David Bosch, a NT scholar and a missiologist, also stresses that English translations usually omit the justice meaning of dikaiosune. He wrote that if a person translated Mt. 6:33 as righteousness that it may mean that in the kingdom of God "the spiritual is more important than the material." But if 6:33 is translated as justice, it may mean that we are to put "the practice of justice in respect of those who are victims of circumstances and society," ahead of our own desires.
I asked a Haitian, Jean Thomas, who speaks French and is a seminary graduate, how dikaiosune is translated into French. Jean said as justice; French really doesn't have a word that is the equivalent of the English word righteousness. The closest the French could come to the concept of righteousness was the word holiness.
Sidney Rooy, in an unpublished manuscript entitled Righteousness and Justice, comments on the discoveries his missionary family made as they read the Bible together in Spanish. Soon we discovered that righteousness and justice are universally translated justicia, our word for justice. Suddenly the Bible was full of texts about justice. But why should that surprise us?
Much later we learned that the English word justice does not occur in the New Testament of the King James Version. Rather the word righteousness is nearly universally used. . . . To them [Jesus and the apostles] it was transparently clear that justification, righteousness and justice were integrally part of the same reality [same root word in Greek].
We [Americans], on the other hand, tend to make idea-tight compartments for each.
In response to a letter criticizing Wolterstorff's review of Robert Webber's Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, Nicholas Wolterstorff comments:
The God of the Bible is a God who loves justice. Injustice is a desecration. That's obvious in the Old Testament; but it doesn't change when we arrive in the New Testament. This would be starkly clear to all if our New Testament translators would follow their classical Greek colleagues and translate the frequent occurrences in the New Testament of the Greek words dikaiosune and dikaios with the English words "justice" and "just."
So Greek, Latin, French and Spanish have only one word for justice/righteousness and the primary meaning or emphasis in these languages is on justice. But English readers of the NT see righteousness much more often than justice. So most of us miss the justice emphasis of the kingdom of God. WANTED: a scholar who will rejusticize the NT and the theology that flows from it. While she/he is at it, I recommend the same with oppression/injustice.
I conclude with two quotations from Pursuing Justice by Ken Wytsma:
Justice is rooted in the character of God,
established in the creation of God,
mandated in the commands of God,
present in the kingdom of God,
affirmed in the teachings of Jesus,
reflected in the example of Jesus,
and carried on today by all who are moved and led by the Spirit.
All people matter to God.
All people desire dignity.
All people need community, and community can be woven by justice or torn by injustice.
This is the end of my six-part series on the kingdom of God; "seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . . "
Showing posts with label JUSTICE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JUSTICE. Show all posts
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Friday, November 15, 2013
The kingdom of God, no.5
In my last email, the kingdom of God, no.4, I ended with this pleasantly shocking statement from Billy Graham: "I can no longer proclaim the Cross and the Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the kingdom which is justice for all." At the time that Billy Graham wrote this article in Transformation (1989), it was not common that evangelical leaders defined the kingdom of God as justice for all, nor that the kingdom as justice was put on a theological par with the cross and resurrection. But Graham never explained what caused him to take this new theological position; he did not ever refer to a single scripture verse to back up his statement. This is pure speculation on my part, but possibly Graham had read Mt. 6:33 in the New English Bible; it reads: "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . ."
A professional Bible translator, Steven Voth, has documented how flawed English translations of the NT are in terms of justice.(The Challenge of Bible Translation, chapter 14 entitled "Justice and/or Righteousness.") In Spanish, French and Latin translations of the NT, justice occurs around 100 times; in the English NIV, only 16 times. But then, strangely, Voth uses an OT analysis of sedeq to make his point. I wish he would have discussed the difference that translating dikaiosune in the Sermon on the Mount as justice (See Joseph Grassi, Informing the Future and my article on Rejusticizing the Sermon on the Mount) instead of righteousness would have made or how we would interpret Romans if translators would have created an injustice/justice axis instead of an unrighteousness/righteousness axis.
