Musings: Living in an Unjust World
By Patrick Mitchel
(From the October - December 2021 issue of VOX)
Watching the images of terrorised people desperate to flee from their own homeland of Afghanistan confronts us with the fact that we live in a grossly unfair world. I couldn’t begin to imagine the desperation that led Zaki Anwari to hang on to the undercarriage of a US plane leaving Kabul. A young man who loved playing football, he clung on literally to the hope of a better life and tragically lost his grip.
With 24/7 news we are more acutely aware of the unfairness of the world than ever before. It’s grotesque that the 22 richest men in the world own more wealth than all the women in Africa and that just 2,152 people have more money than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the world’s population (Oxfam, 2020). It is unjust that climate change, caused primarily by wealthy industrial nations, is impacting the poorest people in the majority world who have the lowest carbon footprint.
In our better moments, seeing such injustice, we cry out ‘It’s not fair!’ The world shouldn’t be this way. But why do we feel this way? What are we to do about it? Is there hope for this unjust world?
Why do we feel this way?
“Justice is rooted in the character of God.”
Our human desire for justice comes from our Creator. We’re made in God’s image, and while that image is cracked, it’s not utterly broken. The Bible tells us justice is rooted in the character of God. A wonderful example is Deuteronomy 10:17: “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.” Bribery is profoundly unjust. It favours the rich at the expense of the poor. The fact that God is incorruptible is good news for the marginalised. He shows no favouritism to the wealthy and powerful.
But this isn’t all. The next verse speaks of how God is actively on the side of the poor. “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing” (18). These were the most vulnerable and powerless people in the ancient world – and God had their backs. Such impartial love reflects God’s perfect justice.
What are we to do about it?
The answer is challenging. God’s people are to be a community of justice. This is a constant theme in Scripture: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24); “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17); “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). God justly judges His own people when they practice injustice – which is why Israel ends up in exile.
“Care for the poor was thought by Paul to be a necessary hallmark of the corporate life of Jesus-followers.”
In Galatians, Paul talks about his agreement with the other apostles on the content of the gospel and his mission to the Gentiles and adds, “all they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along” (2:10). Doing justice is integral to the gospel. In Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty and the Greco-Roman World New Testament scholar Bruce Longenecker says, “... economic assistance of the poor was not sufficient in and of itself, nor was it exhaustive of the good news of Jesus; but neither was it supplemental or peripheral to that good news. Instead, falling within the essentials of the good news, care for the poor was thought by Paul to be a necessary hallmark of the corporate life of Jesus-followers ...”
As we look at our unjust world, let’s ask ourselves how can we act for justice? What is God calling us to do?
Hope for an Unjust World
However much we do we will never fix this world. Its future does not lie in our hands. The good news of the Gospels is that Israel’s Messiah has arrived, one who fulfils the Old Testament’s longing for justice. The king is inaugurating a kingdom of justice, open to all. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour”(Luke 4:18-19 quoting Isaiah 61:1-2).
But there’s a dramatic plot twist. Jesus comes first not as a judge but as a Saviour. He bears the judgement of sin for the whole world. This is why Paul goes to the Gentiles – this good news of forgiveness and new life is for all humanity, rich and poor, Jew and Greek, male and female. So the other ‘side’ of our response to a broken and unfair world is tell the good news of Jesus Christ. And we do so in the hope that the resurrected Lord will return as a just judge to end all injustice and put this world right.
Dr. Patrick Mitchel is Senior Lecturer in Theology at the Irish Bible Institute. You can follow his blog at www.faithinireland.wordpress.com.
