The struggle for justice is never easy. The constant presence of sin makes it feel like the world cannot get better. The weight of discouragement continually brings you to the edge of giving up in the fight. The ongoing, and changing, manifestations of injustice make it feel like there’s no end in sight, no hope for the hopeless. While this series has discussed a view of God’s justice (the Proverbs), Jesus’ justice (the Psalter), and our personal response to injustice (Job), we haven’t talked about what we are supposed to think about injustice. This is where we will discuss the final two books in the Wisdom canon: the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes.
Nineveh and Enemy Love
Even though I was living in small town Pleasant Hill, Missouri, rather than New York, 9/11 was a scary day for me and my family. Before I knew it, I was told my dad was not allowed to leave the air force base he was stationed at, since they were a potential target for future attacks. The thought of my dad being stuck on base while our country was under attack, let alone not coming home alive, was paralyzing for a 7th grader. Nothing may have happened, but it remains a haunting thought to this day, and it caused me to become skeptical of anyone I met who might…well, you know…be a “terrorist.”
Fast forward a few years later, and the same fear that gripped us as a nation then still lurks in the corner (or sometimes forefront) of our minds now. This is why Trump gets so much support for his ideas: if it were Japanese or Australian soldiers who had flown planes into the Twin Towers, Trump’s rhetoric against Muslims and Middle Eastern men and women would be powerless. However, because of 9/11 and our supposed “war on terror,” it’s easier to view others as potential terrorists and our enemies simply because they are Middle Eastern in descent. It’s simply how we’ve been conditioned to think.
The Wisdom of Justice: Job
So far in my series on the theme of justice in the Wisdom books, we have looked at the Proverbs and Israel’s Psalter. In the Proverbs, we saw a revelation of God’s character as someone who is personally involved in bringing justice to the world and rewarding those who worked toward justice. As we sang through the Psalter, we saw God’s Son, the King, who works to bring God’s kingdom to the world and remake its citizens as people who look like God. Yet, for some, this might still remain somewhat abstract. So what if God is working to bring justice to the world? We don’t live in the eschaton: we live in the now, where violence still disrupts life and people still love themselves over their neighbors.
This is where the story of Job can help fill in the gaps.1While it may not be completely right, for many reasons, to equate Job’s suffering with systemic injustice, I think there is still a lot to learn from Job. Job is the story of a man who had it all, even by our standards. He had a large family, good standing with God, and a lot of possessions. He even used these possessions for the advancement of his community (Job 28). He made sacrifices, anxious to keep his family right in the sight of God. His children gathered often to feast and make merry together. He had servants who watched over his cattle and his fields. One day, though, that all changed.
References
| 1. | ↑ | While it may not be completely right, for many reasons, to equate Job’s suffering with systemic injustice, I think there is still a lot to learn from Job. |
The Wisdom of Justice: Psalms
You know when you get a song stuck in your head and nothing seems to be able to get it out? Every thought you have is tainted by the song, and the worst part is that it’s usually just a small snippet of the song. Rather than being able to focus on your work, you can’t help but sing Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” for the hundredth time…today. That’s not to mention when you listened to it yesterday in the car or when you first heard the song and couldn’t stop singing it.
The Psalms aim for the same concept: to get the ways of God stuck in our heads through song and poetry. They are based on a combination of the Torah (Psalm 1) and personal catastrophes or life lessons. As David was on the run from Saul (Psalm 22), or lamenting over his sin in the aftermath of Uriah’s death (Psalm 51), or as Asaph was wracked with guilt over his desire for unrighteous living (Psalm 73), the composers took what they knew to be true from the Torah and set their feelings to music. In doing so, they passed on their experiences to future singers, that these singers might know solidarity with others who have felt similar feelings before.
The Wisdom of Justice: Proverbs
The world, as it stands, does not seem to look the way that Christians would expect it to. Rather than seeing a world marked by peace, where weapons have become pruning hooks and the lion lies down with the lamb, we see death. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are victims of systems designed to protect people like them. Lorne Ahrens, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, and Michael Krol lost their lives in an act of violence committed by a trained gunman, one whom they swore to protect. Sin wrecks the systems of this world, and the principalities and powers of this age are not content to merely fuel individual violence, instead creating whole anti-Christian narratives. Systems designed to keep law and order end up being wracked by violence from both within and without.
When most Christians want to speak the language of the Bible and apply it to present situations, our first instinct is usually to look at the prophets. This is not wrong, but maybe incomplete. The prophets learned the language of justice from Israel’s extensive wisdom literature. To speak the language of the prophets, we should first learn the language of Lady Wisdom. Put another way, we look through the lens of the Proverbs: rather than listening to the instruction of our fathers, and the teaching of our mothers, we have gone astray to be with Lady Folly. Her alluring words, dripping with honey and smoother than oil, help us forget that she forgot the God of the covenant and left the companions of her youth. Humanity, under Adam, left the path of her fathers and followed the sons of Folly: ambushing those who were innocent without reason, rejoicing and delighting in evil, learning deviousness and crooked ways. By embracing the wisdom of this world, we have adopted the wisdom that killed the Son of Glory, becoming a part of the violent ways of Folly, at risk of never regaining the paths of life.