The English speaking Christian world generally has a shallow understanding of biblical justice. Why? In the KJV, the word justice never occurs in the NT and rarely in the OT. So for centuries English speaking Christians read a Bible that said little about justice. The KJV translators mistranslated the Hebrew word mishpat about 100 times; they translated mishpat as justice only once whereas the RSV or NIV translators translated it justice about 100 times. In the KJV, the famous verse from Amos 5:24 reads: 'Let judgment run down as water. . . . " whereas in the NIV it reads: "Let justice roll on like a river. . . . " In fairness to the KJV translators, mishpat means both judgment and justice.
So the KJV readers read much about individual righteousness, but little about social justice or Jubilee justice. Both evangelical theology and practice reflect an overly individualized gospel devoid of a strong social justice emphasis. The Hebrews, however, thought holistically; individual righteousness and social justice went together like Siamese twins. They could not be separated and live (See Job 1:1 and 29:7-17). But much of Western Christian thought compartmentalizes life, thinking that a person can be individually righteous through Jesus Christ even if one remains uninvolved in doing justice. Not a biblical option.
When it comes to the NT, something similar occurred. Most English translators have translated the Greek word dikaiosune as righteousness even though a growing number of scholars such as Joseph Grassi, Timothy Keller, Ken Wytsma, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Howard Snyder, Graham Cray and David Bosch insist that dikaiosune means both justice and righteousness or justice/righteousness.
There is one major English translation that captures the strong justice meaning of dikaiosune---the New English Bible translated by British scholars. In the NEB, Mt. 6:33 refers to "God's kingdom and his justice" In Romans 14:17. the NEB reads: "The kingdom of God . . .is justice." Graham Cray in his article in Transformation (1988) entitled, "A Theology of the Kingdom," translated Mt. 5:6 as "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice." And Mt. 5:10. Cray comments: "Much of this is entirely lost to readers of the English Bible, because of the false separation made between righteousness and justice, and because dikaiosune is consistently translated 'righteousness' in English translations, whereas in the Septuagint [Greek translation of the Hebrew OT] it was often used to translate justice." In summary, Cray states that the agenda of the kingdom of God on earth is justice and the dynamic of the kingdom is the Holy Spirit.
A professional Bible translator, Steven Voth, has documented how flawed English translations of the NT are in terms of justice.(The Challenge of Bible Translation, chapter 14 entitled "Justice and/or Righteousness.") In Spanish, French and Latin translations of the NT, justice occurs around 100 times; in the English NIV, only 16 times. But then, strangely, Voth uses an OT analysis of sedeq to make his point. I wish he would have discussed the difference that translating dikaiosune in the Sermon on the Mount as justice (See Joseph Grassi, Informing the Future and my article on Rejusticizing the Sermon on the Mount) instead of righteousness would have made or how we would interpret Romans if translators would have created an injustice/justice axis instead of an unrighteousness/righteousness axis.
The English speaking Christian world generally has a shallow understanding of biblical justice. Why? In the KJV, the word justice never occurs in the NT and rarely in the OT. So for centuries English speaking Christians read a Bible that said little about justice. The KJV translators mistranslated the Hebrew word mishpat about 100 times; they translated mishpat as justice only once whereas the RSV or NIV translators translated it justice about 100 times. In the KJV, the famous verse from Amos 5:24 reads: 'Let judgment run down as water. . . . " whereas in the NIV it reads: "Let justice roll on like a river. . . . " In fairness to the KJV translators, mishpat means both judgment and justice.
So the KJV readers read much about individual righteousness, but little about social justice or Jubilee justice. Both evangelical theology and practice reflect an overly individualized gospel devoid of a strong social justice emphasis. The Hebrews, however, thought holistically; individual righteousness and social justice went together like Siamese twins. They could not be separated and live (See Job 1:1 and 29:7-17). But much of Western Christian thought compartmentalizes life, thinking that a person can be individually righteous through Jesus Christ even if one remains uninvolved in doing justice. Not a biblical option.
