Tag: justice

a psalm of un-timely justice

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

Psalm 37 is a justice Psalm.

It is not easy to categorize it within Walter Bruggemann’s famous and immensely schema of orientation, disorientation and reorientation. It seems at times to simplistically state (as orientation Psalms do) that God protects the righteous and judges the wicked. But it also acknowledges the present reality of injustice (like disorientation Psalms do). It also looks forward to a time of reorientation when ‘you will see’ with your own eyes the downfall of the wicked.

The Psalm comes from a seasoned David who has seen how justice and injustice play out. He says in verse 25, “I have been young, and now I am old.” Here is David who has learned the wisdom of the ages that simple retaliation and vengeance only does more harm. He packs this wisdom into two lines in verse 8:

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
    do not fret—it leads only to evil.

We live in a season of human history where culture seems to be really keen on speaking out against oppression and injustice, rooting out aggression even at the microscopic level. This, as I’ve said countless times, flows from a good and godly impulse that rightly judges and wants to respond righteously to evil, oppression, aggression and anything that harms.

Elsewhere in the Psalter, David will join in this justice party. Heck, he has plenty to say about injustice in this Psalm. The wicked borrow and don’t repay, while the righteous give and lend from a posture of mercy. The wicked plot against the poor. Injustice is always economic.

But in this verse, he takes a different tone. People are sometimes concerned about ‘tone policing’. Don’t tell me to calm down. Don’t tell me I can’t be angry. But here David is policing his own tone. Or better yet, the wisdom that only comes from years of experience has affected his tone.

Embarrassingly, we see an aged David speaking as though to the hot-headed young social justice warriors, gently coaxing them to not get too upset about such upsetting things. “Yes all this injustice really is evil. But don’t be angry. Don’t fret. Don’t get tied up in knots about this. That will only lead to more injustice and evil. Their downfall is coming. Just you wait. Their own sword used to harm others will come back on themselves.”

This is holy week, and I preached last Sunday on the story of Judas. My theory is that Judas thought he was doing the righteous thing. He, like so many, wanted a military Messiah to make Israel great again. He would have been frustrated with a Jesus who rallied the people only to suggest that they would counter oppression by ensuring that they themselves didn’t participate in or mirror it.

And that’s the great tragedy of evil responses to evil. They are counter productive. Victims take vengeance against their oppressors and soon become oppressors themselves. Their own sword turns back to pierce their own hearts.

God’s way is different. He works in an un-timely manner, as far as we are concerned. He waits for evil to break itself. He waits for us to stop fighting and surrender to the reality that our swords, blogs, jabs, memes, pipe-bombs, or counter-strikes only make more evil.

The Scriptures tell us to wait on the Lord and for his justice.

Does this mean we do nothing? Just sit back and take oppression? Not at all. Jesus celebrates the persistent widow who pleads for justice against her adversary. But this woman had policed her own tone. It was passionate but not vengeful. It was persistent but not violent.

God save us from anger that makes things worse. Amen.

sovereign intervention

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I think I believe two seemingly contradictory concepts.

On the one hand, I believe that God has made the world in such a way as to respond to and use our actions, including our prayers. Despite our preferences for a God as predictable (and controllable) as a machine, equally and lawfully distributing oxygen, planets, miracles and tsunamis, God sometimes seems to act like an interventionist genie, conjured up by profiteering faith-healers and televangelists. How embarrassing.

On the other hand, I believe that God is by definition the kind of being who is unchanging, eternal, and thus God will do what God will do no matter what. Whether we forget or remember to pray, a little or a lot, as individuals or in global concert, praying for vague blessings or specifically for things we are certain that the God of Scripture would approve of, God sometimes seems totally OK with being perceived as Richard Dawkins’ blind watchmaker. How disappointing.

To reference a couple of book titles by Pete Greig, the articulate and wise international founder of 24-7 Prayer, God is both the God of the shocking miracles of Dirty Glory, and the shameful silence of God on Mute.

How then, should we pray to this kind of God? We could make at least two errors.

