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Just like the Filipinos, Jesus lived under an empire that oppressed the poor and protected the powerful. In that situation that Jesus proclaimed the reality of the Kingdom of God, announcing a new social order where the hungry are fed, the poor are lifted up, and the oppressed go free. The powerful were threatened by this popular emerging reality, the reason he was crucified. Empires do not crucify harmless people. The image of the Kingdom of God mobilized a memory that exists in the future. They crucify those who hold such conviction because they know that the present order is a house built on a sand.

Mao’s purpose for initiating the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was to mobilize and engage millions and millions from all sectors of society—workers and peasants as well as students and intellectuals— in a struggle against the forces within the Party that favored the restoration of capitalism. Among most intellectuals in China and the United States, the Cultural Revolution has been viewed as an era of inhumane chaos. And it is true that the Cultural Revolution was chaotic, with various Red Guard factions (some were even sham Red Guards, possibly organized by those under attack to confuse the masses) and many instances of exaggerated and inhumane treatment of people, including some killings. Most of the writings about the Cultural Revolution have emphasized the problems, especially of intellectuals. However, in the rural areas of the country this period is still viewed in a much more positive light—an era when much infrastructure was built, agriculture advanced markedly, and attention was paid to problems of the people living in the countryside. Thus the lives of the rural population—in other words, the great mass of the people—during this period has received little attention. Few people are aware of the visit to China in the summer of 1974, during the Cultural Revolution, by a delegation of U.S. agronomists. They traveled widely and were amazed by what they observed, as described in an article in the New York Times (September 24, 1974). The delegation was composed of ten scientists who were “experienced crop observers with wide experience in Asia.” As Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug put it, “You had to look hard to find a bad field. Everything was green and nice everywhere we traveled. I felt the progress had been much more remarkable than what I expected.” The head of the delegation, Sterling Wortman, a vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation described the rice crop as “. . . really first rate. There was just field after field that was as good as anything you can see.” They were also impressed with the increased skill levels of the farmers on the communes. Wortman said “They’re all being brought up to the level of skills of the best people. They all share the available inputs.” A detailed description of their observations on agriculture in China was published in prestigious journal Science in 1975 (vol. 188:549-555) by Dr. Sprague. Much of the progress in China’s agriculture after the Cultural Revolution was made possible by the advances during that period. Even the increase in fertilizer use that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s was made possible by factories that were contracted for by China in 1973.

I believe that taking up arms is the only effective way of protecting the poor against their present exploitation, the only effective way of generating a free man. I believe that the struggle for liberation is rooted in the prophetic line of Salvation History.

To Love Is To Die For Your Friends

And you, Jesus, are you not also a mother? Are you not the mother who, like a hen, gathers her chickens under her wings? Truly, Lord, you are a mother; for both they who are in labour and they who are brought forth are accepted by you. You have died more than they, that they may labour to bear. It is by your death that they have been born, for if you had not been in labour, you could not have borne death; and if you had not died, you would not have brought forth. For, longing to bear sons into life, you tasted of death, and by dying you begot them. You did this in your own self, your servants, by your commands and help. You as the author, they as the ministers. So you, Lord God, are the great mother.