When it comes to the NT, something similar occurred. Most English translators have translated the Greek word dikaiosune as righteousness even though a growing number of scholars such as Joseph Grassi, Timothy Keller, Ken Wytsma, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Howard Snyder, Graham Cray and David Bosch insist that dikaiosune means both justice and righteousness or justice/righteousness.
There is one major English translation that captures the strong justice meaning of dikaiosune---the New English Bible translated by British scholars. In the NEB, Mt. 6:33 refers to "God's kingdom and his justice" In Romans 14:17. the NEB reads: "The kingdom of God . . .is justice." Graham Cray in his article in Transformation (1988) entitled, "A Theology of the Kingdom," translated Mt. 5:6 as "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice." And Mt. 5:10. Cray comments: "Much of this is entirely lost to readers of the English Bible, because of the false separation made between righteousness and justice, and because dikaiosune is consistently translated 'righteousness' in English translations, whereas in the Septuagint [Greek translation of the Hebrew OT] it was often used to translate justice." In summary, Cray states that the agenda of the kingdom of God on earth is justice and the dynamic of the kingdom is the Holy Spirit.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
The kingdom of God, no.4
My conclusion is that Rom. 14:17 beautifully ties the central components of the kingdom of God together. It brings the key OT concepts of justice and shalom to the NT understanding of the social nature of the kingdom of God. And Rom. 14:17 ties the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit together, something that few theologians do.
In summary, then, Isaiah 9:7, Luke 4:18-19 and Rom. 14:17 are all saying the same thing: the kingdom of God here on earth should focus on the special needs of the poor and oppressed by preaching and practicing justice/righteousness which will lead to personal and community shalom. The above can only be done through the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.
With this background, Acts 1:1-8; 8:12; 28:23 & 31 make more sense. Two themes are highlighted in Acts 1:1-8: the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit. After Jesus' resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus spoke of "the kingdom of God" and "the promise of the Father---you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." Howard Snyder (A Kingdom Manifesto, 1985) paraphrases Acts 1:6-8 as follows:
His disciples ask, "are you finally going to set up your kingdom?" Jesus replies, "The time for the full flowering of the new order still remains a mystery to you; it is in God's hands. But . . . the Holy Spirit will give you the power to live the kingdom now. So you are to be witnesses of the kingdom and its power from here to the very ends of the earth.
Wait until you are filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit; then you will have the power to incarnate the kingdom of God. The day of Pentecost soon came when the Spirit was poured out on the church.
What did the church do? Acts 8:12: "Philip preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ." Later in Acts 28, Paul spoke to the Jews in Rome "testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus Christ from the law of Moses and from the prophets." Many Jews rejected this message from Paul so he turned to the Gentiles "preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . "
So the book of Acts is about the empowered church preaching a two-pronged message: personal salvation based on the cross and resurrection, and a second and equally important theme---the kingdom of God as justice and shalom for the poor and oppressed. The complete gospel includes both personal righteousness and social justice. Both are absolutely necessary if we are to minister to all of the needs of a person and a community.
Previously I have identified ethnocentrism and oppression as two social evils the church must expose and challenge. If the church does not address these and other social evils, the church itself may become an agent of ethnocentrism and oppression. Ethnocentrism is a false sense of ethnic superiority. Oppression in the OT meant to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and/or kill persons created in the image of God.
Now I would like to examine some examples from church history when the church became an agent of ethnocentrism and oppression. In these examples, the church usually was faithful in proclaiming the cross and resurrection, sometimes the anointing and filling of the Holy Spirit, but failed to preach and practice the kingdom of God as justice and shalom.
