God, the Bible and Political Justice: Chapter 6

We All Want Justice

As we prepare to look at the prescriptive Laws of Moses it is important that we first take time to look at two things. One is the importance of the meaning of our words and where we get those definitions, which we will look at in this chapter.  The second, we will take up in chapter seven, is the differences between moral and civil law.

What Are We Missing

There is something in the New Testament that no longer seems to draw our attention. In my own study and reading this began to be highlighted and bother me. From the second chapter of Acts on there is a response from people the writer struggles to describe using words and phrases like “bewilderment,” “utterly amazed” and “amazed and perplexed.” And those expletives are in one single paragraph.

Acts 2:4-12

4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. 5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

“What does this mean,” indeed?

All the people present that day in Jerusalem lived in or were visiting a very cosmopolitan city. This is not the first time they have heard foreign languages. There would have been a cacophony of different tongues around them all the time. This is certainly not the first time they have heard drunks in the street. So what is it that draws their attention and causes them to be “amazed?” This type of language of amazement continues throughout the New Testament as the message spreads from Jerusalem to the surrounding Gentile cultures.

In Pisidian nearly the whole city turns out to hear Paul and Lystra the crowds that Paul and Barnabas were gods and wanted to worship them. In Thessalonia they accepted as the words of God not of men.

In Rome Paul declares the message he is preaching to be a mystery hidden from the beginning of time for all nations. To the Colossians Paul says that this mystery hidden for ages and generations is now revealed in Christ in whom are “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” To the Ephesians Paul says he is an administrator of this great mystery and asks that they pray he will fearlessly make this mystery known. And Peter tells us that even the angles want to look into these things, but apparently cannot.

What Have We Lost?

What is it that we do not seem to experience any longer in the preaching and the hearing of the gospel? What have we grown so accustomed to and no longer notice? Or is it something we have lost the ability to see in our modern understanding of the message of Christ? When left with questions like this I assume that if the Bible labors a point it is because that point will always need to be grasped in order for us to understand God and His message correctly. There is something going on here in Acts and through out the rest of the New Testament church experience that relates to how these people perceived their “god/s.” Something about “this God” being proclaimed in all their languages that they cannot conceive.

If we look at the “god/s” in the age of the Old Testament we see that they are perceived as deities of the land the people inhabit. They are the god/s of the mountains or plains, gods of the sea or the sky, the moon or the sun. They are the gods of “a people,” “a land,” the Philistines, the Cretans, the Greeks or Medes. All these nations were perfectly willing to accept the credibility of another “ god of Abraham” and later a “god of the Jews.” People of different cultures speak freely of the power of some other nations god/s. They even devise military strategies based on the attributes of the enemy’s god. This was the thinking of the Jewish people as well. It was not only “our god is the true god,” it was “our god is our god.” These deities defined nationhood and who the people were. And they were jealous for them.

This Is Our Way

We can imagine how human beings came to these views. These wonderful creatures created in the image of God but separated from the God of that image must try to understand “god” on their own terms. They have no doubt that there are/is a power/s greater than themselves. The world they inhabit is full of danger and empty of understanding. Why does the volcano erupt, or a storm swell and destroy the fishing fleet? Who or what kills the corpse lying in the wilderness? Why is one farm prosperous while another fails, one baby live and one die? Where do dead people go and babies come from.  Are they the same spirit? Do I need a boat to travel to the next life? What do I need to take with me? Is everyday a new day or the same day all over again? What will keep us safe? From weather? From monsters? From disease? From enemies? From each other? These are the questions of survival.

If we are living in mountains we begin to find keys to surviving in those mountains. These discoveries are so important to life they begin to take on meaning beyond information becoming doctrines of faith. Imagine a fishing village struggling with low catches. In dire conditions, one fisherman not finishing his morning drink as he gets into his boat pours it out on the beach as he leaves. That day he catches more fish that they have seen all season. Everyone wants to know “what did you do? Where did you fish? What did you use for bait?” The bewildered fisherman does not know…the day seemed common. He did what he always did. Except? And then he remembers. He poured his morning drink out on the beach! That’s it! That’s what the god of the sea requires… a drink offering, a libation for the god of the sea to bless them. In order for the tribe to survive and eat we must offer the sea a gift. And so it begins…

One step at a time, a people, a tribe a nation lays down a system of ideas that experience, history, the ancestors have taught is “the way” to be safe, to prosper, to be blessed. These ideas become beliefs and these beliefs become the tacit basis for culture and religious faith. These ideas describe, “How things work,” reality. They keep the tribe safe and they become deeply woven in the group consciousness generation after generation. Intricate systems of living become known as “the Jewish,” “the American way,” “the African way,” “the Latin way,” “the Asian way.” They define who we are as a people and how the world works. We feel these beliefs very strongly. We would go so far as to say “god gave us this way.” And in some of our many beliefs, He did.  And the fact that God did speak to our forefathers has made us, in part, a great nation.

