mercy « Wondering Fair

Social Justice

27 01 2012

I was taking a walk at a park when I saw Claudio from the distance. I walked toward him to begin a conversation. He was clearly a ragamuffin and seemed to have some level of mental disorder. I greeted him and asked his name. I remember asking: “Do you have any food to eat?” “I knock at people’s door and eat what they give me” Claudio calmly replied. His eyes seemed distant and his answers were concise. We spoke briefly and I offered help. He refused any assistance and soon decided to walk away.

A few days later my heart sank once again. My brother told me he had given a pair of shoes he no longer wore to the man who watches over the cars parked on the streets near a university campus. The man’s reaction was one of overwhelmed joy and gratitude (perhaps the same as the one most of us would have if somebody gave us us us a Ferrari).

You and I live in a world marked by profound social injustice.

According to a study commissioned by the United Nations food agency, about one third of all food produced for human consumption in the world today is wasted or lost. At the same time, according to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single most serious threat to the world’s public health. Around 25000 people die of hunger or hunger-related causes every day, including 6 million children every year.

How does this make you feel? I guess one of the most common reactions in people who genuinely consider or face social injustice is a sense of revolt and revulsion. We want to rightly shout: “This is not fair!” Don’t you agree?

But why is it not fair? Who are we to say this condition is unjust? Though it may seem cruel to even ask these questions, I do it for the sole purpose of reminding us that an absolute outside pattern is necessary for any situation to be considered just or unjust.

As C. S. Lewis expressed: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[1]

The reality of God, therefore, is what offers humanity a criterion to live by and enables us to determine what is and what is not just. This includes social issues. If the global social injustice breaks our heart, it is because first and foremost it breaks God’s heart. When we cry: “it’s not right!” We are but echoing the cry of God.

There are literally hundreds of references in the bible to God’s concern for social justice. Among them are: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”[2] “For I, the LORD, love justice”[3]. “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”[4]

God not only speaks against social injustice, he also chose to immerse himself in this reality through the incarnation of Jesus, the God-Son. And moreover, through the death and resurrection of Jesus he inaugurated an injustice-free kingdom which will be fully established after Christ’s second coming. When this happens, the bible affirms, there “…will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain.”[5]

Undoubtedly we must do whatever we can, wherever we can and whenever we can do to eliminate any form of social injustice in the world. But we are not alone on this mission. There’s a God through whom we know what social justice should look like, who has spoken so clearly regarding it and who is establishing a fully just kingdom for those who belong to him.

Hélder Favarin

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

[2] Isaiah 1:17

[3] Isaiah 61:8

[4] Zechariah 7:9

[5] Rev. 21:4

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Tags: faith, God, hunger, justice, mercy, poverty, social justice
Categories : Making a Difference

Is God Pro-Genocide?

29 06 2011

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Richard Dawkins[1]

Never short for words, Dawkins has a point. Let’s take one tag: genocidal. Think global flood, God eradicating Egypt’s firstborn then throwing horse and rider into the sea, and the divine mandate to destroy seven people groups before Israel could set up in the Promised Land.[2] The Bible is a bloody book, and whilst religion is a convenient excuse for crazy people doing crazy things, much of the blood is directly on God’s hands. In a world with religious violence on the rise, this is disturbing.

Let’s hone in on one particular incident: Jericho. In Joshua 6 we read of Joshua’s conquest of the Canaanites—seven musical rounds of the city and the walls tumbled down. They were to ḥērem this people: utterly destroy all life, including men, women, the young, the old, and even the livestock. I wonder how a Tutsi would read this text? Would they insert Hutu for Israel, recalling the hundreds of thousands of people—friends, grandfathers, daughters—murdered in cold blood back in Rwanda, 1994?

Make no mistake, this is shocking. And unless your tack is to save YHWH by dismissing the Bible (kind of like cutting off your nose to spite your face), what we have here seems to be Class A Genocide. No answer will make the situation rosy, but is there a way to make sense of divine violence?

