Punisher, Healer, or Sufferer?

Abstract

This chapter investigates the xenophobia Korean Argentineans commonly experience in these times of COVID-19 and formulates a theological response. Qualitative research is used to explore the practice of discrimination that Korean immigrants and their descendants experience in Argentina. The chapter also points to the absence of an appropriate theological responses to embedded structures of marginalization that intensify whenever there is a major social upheaval, such as COVID-19. Recent theological responses to the situation seem to focus on God and the pandemic itself, rather than on God and the suffering of a targeted group of people. Indeed, theologians offer creative interpretations of God and the outbreak, but little attention is paid to God and the scapegoated minorities resulting from the outbreak. Such interpretations portray God as the punisher or the healer of the world, but not as a sufferer who suffers with those considered a virus. It is argued here that unless theology critically approaches the structural sin that justifies discrimination, and carefully attends to the suffering of the marginalized, it runs the risk of becoming lost in a maze of ideology, instead of prophetically participating in God’s work in the midst of a global crisis.