Now, someone comes along and says there only one way?  And they say it in the language that was designed to communicate “our way?” The audience is amazed, bewildered and perplexed.  If this is such an important Biblical message where have these incredibly strong feelings and reactions gone?

Today

“Well” we might say, “we live in a much more enlightened age now.” “We no longer are so controlled by those superstitions and taboos, at least not in most cultures.” And in some areas of life that is perhaps true. But is it possible that in other areas of life, thought, belief that we still, even as Christians, we hold onto these cultural securities and comforts? Is it possible that we lay the message of Jesus over the top of these tacit, fundamental definitions of reality? Could it be that the gospel we preach today does not even begin to touch our cultural realities? Could this be why the global Church of Jesus has such patchy blessing and our lifestyle cannot be distinguished from those who live around us, except on Sunday?

Consider this!

We All Want Justice

If we ask anyone in any country from any religion, with only the grossest of exceptions, to answer the following questions, we would get the same answer:

*Do you want political justice?  Yes!

*Would you like to be a slave? No!

*Do you want people to be poor?  No!

* Would you work for me for nothing? No!

*Should people be loved?  Yes!

*Do you think we should kill people?  No!

*Is it a good thing to steal things from others? No!

*Is telling the truth better than lying? Yes!

*Do you think people should have sex with other people’s wives/husbands? No!

*Is it a good thing to disrespect your parents? No!

*Should a person be convicted of a crime they did not commit? No!

*Is abortion, drug use, lying, cheating, stealing a good thing? No!

*Do you love your family? Yes!

*I don’t have a car.  Can I take yours? No!

We all want the same things, don’t we? I have been to more than half the countries of the world and I have yet to encounter a culture or a people who are crying out to be more corrupt, poorer, less developed and with no justice whatsoever.

So, what is the problem? Why do we not have world peace, global quality of life, wonderful whole families and zero crime rates? Is it possible that it is because when we use the words, justice, poor, corruption, development, kill, work, steal, sex, disrespect, crime, peace, own, property, freedom… we are not talking about the same thing. Our definitions have vastly different meanings? We seek the same values in “word” but they are not the same values in meaning. When we watch the news and see the protesters placard,  “We Want Justice,” we would be wise to stop and ask their definition of “justice” before we agree or disagree.

Is it possible that this is just as true among believers as it is among those of different faiths? If we are to “disciple all nations” in “Kingdom justice” we must make sure our definitions are the same as God’s. Otherwise, we may once again see the “King coming in all His Glory” and be aware of only “a man on a mule.” In other words we may see Jesus bringing justice and not recognize it because it is not “our” definition of justice. Or, perhaps worse, we will preach a justice that is not God’s at all, but more a Jewish, American, Latin, Arab, African, Asian version of justice.

What can deliver any of us from our cultural blindness?

There Is Only One Source

There is only one place to go in order to understand the specific definitions God gave to these terms. That is to the Law of Moses and the Prophets. Justice does not mean anything we want it to mean, for the Kingdom ambassador it means what God says it means. We have a set of values in Scripture by which to measure and correct our own personal and/or cultural definitions of reality.

These, Jesus had mastered by the time He was thirteen.

God lays out His Biblical revelation of Himself on a timeline, beginning with creation, man’s decent into global violence, the flood, man’s decent into violence again and finally Abraham and God’s strategy of using one nation to reveal His heart and strategy for all nations. Through Abraham and his descendants God will bring “the Law,” His thinking on all of life and “His Son,” His solution for the redemption of all creation. God continues to tell us two millennium of Jewish history, which is anything but good. The Law will “bless” those who live by it, setting them free from tyranny but only the Messiah will bring release from our “slavery to sin” and unveil the “mystery” kept secret for ages.

Jesus Loved the Law

All of Scripture, old and new, refers back to and builds on the Laws of Moses, the Pentateuch. In Matthew five Jesus makes it clear that the Law and the Prophets build the foundation for His message and His actions:

17″Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

If our thinking does not build on the values and definitions of the Law then we cannot understand where Jesus is taking us with His message. He is not giving us a sympathetic, spineless, feel good broth. Jesus actually raises the requirements of the Law to righteousness beyond what Moses could have comprehended. We do not reinterpret the Old Testament with the New, nor the New with the Old, but rather see them as a four thousand year line of thought that God is building. It is a continuum of ideas that begin in Genesis and build towards His ultimate return. And, it instructs us as to how we should live in the meantime.

It is impossible to define “justice” or “mercy” without the Old Testament definition of “justice” and “mercy.” It is impossible to define “political justice” without God’s definition in the Old Testament. These concepts do not mean whatever we want them to mean because of our gifts or personality, culture or times. They mean something quite specific to God and only He has the right to define them for us. If we seek to be God’s ambassadors then we must represent His policies not the current policies of the world or even sometimes the thinking and policies of Christians in our age.

At this point you may be feeling like skipping ahead to the revelation of the “great mystery.” But before you can understand that you must labor with God through several hundred years and pages of painful Jewish history, even after the Law. Then, and only then, will you understand what Christ has done and what our message is today.

Next