Back in New Testament times, there was a small rich elite that ran Palestine composed of Herodians, high priests, and a lay aristocracy, one to two percent of the population. Another 5 percent served the rich elite. Rural peasants---small landowners, tenants, day laborers and slaves---made up around 75 percent of the Palestinian population; the majority were poor or near poor. Things were going from bad to worse as a predatory financial/economic system was pushing farmers off their land. Justice was broken; oppression was running wild; some of the worst oppressors were the religious rich. For more documentation, google Matthew: A Log Cabin Publican? Good News for Sex Workers.
Rich elites seem to prosper in either dictatorships or democracies (aristocracies/plutocracies.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, brilliant Reformed philosopher/theologian, declares that English translators and theologians have "dejusticized" the English translations of the New Testament, have separated justice and love. This also means that few English readers of the New Testament tie the kingdom of God and liberating justice together; most, therefore, neglect justice and the love of God (Mt. 6:33; Luke 11). Therefore, they do not grasp Graham Cray' assertion: "The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit."
Steven Voth, a professional Bible translator (chapter 14, The Challenge of Bible Translation), documents Wolterstorff's claim that English New Testaments have been dejusticized. Voth made a statistical comparison of different language translations of the New Testament. The KJV NT has zero references to justice; the NIV, only 16 references to justice; whereas a typical Spanish, French or Latin translation of the NT has around 100 references to justice.
Wolterstorff says there are around 300 dik-stems in the Greek NT; the fundamental meanings of dik are just, justice or adik injustice/oppression.
In Matthew 25:31-46. the whole meaning of the passage hangs on were you just or unjust in your treatment of others; the final judgment is based on the doing of justice or the neglect of justice. "Luke contains the same number of dik-words as Matthew (28) but the additional 25 uses in Acts make Luke the New Testament author second only to Paul (114 uses plus 25 in the pastoral letters). In Luke-Acts, 19 of the 53 uses involve words signifying oppression/injustice."
The Christian Reformed Church's Committee to Study Restorative Justice states:
"[American] Justice is broken. . . . we need a concept of justice that corrects and restores what is broken [as a result of oppression]. . . . Confusion sometimes occurs because the single word justice is used for both justice in the sense of being right and justice in the sense of setting right. The Bible is concerned, for the most part, with setting right. It does not so much describe justice as prescribe it. . . . .Paul has in mind a setting right of what is wrong. This, of course, is God's setting right, but there is also in Scripture a call for a human setting right [a liberating justice]."
In modern day America, justice is broken and ethnocentrism and oppression are running wild. Not only is America refusing to repent and repair over its sins, its social evil, it has renamed and rationalized them. We have sanitized our national evils by calling them American exceptionalism, westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, Christian nation, the American Dream, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Out of our ignorance and arrogance, we built an Arch to celebrate our sin of Indian genocide. Lewis and Clark are celebrated as heroes, not as genocide spies
When a nation doesn't repent of its sins, it repeats them over and over again---in Hawaii, in the Philippines, in Tokyo Bay. Could our invasion of Tokyo Bay been one of the factors that, long term, led to Pearl Harbor? We don't repent because we reap the fruit of oppression. The DeWolf slave trading clan said they were in it for the MONEY. Jefferson and Jackson wanted free Indian land. Washington and Jefferson wanted free black labor.
When faced with a choice to repent or celebrate, we celebrate our sins, our social evils; we sin and celebrate. Seldom do our pastors pray the Daniel 9 prayer for America. After all, a self-righteous people sees no need to repent and repair.
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