The Puritans attempted to be a godly and biblical people, and in many ways they were. But they did not understand that justice and shalom applied to all people. They saw themselves as God's chosen people, chosen to set up a Christian on American shores. But there was more than a touch of biblical ignorance and arrogance in their sense of chosenness. After a short period of relative harmony with Native Americans, as Puritan numbers grew and they needed more land, ethnic conflict developed. Increasingly, Puritans saw the surrounding tribes as heathen standing in the way of God's will. When large numbers of Indians died of disease, Puritans often saw this as the hand of God eliminating heathen from their midst. A religiously legitimated ethnocentrism soon led to acts of oppression---the slaughtering of whole villages and the offering of bounties for the scalps of Native Americans. Incomplete biblical truth---the lack of understanding that the kingdom of God is justice for all---had tragic consequences. The Puritans who saw themselves as instruments of God became instrument of evil. They also set in motion the ethnocentric and oppressive pattern that contaminated much of the rest of American history.
Much the same happened in South Africa. The Afrikaners saw themselves as a people chosen to establish a Christian nation. During the time that the Afrikaners governed, most Afrikaners attended church. They zealously kept the Sabbath day holy. Public TV opened with Bible reading and prayer. Abortion and pornography were low when compared to the United States. At the same time that they manifested this religious spirit, they treated their fellow Africans as inferior human beings. Their ethnocentrism led to vicious and inhuman acts of oppression. They did not preach nor practice the kingdom of God as justice for all peoples.
In the American South---the Bible Belt---ethnocentrism and oppression ran wild during the eras of slavery and segregation. Much too often, Christians and churches were a part of the problem. Only a few stood for justice and shalom for all.
In Rwanda, supposedly the most Christian nation in Africa (8 out of 10 profess to be Christian), ethnic conflict exploded between the Tutsi and Hutu. The cross and resurrection were preached. The Holy Spirit was present in a Protestant continuous revival and in a charismatic Catholic revival. But apparently there was little biblical teaching on the kingdom of God as standing against ethnocentrism and oppression and for justice and shalom. Some ruthless politicians fanned the existing embers of ethnocentrism which exploded into a forest fire that ravaged the land. The Christian church had not erected any justice barriers to stop the raging fires of bitterness and hatred. Christians were killing other Christians. Serious flaws in the understanding and practice of the gospel can lead to fatal consequences.
One more sad event in American church history needs to be recounted. John Dawson describes the origins of Pentecostalism in his book Healing America's Wounds:
The [1906] Azusa St. Revival was a modern Pentecost in which the outpoured Spirit broke the barriers to true Christian unity. Racial division, America's greatest problem, was swept away. The huge dirt-floor barn that housed William Seymor's [Afro American] church attracted scores of ethnic groups from their separate enclaves across Los Angeles. . . . This sincere and loving man [Parham]---Seymor's friend---was afflicted with the blindness of his generation. He admired the Ku Klux Klan and believed that the besetting sin of humanity was racial mixing. . . . After denouncing Seymor, he continues in his ministry, preaching against racial mixing and proclaiming the baptism of the Holy Spirit. . . . Pentecostalism divided into
two groups, one black and one white, between 1908 and 1914. Glossolalia became the new emphasis. . . . and God's true purpose went down the memory hole.
A flawed church that preaches and practices a partial vacuum. Evil floods in to fill that vacuum. Only a fully biblical church preaching and practicing a comprehensive gospel can do God's will on earth. In 1989, Billy Graham (Transformation) wrote: "I can no longer proclaim the Cross and Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the kingdom which is justice for all."
In summary, then, Isaiah 9:7, Luke 4:18-19 and Rom. 14:17 are all saying the same thing: the kingdom of God here on earth should focus on the special needs of the poor and oppressed by preaching and practicing justice/righteousness which will lead to personal and community shalom. The above can only be done through the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.
With this background, Acts 1:1-8; 8:12; 28:23 & 31 make more sense. Two themes are highlighted in Acts 1:1-8: the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit. After Jesus' resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus spoke of "the kingdom of God" and "the promise of the Father---you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." Howard Snyder (A Kingdom Manifesto, 1985) paraphrases Acts 1:6-8 as follows:
His disciples ask, "are you finally going to set up your kingdom?" Jesus replies, "The time for the full flowering of the new order still remains a mystery to you; it is in God's hands. But . . . the Holy Spirit will give you the power to live the kingdom now. So you are to be witnesses of the kingdom and its power from here to the very ends of the earth.