On the one hand, we could pray our foot-stomping, confidently contending, passionately persisting prayers, dripping with biblically shameful audacity for God to break in act like an interventionist deity, and all the while forget to leave God any room to have a different purpose or plan than us for that situation. Tragically, we could do serious damage to our faith or the faith of others – all simply because we had a view of God that was not large enough to allow God to be both responsive and sovereign.

On the other hand, we could pray safe tidy prayers that cover all theological contingencies, making our prayers little more than self-referential pontifications pointed at God reminding him – and us – that basically we should remember to trust in his machine-like sovereign faithfulness over all things; all the while failing to have the prophetic imagination that God may be willing and postured to act from eternity within time in what we can only call a ‘response’ to something we pray. Tragically, we could fail to see healing of relationships or withered hands, or the confrontation of unjust systems or personal sin – all just because we had a view of God that was too arrogantly sophisticated to allow that God frequently does his work on earth through humans.

So then.

Let us pray with that strange and holy cocktail of deep assurance in a very large and unimaginably sovereign Father reigning over all things, and childlike urgency that can ask with unassuming and open-hearted expectancy for good gifts from the same sovereign interventionist Father.

the disturbing arrival of just mercy

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For those of us in contexts with a wealth of technology and media (and a poverty of contentment and patience), many of us are feeling weary, tired and over it. This is an exhaustion that goes deeper than number of hours worked or slept. It is an underlying dissatisfaction with things… something… or maybe everything.

Further Fracturing…

Humans have had their usual military, political and personal dramas for aeons. But something is different. There is growing division and distrust and distance from one another. We are losing hope. Relationships seem more fragile. We have more and more reasons to avoid one another. More and more things are harder and harder to talk about. Discourse is toxic. Extremes widen. We seem strangely eager to uncover wrongs, and understandably terrified of being seen to be affiliated with anything wrong. We are determined to be right, or at least less wrong than ‘them’.

And underneath this, we are slowly waking up to the reality that our greatest boast in the modern world, science, is not the simple saviour we had hoped it was. We are beginning to admit that even an impressively comprehensive collection of accurate factoids cannot itself provide the epistemic basis for meaning, value, justice, human rights, compassion.

Worse still, it seems that our heroic efforts at making a more just world sooner or later take on the broken and fragile characteristics of our individual and collective psychologies. Our demonizing, defensiveness, vengeance, resentment, superiority (so often mixed with inferiority), fear and hopelessness end up pouring fuel on the fires of injustice. Seeking justice, we create more injustice.

As the Psalms frequently invite us to do: “Selah” (reflect on this for a moment)

The God of Just Mercy

The Christmas story, amidst all the consumptive noise, unintentionally exclusive gatherings, Santa hats and holiday ‘meh’, is about the arrival of the God of just mercy.

Luke’s historically-savvy Gospel understood well the reality of Roman oppression of 1st century Israel. Luke captures the song known as Mary’s Magnificat (see Luke 1:45-55), rich with feisty social justice themes of powerful people being cast down and rich being sent away empty, while the humble are lifted up and the poor are filled with good things. Despite what you may hear on streets or screens, the biblical Gospel was never only about individuals going to heaven after they die. God longs for his fair and just rule to be realised here on earth. Now.

To riff off of Isaiah 58, God is the breath in the lungs of the oppressed when they ‘lift up their voice’ (v.1) against oppressors – even (especially!?) religious oppressors (‘my people’ / ‘the descendants of Jacob’ v.1).

The Bible clearly and consistently shows God to despise oppression and injustice, but we should not mistake the Gospel for the kind of popular rage that wants to burn it all down. God doesn’t burn for the sake of burning. Like a farmer burning off a field, the fire is for fresh grass to grow.

The Magnificat ends with mercy.

