Stephen
Terry, Director
Mercy
and Justice in Psalms and Proverbs
Commentary
for the July 27, 2019 Sabbath School Lesson
"This is what the Lord Almighty said: 'Administer true
justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or
the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each
other.'" Zechariah 7:9-10, NIV
We live in a time when evil seems to ooze from every
crack and crevice in our world. It seems overwhelming, and with it comes
injustice and oppression. Those who are unable to defend themselves are
victimized by those who are able to wield power over them. Perhaps one of the
greatest tragedies of our time is the multitude of children never being allowed
to see the light of day. Instead they are slain in their mother's womb as
though they were nothing more than a cancerous tumor. This is not a new evil.
It is only a more widely available one. The wealthy and privileged have always
had access to means to terminate unwanted pregnancies while the poor were
forced to give birth to children they could ill afford. However, in Roe v. Wade, in 1973, a majority Republican
Supreme Court made access to early termination of pregnancy available to all
women as a civil right. Justice demanded equal access for all, not just the
wealthy, and mercy delivered women, especially the poor, from the sometimes
deadly ordeal of backroom abortions, or the alternative, abject poverty with
too many mouths to feed on too little income. Unfortunately, apart from the tragedy
of so many children torn prematurely from their mother's womb, which is sad
enough, a Christian is confronted with an additional quandary. If, as we
commonly believe, each of us is born for a purpose, are we then thwarting or
subverting God's plan for this world by not allowing these many pregnancies to
proceed to birth?
No doubt, some, who profess no religion or one with a
different concept about life, would find this to be irrelevant. Also, without a
doubt, some might also see me as another white male worrying about what women
do with their bodies. It also goes without saying that since the question I
have raised is religious in nature, it is beyond the authority of the United
States government to consider such factors when deciding cases like Roe v. Wade. But this is only a
touchstone for a far larger problem. In a religiously pluralistic society like
ours where a government is mandated to remain neutral regarding religious
belief, we struggle to find a just and merciful path forward. This is because
those properties are not defined identically across the religious spectrum, and
while the government may not identify with a particular religious perspective,
the people most certainly do, all the way from extreme fundamentalism to
atheism. Remaining neutral in such a landscape must be very similar to the
proverbial "herding cats." Certainly each perspective asserts a varying
amount of cat-like independence from all the others. The uniqueness of the
principles of the United States Constitution may, in spite of its great
promise, may carry within itself the seeds of the demise of the very justice
and compassion it seeks to promote as it makes decisions almost guaranteed to
alienate one powerful faction or another. Especially with limited powers of
enforcement hedged in by civil rights guaranteed in the Constitution and finely
defined by previous court decisions.
Imagine if you will, a hornet's nest that is threatening
passersby with painful stings, and you must deal with the problem, but you may
not address the root of the problem, the nest. You may only deal with each
hornet as it comes to sting someone. Even then it is sometimes impossible to
tell the hornet's intent until after they have already struck. And while you
are dealing with those errant hornets, the queen continues to produce more
within the sanctuary of the untouchable nest. As the nest grows in size, the
problem only becomes more and more difficult to deal with in the restrained manner
being used until if overwhelms the deterrent and assumes free reign over the
area. Eventually as the colony generates more queens which begin new colonies,
the evil becomes pervasive and establishes itself as the new normal. In this
situation, a government that attempted to adopt a lamb-like harmlessness toward
varying religious perspectives may be forced to become ever more dragon-like in
the interest of its own self-preservation. We may indeed be witnessing such an
evolution as the government attempts to deal with forces that seek to overwhelm
it. Faced with a massive flood of foreigners coming to our borders, the
government places them in indefinite detention pending determination of their
status, at times taking children from the adults and placing them in detention
as well. Some may see this as an ironic form of abortion after birth as some of
those children and parents may never see one another again. Sadly even the
government seems not to know what has happened to some of them. Meanwhile the
government is accused of violating basic human rights, rights that are also enshrined
in the Constitution.
