not blocked, by historical social conditions. Four hundred years of colonization and fifty years of neo-colonization erected economic, political and ideological structures that confine a greater part of the nations productive forces to pre-modern and pre-industrial modes of production. Appearances of modernity and high technology tend to give the false impression that the countrys development is advancing to catch up with the more developed societies in the world. But at its core, Philippine society remains in a state of suspended animation.

In a sense, Filipinos are like the exiles in Babylon who build and another inhabit ... plant and another eat. As a neocolony of the United States and other advanced countries, the Philippine economy has been designed to be responsive to the imperatives of these countries rather than to the needs of its people. Rather than produce food for its people, it fabricates electronic parts and commodities for transnational companies. Instead of employing their labor power to develop the nation, Filipino workers go overseas in order to earn a living. In an age of high technology, a good part of its productive forces is devoted to agriculture and mineral extraction using borrowed obsolete technology from the West.

The prophets of old envision a society whose productive forces develop in the process of meeting the needs of its people. There is a theological as well as an economic correlation between those who build and those who inhabit or those who plant and those who eat. In the first instance, Gods will according to the Scriptures is that by their toil people shall eat [Footnote: Gen. 2:17 although Gods mandate comes as a curse, it may serve as a definition of justice among those who toil for a living. And in the economic sense, there exists a perfect equation when producers receive the full value of their labor the cyclical crisis of overproduction will be solved with finality. Violation of this divine order or justice in relation to the human application of labor and its reward will lead to disorder in creation. In the realm of economics, crisis of overproduction happens precisely when producers are deprived of their products, or when those who build do not inhabit the houses, and those who plant the vine do not drink the wine.

Conclusion: Without a vision, a people will perish the Bible so tells us. Biblical visions, because grounded on a peoples trust in Gods faithfulness, can transcend anything that the human mind can imagine or think of. Thus, they can give a radical critique of every human project and, at the same time, open up possibilities of a radically new reality. These are a unique resource for Christians involved in development work.