Yes, the immediate focus is on mercy to the ancestors of Abraham, but those who know Scripture will recall that Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3) and his people had a vocation not simply to burn with judgmental finger-pointing at the nations forever, but to be a channel of blessing to them. The prophet Jeremiah knew that even in exile among their oppressors, the victim mentality that so often justifies violence would do them no good. Before Christ ever said “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, he told the captives to “seek the peace of the city…” Even in Babylon, a city continually reminding Israel of their oppression, Jeremiah wants them to have a different stronger memory of his words that “in its peace you shall have peace.” (Jeremiah 29)

God is not revealed as a tyrant in the thunderclouds, who gets a real kick every time he gets a chance to topple, expose, shame or punish someone. Yes, God is angry at oppression to be sure. But God knew the familiar patterns of injustice long before we did. God knows that oppressors often justify their oppression with their own claimed (or maybe even real) experience of oppression. God knows the cycle. Nobody’s hands are really clean.

Justice – and Mercy – for Everyone?

God knows that justice has to be mixed with mercy and hope – for everyone.
Obviously the oppressed… but even oppressors.

The Oppressed are offered hope that oppression will not go unpunished in the end, and practical real-world assistance as the God of justice empowers down-to-earth help from their neighbours, allies and prophets.

As for Oppressors, yes they are summoned to repair the damage they’ve done as best they can, but they too are offered the hope of renewal and new life. For Israel who “oppresses all [their] workers” and more, they are challenged to change, for sure.

But… they are also told of the life they can have if they do.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
    with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
    and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you always;
    he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
    and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
    like a spring whose waters never fail.

And that is at least one ingredient that missing in our world. A justice that is merciful and vulnerable. A justice for all. Hope for all. A God whose compassionate justice – whose just mercy – is well described from the times of Exodus:

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished…”

Punishment and Forgiveness.
Justice and Mercy.
Consequences and Restoration.
Held together in redemptive, transformative tension.

This God does not leave oppressors to oppress. The consequences of injustice are firm and full punishment. But nonetheless, even the “wickedness, rebellion and sin” of oppressors can be forgiven and overcome.

The author of the persistently profound hymn extolling the wonder of a Grace that “saved a wretch like me” is none other than an oppressor – the former slave-owner John Newton.

This is a merciful justice that may disrupt our popular rage or political resentment. But it just may be the one solution to injustice that actually works. If we would have the courage, and yes the mercy, to give it a try.

Have a merry and merciful (and just) Christmas.

sword & shield v. cross & towel

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All humans carry a sword and a shield.

We strike out at and critique others with our verbal, philosophical, political, social or literal swords. We block and defend ourselves from criticism with our good intentions, mimising excuses, self-justifying reasoning. Our shields.

It’s not that we should never defend ourselves, and I don’t know if we should be surprised that people and nations frequently want to have at least some kind of readiness to respond to violence. It’s just that the sword and shield become a way of being. They shape us into people whose tendency is to critique others and defend ourselves.

This even happens within ourselves, psychologically. We divide ourselves into parts: parent / child, good / bad, the rebel / the law, or what have you… One part of us critiques the other part, and the other part defends itself. We don’t have to suffer from multiple-personality disorder to relate to the experience of feeling simultaneously innocent and righteous on the one hand and victimised and full of self pity on the other hand. It’s the sword and shield again. Just directed inward.

Christianity offers a way of life where we trust God to be our sword and shield.

We don’t need to take up the sword against others and sort them out. (Or ourselves.) God is just. (And merciful.) The biblical wisdom is that God almost always does this in his usual way – by delegation. Natural law, imperfect human governments, communal or relational systems. Injustice has its day, but eventually gets toppled. When we try to rush the process with our swords, we end up becoming what we hate.

We also don’t need to overly defend or protect ourselves from critique. God is our fortress, tower, shield, and defender. The great irony is that when I live in the freedom of not worrying what might happen to me (gossip, violence, theft, you name it), those things don’t have any power over me. I trust that God will deal with them as he will, and when he will. Ultimately, the biblical narrative promises a final justice that will heal all wounds and restore all things. I can choose to take comfort in that.

Christ – at Christmas and at all times – comes to us asking for an exchange.
He wants our swords and shields, and offers us a cross and a towel.