Apart from these issues, we are faced with an ever growing
disparity of wealth in the United States with much of the population seen as
little more than a resource to be expended to produce wealth for the few. Those
laborers work until their health fails them, and then are forced into
bankruptcy by excessive medical costs, destroying any dream of financial
security for themselves or their family. No matter. Others will step into the
ranks to take their places, and if it becomes too much of a problem here, the
production can simply be moved overseas where they can be forced to work even
harder for longer hours and paid much less. All of this feeds the desperation
here in the United States, and rather than blame the problem on the lack of
compassion by the rich and the government those plutocrats own, the blame is
placed on the "greedy" poor who want enough to survive, the
immigrants who come to "steal our jobs," or the drug smugglers who
bring addiction to our cities and towns. Not only do these scapegoats keep the people
from seeing the real problems, they also provide an excuse to fill the prisons.
With the largest percentage of our population imprisoned than most other countries,
we have replaced antebellum slavery with its modern equivalent, prison labor.
And if the prisoners refuse to work, it is no matter. We will simply privatize
the prisons and make a profit from running them. Ironically, even institutional
religion seems bent on accumulating wealth and power, readily supplying
"biblical" foundation for the buses the wealthy inflict on the poor.
They use verses like "The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat"[i] as an excuse to condemn
others to a life of unremitting hard labor while never questioning their own
life of ease and indolence.
All of this is sadness, but this commentary can only barely
scratch the surface of the injustice and lack of compassion washing over the
nation like a rising tide. As I hinted earlier above, these problems are
nothing new. The Old Testament prophets repeatedly chastised the people about their
lack of compassion and refusal to be just and merciful to one another. As those
prophets often pointed out, the only court of appeal that was not corrupted and
could be trusted to mete out justice and show compassion to the oppressed is
that of God himself. The prophet Habakkuk, did just that, appealing to God for
justice.[ii] God's answer to him was
that nothing was being ignored and justice was already in the works. But even
Habakkuk was troubled by the severity of that justice once he was allowed to
see its nature. It took the form of a much wickeder nation devastating Israel
for their failure to prioritize justice and mercy. In return, they were to
receive none when this fierce, rapacious nation came to their door. The prophet
Isaiah gives a glimpse of the natural reward of evil and the results to ancient
Jerusalem when the judgment of that reward was allowed to be executed against
them.[iii]
The people of Jerusalem felt that no matter how evil
things became, God would protect them because the temple was there.
Unfortunately, they failed to realize that the temple is simply a building. The
true temple is not built of wood and stone but consists of God dwelling in our
hearts through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Once that heart temple becomes
corrupted, there is no building that can save us or it. Salvation can only come
with repentance and opening our hearts to the presence of God. We have become
like those Israelites of old. We have come to worship denominationalism,
nationalism, wealth, power, our ethnicity, our gender, anything but God. Then we
go further by convincing ourselves that God has the same prejudices we do and
cause him to worship at the shrines we ourselves worship at as though he would
condone such idolatry. Should God finally appear to set things right, we would likely
crucify him for heresy just as we did two millennia ago. But as God told
Elijah, when he thought he alone was left to follow God, there are still those
who have not given in to the idolatry.[iv] Now as then, there are
some who mourn over the lack of compassion and injustice in the land. Just like
Habakkuk, they ask God "How long will this continue?" But nature
itself reveals that justice is certain and inevitable. When we plant cucumber
seeds, we don't get strawberries. We get cucumbers containing many more seeds than
what we planted. What we plant in the world will come back to us in a similar
manner in far greater quantity. Sowing the wind will undoubtedly bring the
whirlwind.[v] God calls us to repentance
and out of mercy holds back the natural reward we should receive for our
actions. Eventually, though as the tally of injustices increases the weight of
those offenses will produce such an imbalance that a just correction can no
longer be prevented. No one should desire that for themselves. Perhaps now,
during the time of mercy, we can consider our path and seek to restore the
balance God intended we should have before we are overwhelmed and overcome by
the same corrupt crop we have been sowing. While mercy lasts, it is not too
late to go to our Creator and learn to sow different seed that will not only
provide us with a better harvest but will profit everyone else as well.
Wouldn't that be a better choice?
