“Let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” (Amos 5:24 NKJV)
How well I remember our first born’s defiant stance. I used to tease her that when she pouted a bird might fly by and perch on her lower lip. She crossed her arms across her body and drew herself up like a unmovable boulder. Because you see, what was fair was fair, and she knew well how it looked in her little eyes, and how it didn’t.
Oh how bent out of shape we beings are about the subject of justice, a subject on which nearly everyone thinks themselves an expert. Why is that?
Perhaps because injustice feels so bad, so wrong, and we have all felt its bite at some time. It stirs up a roiling boil of emotions, and those feelings often drive out of control actions. Our sought after justice is slippery.
In the name of justice, mobs are motivated to take to the streets with, dare I say… injustice? As world events play out, it balloons into intangible messes of unhinged opinion and unchecked ambitions.
As easy as we find it to call out injustice, we at times forget to define what is true justice. And should not that be foundational to our, oh so passionate, definition of injustice?
Today’s same old, same really-really-really old, cry for justice echoes back to the beginning of time. These crazy ultimatums we own in our current politics and modern culture are not new.
“But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” (Genesis 3:4-5 ESV)
Satan’s temptation to Eve questioned the holiness of God’s ultimate and just authority. It relabeled right and wrong to accommodate its own self defined justice and brought its skewed misinterpretation to all of humankind.
I hear that seductive whisper today in a vacuum of ignorance about what Scriptures actually teach and what Jesus said. Biblical language spoken deceitfully, Scriptural phrases misrepresented, wage war with the foundation of God’s Word.
For justice to exist, judgement must play its part.
In my Bible reading I’m coming to the end of the Old Testament and landed in Amos. Not a book I read everyday.
The writings of a humble shepherd and farmer, to whom God entrusted His message, described the nation then and in many ways, now.
Amos pled for justice to flow like a river and righteousness like a never-ending stream. These described a standard of what was both right and equitable, poured out into action.
Not only does the book relate surprisingly well to today’s state of affairs, Amos exposed a justice rotten to the core, a problem that infiltrated His chosen people when it was written, as it does in some modern churches today.
“Yet you have turned justice into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood, you who rejoice over Lo Debar, who say, “Have we not taken Karnaim for ourselves by our own strength?” (Amos 6:12b-13 NKJV)
Israel, a nation God set apart with His covenant, lived much like the pagan countries surrounding them. They exploited the poor, lived in sexual perversion, and committed violence. Justice, had turned to bitterness, “wormwood.”
Lo-Bar likely refers to the city, Debar, with a dubious history. Debar means “word” or “thing.” However with the prefix “Lo,” it means the opposite. Amos calls out the people of God for celebrating what amounted to “nothing.” Militarily successful, Israel credited themselves with what was in reality emptiness. In their arrogance, they claimed victory over Karnaim, a city whose name symbolized strength.
Amos, declared that even to an uneducated mind, laws of nature exist in order for life to be preserved. God gave these laws.
“Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow there with oxen?” (Amos 6:12 ESV)
What a fig farmer and shepherd of sheep saw in a nation thousands of years ago, we see today in the “Lo-debar” of our own self-made justices. Bent to embrace the depravity of humankind, justice becomes darkened, ushering in judgement.
With mid-term elections coming, I might wish that I could tell you how to vote. I could possibly tell you who to listen to in order to be informed. And, I may wish to share some bent out of shape opinions of my own. In fact in protest, and with my own sense of justice, I might wish to stand with my arms crossed, feet planted, and bottom lip protruding, rather like a little girl I once knew.
But, the real question waiting for an answer is, what did God really say? Knowing Jesus and relying on the wisdom of His Word, shed light on the just and unjust paths of my own life, a nation, and its people.
“Who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.” (1 Peter 2:23 NKJV)
His is the justice I want my life to display. I am so grateful that the One Just in every way loves and cares for one like me.
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