I am offered a cross. An instrument of death and violence to myself. I am not expected to do what Jesus alone could do – atone for the sins of the world. I am invited, expected or even commanded to follow his way. To ‘take up my cross and follow’ him. To live sacrificially is not the way of self-loathing – constantly criticizing, punishing and judging myself. As the cliche truth goes, it’s not “thinking less of myself, but thinking of myself less.”

And this leads to the towel. I am to become a servant. Not a show off servant. Not “Hey everyone, I’m just going to pick up this piece of rubbish… aren’t I a great person….” Not “Hey everyone, look how pissed off I am about social injustice… I probably hate oppressors more than anyone I know…” Not this. Real service. Service that can go unnoticed. Uncelebrated.

The world is full of divided politics, communities, families and selves. If we’re honest, we’ll be able to see how we participate in wleding the sword of criticism, and raising the shield of self-justification.

The world needs more cross bearers and towel servants.

That is precisely what Jesus taught and modeled. It is his plan to bring his kingdom where needs are provided for, sinners are forgiven, and humans live in grateful peace.

justice with mercy

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Mercy must be joined by Justice & Justice must be married to Mercy.
Let’s consider, simply and briefly, what happens when they get disconnected.

Unjust Mercy & the Enabling of Injustice

Simply put, we enable injustice to continue when, in the name of ‘mercy’ we fail to critique, resist, prosecute, report, vote, petition, march, speak out, inquire about or act against an injustice. The oppressed are justified in resisting injustice, and allies are ethically bound to critique oppression. Ironically, more and better ‘standing against injustice’ is needed, even in a culture where ‘standing against injustice’ is trendy and can win you a reputation as a ‘good person’ who ‘hates injustice’. Yes allyship can be performative. But we need more allyship and better allyship.

Letting injustice go unpunished and uncritiqued in the name of ‘mercy’ is not merciful. It’s obviously not merciful to the oppressed. And less obviously, it’s not merciful to oppressors who are also harming themselves by harming others.

Merciless Justice & the Escalation of Injustice

Just as being ‘soft’ on injustice in the name of ‘mercy’ is not truly mercy; so also justice is distorted when we go beyond the truth or to abandon the facts. We do this when we go beyond critiquing an oppressor to demonising them or misrepresenting their injustice.

Performative allyship is again the culprit here. I, wanting to be seen as a ‘good person who hates injustice and protects the world from it’, take self-serving pleasure in declaring how bad ‘they’ are, leaving it obvious to everyone how righteous ‘I’ am. An oppressor can easily ignore such distortions, claiming that they are being misrepresented. Ironically, an oppressor usually feels victimized already, and such demonizing only adds to this, confirming their sense of victimhood. What’s more, when victims go beyond resistance and engage in retaliation or revenge, they unintentionally perpetuate a cycle of violence. The oppressed become oppressors. Justice becomes Injustice.

Just Mercy & the End of Injustice

Only when the persistent pursuit of justice is tempered by mercy is it truly effective. Instead of a ‘good person’ dethroning or locking up a ‘bad person’, everyone retains their human dignity. Justice means consequences – stepping down from leadership role, imprisonment, fines, reparation, whatever is ‘just’ for that situation – nothing less and nothing more. But justice must be merciful – avoiding excessively shaming labels, sticking to the facts and rightly scaling the actions committed.

When mercy is wedded to justice, everyone in the triangle (oppressor, oppressed, ally) is human. Not heinous (villain), helpless (victim) or heroic (ally), but human. And justice, after all, is for humans. It stands to reason that the actions we take to pursue it must therefore be humane.

Nehemiah-nomics

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Chapter 5 of Nehemiah gives a great picture of biblical justice.

The irony here is the context that the injustice develops.

Luxury in a context of hard-times

Cyrus, the pagan king anointed by God, has mercifully decreed that the Jews should return and rebuild Jerusalem. Artaxerxes, not able to bear seeing sadness in his presence, has sent the weeping Nehemiah back to rebuild.