First, a couple of questions: Can God kill the innocent?

Granted, it’s immoral for us to destroy life: we didn’t create it in the first place. That would be “playing God”. But can God play God? Is there anything inherently wrong with the Creator of life—where life is a gift, not a right—destroying the life he made? It may offend us, but if we can cut the lawn and kill a cow (neither of which we made) then surely God has a right to give life and take it away. Death is everyone’s end, whether in the calm of a nursing home or the turmoil of a battlefield.

I’m not sure Jericho is this stark, though. God is never capricious. Who, truly, is innocent? Can the perfect people raise their hand? In Biblical language, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. … For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[3] Our actions flow from our desires, and we’ve each hated (the heart of a murderer), lusted (the heart of an adulterer), coveted (the heart of a thief), not to mention blasphemed (damning the Life-Giver). (And all of this without unveiling enacted evil, where our self-control couldn’t restrain destructive passion.)

Which brings me to the second question: Does sin deserve to be punished?

Josef Fritzl locked his 15 year old daughter in a basement and raped her up to 5 times a day, fathering her seven kids. He got life in prison. Is his punishment deserved? Perhaps too lenient? Unless you’re a die-hard anarchist, you recognize the need for ultimate justice. When wrong is done, someone must pay. And in the case of the Canaanites, these weren’t minor indiscretions: they imaged their violent and sexualized gods, enshrining child sacrifice, cultic prostitution, bestiality and incest (Leviticus 18). Who better than God to weigh right and wrong, and meter out punishment?

God is longsuffering. From his initial heads up to Abraham about Jericho’s sin in Genesis 15, through to his final right handed violence in Joshua 6, we have 430 years of repeated warnings about impending judgment. One of Canaan’s prostitutes, Rahab, used God’s covenant name YHWH when explaining to Israelite spies that this coming conquest was no surprise; in her mind, the punishment was expected and just (Joshua 2:9-14). Granted, this punishment affected everyone, even infants. For individualistic westerners, this is unconscionable. Yet even we recognize that our actions affect each other—we are part of an interconnected web. A parent’s bankruptcy endangers the whole family. A president’s call to war endangers the whole nation. God was holding all of Canaan responsible for their collective sin. The corruption and violence of this culture was systemic. Enough was enough, so God stepped in to judge.

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf was born in Croatia. He lost family members to ethnic violence. Wrath first seemed “unworthy of God. Isn’t God love?” But his final resistance to the idea fell as he reflected on genocide in the former Yugoslavia, millions displaced and thousands butchered. Volf wondered,

“How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? … Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them? … I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.”[4]

For Canaan, divine violence was just. Israel was the underdog, a nation of slaves called to confront a superpower as YHWH’s sword—not because of Israel’s superiority, but because of Jericho’s sin (Deuteronomy 9:4-6). God returned on Canaan the violence they unjustly exercised on others, even their own people. We may not like it, but we can hardly call it unfair.

But the right-handed violence of God is only half the story. As God laments in Ezekiel 18, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” God’s left hand of mercy and grace was always extended to any who would repent. Even to a prostitute named Rahab. This was not ethnic cleansing. Indeed, Rahab was incorporated as the ancestor of Israel’s Messiah, Jesus the Christ. God would still bless the nations through this nation.

Any blog-length treatment of such complex issues will always fall short.[5] But as I’ve grappled with divine violence, I’ve come to see the truth in the old spiritual, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” Yes, but it takes two hands for God to hold a broken world. God’s right hand of justice will rightly deal with individual and corporate evil, bringing all things to account, precisely because he loves the world. Without confidence in ultimate justice, surely we would play vigilante rather than turn the other cheek as peacemakers in the image of Jesus. But God is arguably left-handed. Grace and mercy had the first word at creation, the decisive word at the cross, and will have the final word in New Creation where violence is no more and swords are beaten into plowshares (Isaiah 2). It is this perfect fusion of both hands together that allows God to hold this fallen world in love. Anything less, and YHWH wouldn’t really be God, or worth worshipping.

