Returning Agency

In my global health class, the professor is leading a discussion about managing HIV in Botswana where 23.9% of adults have the virus. We’ve listed many causes of the structural violence that has led to the current situation including education, wages, diamond company policies, ineffective aid, lack of primary medical care and the list goes on. I raise my hand suspecting my contribution will not be popular; “What about people choosing to have multiple sexual partners? Despite the factors we’ve listed, some people still make the choice to engage in risky acts.”

Structural violence is real. The social, political and physical infrastructure in our world is too often unjust and commits real harm to our friends, neighbors and to those known only by statistics. This injustice does not merely exist on the macro level but intimately abuses its victims despite its apparent anonymity. For example, an Angolan family goes without food regardless of whether the cause is policy exempting oil companies from employing local people or if it they are robbed walking home from the store. Kids in Dorchester have medical problems regardless of whether a parent hits them or if they attend a school with no physical education program. People are injured by decisions outside their influence and have no agency in these spheres.

In our well-intentioned haste to combat and redeem the causes of this structural violence and restore agency to those victimized, have we instead stolen their agency by suggesting that sole responsibility lies with the structure leaving no responsibility with the community or individual? In trying to help those living in Botswana, might redemption include reminding people that they are able to make choices in some realms of life? A worker in a mining camp can choose to not pay a sex trade worker for sex. A high school student can choose to not have multiple sex partners but rather wait for a monogamous marriage. Applied beyond sexual choices, a father can choose to bring the paycheck home rather than gamble or drink much if it away.

I do recognize that there are those people so far in the margins that their agency has been entirely stolen. For example people in the sex trade, people suffering from mental illness and people with addiction have little or no franchise.

My caution is only to recognize that often the source of violence is both structural and personal. The Good News of the Kingdom of Heaven is also both structural and personal. The structures must be redeemed so that they are both merciful and just in accordance with God’s story. Likewise individuals and communities need to be redeemed so they can personify the fruit of the spirit in accordance with God’s story.

May we be a people committed to God’s redemption story; both its structural and personal implications.