It’s all hands on deck building the wall. Read chapter 4. The people “worked with all their heart” (4:6) and are making angeringly fast progress filling in gaps. Their neighbouring adversaries (forced to let them build) are threatening to attack and stop them. So the re-builders have to work with one hand and have a sword in the other. They roster on shifts of people working and watching.

As early as chapter 3, Nehemiah hints that the nobles are not so helpful. They “would not put their shoulders to the work” (3.5).

The Voice of the Poor

Now in chapter 5 we have three quotes from those facing hardship. This is quite remarkable. Nehemiah doesn’t just describe the challenges facing them in his own words, but in the actual voice of the poor.

One group talks about how their large numbers make their need for grain a matter of life and death
Another talks about having to mortgage their homes to get grain.
A third group talks about having to sell their children into slavery to pay the kings tax. They say “we are powerless, because our fields and vineyards belong to others.”

Economic Dominance

Nehemiah critiques the nobles for economically dominating their fellow Jews. Buying their lands and charging interest for the loans they made. The nobles didn’t have a word to say in their defense (5:8) This moment is a parallel of the Jubilee laws given at Sinai (Leviticus 25) to prepare the people to live justly in the land. Land was not to be sold permanently. It was to be seen as belonging to God. Nehemiah calls for the Jubilee reset. Give it back. The fields, vineyards, olive groves, and interest you gained.

Translating this for today…

It is a stunning picture of biblical justice and jubilee economics.

It’s important to say that it is not communism. It’s not everyone having the same. It’s not equality legislated to the max. But it’s clearly not everyone ‘free’ to do whatever they want. Be as successful as you can, make as much money as you can. Even if it causes your neighbour to starve and they end up facing the horrible decision of dying of starvation or selling their family into slavery.

No. This is neither unhindered free-market economics, nor big-government forced equality (which always seems to make room for a special powerful group who has a lot more). Neither Moses nor Nehemiah intended to control people so that nobody would ever be a bit more successful than another. What they both will not stand for, however, is gross inequity. Once you have a huge rich/poor gap, things get practically impossible for the poor, while the rich have to do practically nothing to keep their wealth.

Whatever we think about government legislation or political policy, the Church today should call one another to conduct ourselves in ways that do not allow the poor to be destitute and without a real choice.

justice with mercy

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Mercy is a fundamental quality of both the King and the kingdom.

Mercy is the kind of loving restraint that refrains from inflicting the fullest possible punishment upon someone. In the pursuit of justice, for example, mercy means we do not seek the fullest punishment.

In Aotearoa New Zealand at the moment, a trial is beginning involving a mother who killed her three daughters. Nobody is trying to defend the actions, but the line of defense seems to be the claim that the mother was insane at the time.

I want this trial to characterised by justice, but justice with mercy.

On the one hand, let justice be fully done. Everything that can be factually confirmed and proven in court matters. If she was not insane, let that be shown. Let truth win out. Let the necessary consequences come.

But on the other hand, let justice be done with mercy. May our understandable horror at the murder of innocents not lead us to demonise and destroy. Let us not repay evil with evil. May we hold out loving hope for repentance. May there be ways for this mother to come to terms with what she has done and become useful to others who have either committed similar crimes or may be in similar situations where such crimes are committed.

Let justice be done. With mercy.

prophesy against the prophets

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The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord! 3 This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! 4 Your prophets, Israel, are like jackals among ruins. 5 You have not gone up to the breaches in the wall to repair it for the people of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the Lord. 6 Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. Even though the Lord has not sent them, they say, “The Lord declares,” and expect him to fulfill their words. 7 Have you not seen false visions and uttered lying divinations when you say, “The Lord declares,” though I have not spoken?

Ezekiel 13:1-7

What makes a person, a church, a ministry, a sermon, or what-have-you prophetic? It depends on what you think prophecy is, or who prophets are.

