Spirituality Without Justice; Spirituality With Justice

Spirituality Without Justice Spirituality With Justice

Isaiah 1:11-16; 22-23
Isaiah 58:1-5 Isaiah 58:6-14
Amos 5:7-12; 21-23 Amos 5:24
Matthew 7:15-23 Matthew 5:6, 10; 6:33
James 2:1-13 James 2:14-26

Examples: Examples:

New Testament Temple: a den of robbers. Job 29:7-17; 31:16-25
Pharisees who loved money and neglected justice. Mahatma Gandhi, India
The church in James 2. Martin Luther King, United States
Jonathan Edwards owned a slave. Nelson Mandela, South Africa
A.W. Tozer moved his church out of a poor black community. John Perkins, Mississippi
White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants.

According to Isaiah 10:1-2, Israelites both "withheld justice from the oppressed" and "robbed the fatherless." Sins of omission and commission? According to the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:6,10 and 6:33, Jesus sets a high standard for the doing of God's will---"Seek first God's kingdom and his justice" and do it with passion, hunger and thirst after justice, even though the aggressive pursuit of justice will often end up flavored with persecution. Those who set a low standard for doing God's comprehensive will, those who only cast out demons and perform miracles but do not do justice for the oppressed, are classified as evil doers or doers of injustice.

As an individual, a person is either a sinner or a righteous one; there is no neutral in between; socially, are we doers of injustice or doers of justice with no neutral in between? So is spirituality without justice also spirituality with oppression? When an individual is born again, this is only a spiritual beginning that is supposed to lead to doing justice. God hates, despises injustice; God loves, requires justice.

The Scripture are fierce, unsparing in their condemnation of a spirituality without justice. America is awash in an evangelical spirituality without justice. Often a spirituality with charity, but not a spirituality that creates economic justice for blacks, that practices comprehensive Jubilee justice.

I have some white Christian friends who were typical Americanized Christians. Then they went to Haiti and found a more biblical God at work in the ministry of Jean Thomas (HCDF), a ministry that combined spirituality and justice among the rural poor of Fond-des-Blancs. They were surprised, amazed and receptive; I see that they are now more biblically Christian, not just Americanized Christians.

The following quotation comes The Message, a Bible translation by Eugene Peterson, the Introduction to the book of Amos:

"Prophets sniff out injustice, especially injustice that is dressed up in religious garb. Prophets see through hypocrisy, especially hypocrisy that assumes a religious pose. . . . If we pray and worship God and associate with others who likewise pray and worship God, we absolutely must keep company with these biblical prophets. We are required to submit all our words and acts to their passionate scrutiny to prevent the perversion of our religion into something self-serving. A spiritual life that doesn't give a large place to the prophet-articulated justice will end up making us worse instead of better, separating us from God's ways instead of drawing us into them."

We need to train a new generation of theologians and preachers who know the difference between a demonic spirituality without justice and a spirituality with justice, and who have the courage to both preach and practice it.

For 15 years, I lived in nearly all black West Jackson, Mississippi. In a 12 square block area, there were 3 large black churches with million dollar church buildings that were well-kept and well-attended. Around these churches, the community was deterioriating with much delapidated housing. A spirituality without economic justice. Just to the east of Rose Street, Habitat for Humanity had built a dozen houses---a spirituality with justice. A few blocks west of Prentiss stood the Perkins Center, a model of Christian Community Development---a spirituality with justice. Strangely, none of the 3 black churches imitated the models of spirituality with justice very close by.

From The Message, Amos 5:

"I can't stand your religious meetings. . . . Do you know what I want? I want justice---oceans of it. I want fairness---rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want."

From The Message, Isaiah 1:

"No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I will not be listening. And do you know why? Because you've been tearing people to pieces."

From The Message, Isaiah 58 on authentic spirituality:

"break the chains of injustice, free the oppressed, cancel debts."



Sweeping, Radical, Extreme

For years, I have been exploring Jubilee Justice/Sabbath Year and its implications for the New Testament kingdom of God. Jonathan Cahn in his book The Mystery of the Shemitah [Sabbath Year], 2014, shed new light for me on the radical release involved in the God-designed Year. Cahn is a Messianic believer, a Jewish follower of Jesus Christ who leads a worship center made up of Jews and Gentiles in Wayne, New Jersey. He knows Hebrew.

Because we are fallen individuals who live in fallen societies [cosmos---evil social orders], we incline toward greed, materialism and oppression. To stop this widespread tendency, every seventh day we are to rest and worship, make the Sabbath Day a holy day. So also the Sabbath Year; every seventh year is to be a holy year---a year of rest and worship in which the land is not to be tilled, the slaves must be freed and all debts canceled. In other words, massive economic and social leveling; every person, family has a new beginning. All tendencies toward lifelong oppression [slavery and debt slavery] are broken. The Sabbath Year which combines holiness and justice is, according to Cahn, "sweeping, radical and extreme." Why? Because social evil in the form of systems of oppression, if allowed to continue for a lifetime or even for generations, becomes "sweeping, radical and extreme." So strong action is needed; a periodic cleansing, a chance to start anew.

According to Cahn, "During the Sabbath Year the people of Israel were to leave their fields, vineyards, and groves open for the poor. For the duration of the year the land belonged, in effect, to everyone. And what ever grew of its own accord was called hefker, meaning "without an owner." So during the Sabbath year the land, in effect, belonged to everyone and no one at the same time."

Cahn states: "So on Elul 29, the very last day of the Sabbath year, a sweeping transformation took place in the nation's financial realm. Everyone who owed a debt was released. And every creditor had to release the debt owed. . . . The nation's financial accounts were, in effect, wiped clean. It was Israel's day of financial nullification and remission." Sounds like every creditor who refused to release the debtor would then, in God's eyes, become an oppressor. See Deut. 15:1-2. This whole action is called "the Lord's release." But it was something the people had to do.

Cahn adds: "The idea of a nation ceasing all work on its land for an entire year is a radical proposition. No less radical is the idea of a day in which all credit and debt are wiped away." So this is why Cahn at the end of chapter 4 states that the Sabbath Year is "sweeping, radical and extreme." It is against the rich and for the poor.

In summary, Cahn says: "So for the people of Israel to keep the Sabbath year was to acknowledge God's sovereignty over their land and lives. It was also an act of faith. It required their total trust in God's faithfulness to provide for their needs while they ceased from farming. In the same way, to cancel all the debts owed them was to sacrifice monetary gain and, again, to rely on God's providence." I think that the New Testament kingdom of God, fully understood, is equally "sweeping, radical and extreme." To avoid these implications, theologians have cleverly futurized and spiritualized the kingdom of God. Therefore, the church has no clear and compelling vision of the kingdom of God here on earth.

According to Cahn, violation of the Sabbath Year can bring divine judgment, but not without warning. 9/11 took place during a Sabbath Year. The 2008 Recession took place during a Sabbath Year. September 2014 marked the beginning of a Sabbath Year which will end in September 2015.

If the church is not now so doing, we should repent, live simple, holy and just lives, shed our American materialism.