Picturing Theology

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P i c t u r i n g T h e o l o g y

Empowering People for Freedom, Wholeness, and Justice (continued)

Implications • Nothing can excuse a worker, leader, or professional from the perils and potentials of personal responsibility. Christian workers are not exempt from the vices of laziness, slothfulness, mismanagement, and greed, and they will not be spared from the consequences of such habits and conduct. • It is a primary aim of development to increase the maturity of everyone involved in the process. It is assumed that the maturing individual will be increasingly characterized by vision (establishing and owning life-long purposes, aspirations and priorities), responsibility (acting on those purposes, aspirations and priorities with motivation, perseverance and integrity), and wisdom (increasing in skill, understanding and the ability to discern and do what is right for themselves and others). Maturing individuals should move from dependence toward autonomy, from passivity toward activity, from small abilities to large abilities, from narrow interests to broad interests, from egocentricity to altruism, from ignorance toward enlightenment, from self-rejection toward self- acceptance, from compartmentability toward integration, from imitation toward originality and from a need for rigidity toward a tolerance for ambiguity (Klopfenstein 1993, 95-96). • Decisions are best handled at the closest point to those affected. National policies and procedures exist to: » Provide a framework for effective decision making. » Express the values and purposes that are corporately shared. » Ensure equity between peoples and projects at many different sites. » Provide accountability which safeguards integrity. Responsible decision making within a community assumes that there are mature individuals with a commitment to these common purposes and that open communication exists between the people involved. When these elements are present, most decision making should be done by the people