Prophecy is the activity of prophets. Yes, that sounds circular. Well, a prophet (navi in Hebrew) is one who sees. Everyone sees things in one sense, but a prophet is someone who can see things others aren’t seeing, or aren’t seeing yet. Prophets change the vision of a community.

What the heck is going on in this passage, then, when Ezekiel is told to prophecy against the prophets? Hint: he’s criticizing their prophecy.

Prophetic Critique

Criticism is kind of a thing that we need if we are going to be prophetic. But I reckon we need just the right amount of it. And it needs to be directed at things that need to be critiqued. The alternatives are: a) critiquing what does not need critique, or b) not critiquing what needs critique.

What gets criticized in your church context? Usually in a church setting, criticism is directed externally at ‘the world’. And fair enough, too. There are things we can rightly critique. Sometimes a church will criticize other churches. And that can have its place too, and it could in a sense be what Ezekiel is doing here.

But I think it goes even further.

This is, I think, critique from within.

The Value of Critique

Ezekiel is critiquing “the prophets of Israel”. Ezekiel was a priest, a Levite, a member of God’s people. Prophetic critique was most often turned on the people of God, to call them back to the ways of God.

When it comes to critiquing our leaders, we go to extremes. None or way too much. When it comes to leaders welcoming or dealing with critique, we have room for improvement. Critique can be unhelpful in various ways:

  • When the one critiquing exaggerates the criticism, making it easier to dismiss it.
  • When the critic is insensitive to the timing (e.g. don’t critique a leader immediately after the church service!) of the critique.
  • When one is closed off to critique, feeling they never need it.

Wise leaders know how to remain open to critique, and to be willing to even seek it out at times, and follow up the critique with change and work. The prophets of Israel in this passage are – shall we say – not open to critique.

Pretend Prophets

Ezekiel doesn’t hold back. He calls their prophecy false. Prophesying out of their own imagination. Following their own spirit. Seeing nothing. Blind seers! The Lord has not sent them, and the Lord has not spoken what they are saying.

That is pretty intense. Imagine modern prophets being told they are full of it!? “Hey you so-called anointed and appointed prophets going around doing your thing with your prophetic pastor friends. You’re making it all up, bro. That’s 0% God’s spirit, and 100% your ego. Stop lying and pretending.”

Eugene Peterson’s rendering is provocative. These prophets are “making things up out of their own heads and calling it ‘prophesying.’” They “fantasize comforting illusions and preach lying sermons. They say ‘God says . . .’ when God hasn’t so much as breathed in their direction. And yet they stand around thinking that something they said is going to happen.”

A bit later in Ezekiel 22:23-29 , the critique is extended to everyone – we might say the five P’s: Princes, Priests, Prophets, Politicians, and the People. Again the prophets are accused of “false visions and lying divinations”, and saying “ ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says’—when the Lord has not spoken. “

Positive Prophets?

The wider context in Ezekiel (and Amos, and Micah, and Isaiah, and…) is violence, idolatry, compromise, injustice, sin. Things are awful, and these false prophets are papering over it all with positive prophecies, whitewashing a thin wall, saying “peace” when there is no peace (Ezekiel 13:10, 16 – see also Jeremiah 28:9 where Jeremiah makes is clear that prophesying peace places the prophet under special accountability!).

Restorative Prophecy

It is really easy to critique, and I’ve erred (and I really do mean erred!) in the past on the side of critiquing where it was not needed or helpful or appropriate. But the prophets of Scripture are absolutely clear: being ‘prophetic’ has nothing to do with papering over the sins of God’s people with positive distracting declarations of the nice things God is going to do. This is the opposite of prophecy. Instead of seeing and saying the transformative things God wants to say, such happy distractions don’t transform anyone, and remain blind to what is going on and what God is saying.

God desires us to turn from our arrogance, violence, sin and injustice; and become channels of love, grace, mercy, hospitality, care, healing and reconciliation. Where the Church is turning from evil and doing good, we dare not critique that. But where Christians are participating in things that do real harm to people. Critique is coming.

Sometimes we need to prophesy against the prophets.