Tag: Justice

Morning Musings: Isaiah 1:16-17

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“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

This is a powerful call to righteousness and justice in its own right, but its context makes it even more powerful.  Take a minute to read again what comes just before this.  God essentially tells the people to stop worshiping Him.  Well, not exactly that, but close enough as far as they were concerned.

For the people of Israel, the worship of God was found in the rituals.  Having rituals be a part of our worship isn’t a bad thing.  In fact, where those rituals help focus our hearts and minds on the God to whom we are directing our attention they can be a very good thing.  But, it is easy to begin thinking that the rituals are valuable in and of themselves.  As a point of fact, they’re not. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Proverbs 20:22

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“Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.”  (ESV)

When we have been affronted by some evil, or when we see someone else who has been affected by it, our natural response is to want to repay it.

Throughout the whole of human history, our natural response has been to repay in kind when we have been dealt an offense.  And this is right, isn’t it?  If something is wrong, we need to act to set it right.  For someone who doesn’t believe in a just god, this is obviously necessary, because who else is going to do it?  But even for those who believe in a God who is perfect in justice this should be something that is good and right, yes?  After all, this would be our participating in His character of justice.   Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Psalm 99:8

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“O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

One of the things that can be so frustrating about the Scriptures is that over and over they take two ideas which seem to be contradictory, declare them both to be true, and, rather than resolving the tension, simply leave it in place.

Some examples of this would be divine sovereignty and human responsibility, Jesus’ full humanity and full divinity, and the three-persons and one-person nature of the Trinity.  Right here we see another tension.  The psalmist declares God to be both a forgiver of sins, but also an avenger of wrongdoings.   Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Ecclesiastes 9:11

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“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Thanks to the influence of Eastern religious movements in this country, we have a fairly common phrase for when something unfortunate has happened to someone.  It comes in many forms, but the simplest (and cleanest) statement is this: “That’s Karma.”   Read the rest…

O God of Vengeance?

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I was reading the other day in Psalm 94 and I came across something that really caught my eye.  In the first verse, the psalmist proclaims this: “O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth!”

O God of vengeance?  I can think of a lot of things for which to praise the Lord.  I could praise Him for His goodness, His love, His mercy, His compassion, His justice, His righteousness, His faithfulness, His generosity, His protection, His plans, His gentleness, His care, and I could probably keep going here for a while.  You may want to go get a sandwich and come back.

The point is: There are lots of things for which we could easily offer praise to God.  Vengeance doesn’t usually (or ever) fall on that list.  Why would the psalmist offer praise like this as the start of his poem and why would that particular song get picked up for the collection of sacred songs that were counted as Scripture?   Read the rest…