Will such answers satisfy sceptics? I doubt it. But God is not genocidal. Dawkins’ rant was one tag too short: Deicidal. God’s character is most truly seen at the cross. Whatever your background, YHWH is ever ready to absorb your evil in love, even if it costs his own life.

Dave Benson

[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 31.

[2] Genesis 6-9; Exodus 11-15; Deuteronomy 7.

[3] Romans 3:23; 6:23.

[4] Free of Charge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 138-39.

[5] Delving deeper? Watch the video “God’s Two Hands” at http://wonderingfair.com/media/ and download resources from http://logos.kbc.org.au/blog/resources/logos-talks/gods-two-hands/.

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Tags: Anger, Blood, Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, God, grace, justice, love, mercy, World, Wrath
Categories : On Anything and Everything, The Heart of Faith, Tough Questions

Amature Lovers and Remembered People

11 05 2011

Cockroaches big enough to be ridden by small jockeys squirmed across the floor, the smell of urine and alcohol hung in the air, and everything seemed to be caked with filth. I recoiled at the thought of helping a forgotten old man named Wayne last week. Standing in the doorway of his single room apartment I could see that “helping him” around the house would mean entering into a chasm of filth and pain. Wayne’s weathered face peered into my own, watching me take in what lay before us. A few hours later I am heaving his limp old “mattress” into a dumpster in the heavy rain. Much to my distress it somehow collapses over top of me and I find myself sandwiched inside of strangely warm, wet stinking mattress. Once freed, I want to get away. I want to run so far away from Wayne that I never have to remember him again. Instead, I take a minuet to “break”.

Wandering onto the apartment’s top floor I overlook the city. “How many other “Wayne’s” are out there?”… I quietly wonder. It is an overwhelming feeling. I realize in this moment that Wayne’s messy apartment is just the surfaced expression of his entire life. I also realize that there are many Wayne’s out there in the city, and, in fact, in me! I, too, have carefully concealed messes and “dirty rooms” needing to be cleaned. Wayne’s obvious mess simply leaks a larger truth that American philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s rightly observes: that “most men live lives of quiet desperation.” I’m not the first person to overlook a city and consider these things… Jesus approaches his own city and weeps at the thought of those like Waynen – those desperate for peace, people like me.[1]

Walking back into Wayne’s apartment I notice something I hadn’t before. In the middle of Wayne’s dimly lit room is a single chair. But who has one chair? A forgotten person nobody hears. I realize that my own desires to run away and forget Wayne would be commonplace. I re-entered Wayne’s apartment settled to not let myself forget him. I wouldn’t be content to just “cry over the city;” Jesus didn’t. Jesus entered the city and famously sat among those most eager for peace, the poor and the broken. He listened, remembered, and taught how to rightly love one another.

Still, I wonder who will remember all the Wayne’s we daily pass on the streets… who will notice when they “check out”? Will they be remembered? While Jesus is dying on the cross a forgotten criminal asks Jesus a simple request, “Remember me when you enter your kingdom.” People want to be remembered. It means their life meant something, that their life mattered. Jesus replies to the criminal “Don’t worry, I will remember you… but not only that, I am going to bring you with me to paradise.”[2] God not only hears the forgotten, He remembers the forgotten while promising a great party. It tells me that each person is of great value and significant in God’s eyes – worth hearing and remembering. That’s good news for all those thirsty for purpose and hungry for peace.

God hears and remembers people like you, Wayne, and even amateur lovers like me. In the words made famous in the movie Wayne’s World, “Party on Wayne…party on”.

Luke 23:38-43

Ryan Vallee is an an adventure seeker, amateur lover, and Jesus follower who enjoys good books, movies, and coffee.

[1] Luke 19:41-42.

[2] My paraphrase of Luke 23:39-43.