Wait until you are filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit; then you will have the power to incarnate the kingdom of God. The day of Pentecost soon came when the Spirit was poured out on the church.
What did the church do? Acts 8:12: "Philip preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ." Later in Acts 28, Paul spoke to the Jews in Rome "testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus Christ from the law of Moses and from the prophets." Many Jews rejected this message from Paul so he turned to the Gentiles "preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . "
So the book of Acts is about the empowered church preaching a two-pronged message: personal salvation based on the cross and resurrection, and a second and equally important theme---the kingdom of God as justice and shalom for the poor and oppressed. The complete gospel includes both personal righteousness and social justice. Both are absolutely necessary if we are to minister to all of the needs of a person and a community.
Previously I have identified ethnocentrism and oppression as two social evils the church must expose and challenge. If the church does not address these and other social evils, the church itself may become an agent of ethnocentrism and oppression. Ethnocentrism is a false sense of ethnic superiority. Oppression in the OT meant to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and/or kill persons created in the image of God.
Now I would like to examine some examples from church history when the church became an agent of ethnocentrism and oppression. In these examples, the church usually was faithful in proclaiming the cross and resurrection, sometimes the anointing and filling of the Holy Spirit, but failed to preach and practice the kingdom of God as justice and shalom.
The Puritans attempted to be a godly and biblical people, and in many ways they were. But they did not understand that justice and shalom applied to all people. They saw themselves as God's chosen people, chosen to set up a Christian on American shores. But there was more than a touch of biblical ignorance and arrogance in their sense of chosenness. After a short period of relative harmony with Native Americans, as Puritan numbers grew and they needed more land, ethnic conflict developed. Increasingly, Puritans saw the surrounding tribes as heathen standing in the way of God's will. When large numbers of Indians died of disease, Puritans often saw this as the hand of God eliminating heathen from their midst. A religiously legitimated ethnocentrism soon led to acts of oppression---the slaughtering of whole villages and the offering of bounties for the scalps of Native Americans. Incomplete biblical truth---the lack of understanding that the kingdom of God is justice for all---had tragic consequences. The Puritans who saw themselves as instruments of God became instrument of evil. They also set in motion the ethnocentric and oppressive pattern that contaminated much of the rest of American history.
Much the same happened in South Africa. The Afrikaners saw themselves as a people chosen to establish a Christian nation. During the time that the Afrikaners governed, most Afrikaners attended church. They zealously kept the Sabbath day holy. Public TV opened with Bible reading and prayer. Abortion and pornography were low when compared to the United States. At the same time that they manifested this religious spirit, they treated their fellow Africans as inferior human beings. Their ethnocentrism led to vicious and inhuman acts of oppression. They did not preach nor practice the kingdom of God as justice for all peoples.
In the American South---the Bible Belt---ethnocentrism and oppression ran wild during the eras of slavery and segregation. Much too often, Christians and churches were a part of the problem. Only a few stood for justice and shalom for all.
In Rwanda, supposedly the most Christian nation in Africa (8 out of 10 profess to be Christian), ethnic conflict exploded between the Tutsi and Hutu. The cross and resurrection were preached. The Holy Spirit was present in a Protestant continuous revival and in a charismatic Catholic revival. But apparently there was little biblical teaching on the kingdom of God as standing against ethnocentrism and oppression and for justice and shalom. Some ruthless politicians fanned the existing embers of ethnocentrism which exploded into a forest fire that ravaged the land. The Christian church had not erected any justice barriers to stop the raging fires of bitterness and hatred. Christians were killing other Christians. Serious flaws in the understanding and practice of the gospel can lead to fatal consequences.
One more sad event in American church history needs to be recounted. John Dawson describes the origins of Pentecostalism in his book Healing America's Wounds:
The [1906] Azusa St. Revival was a modern Pentecost in which the outpoured Spirit broke the barriers to true Christian unity. Racial division, America's greatest problem, was swept away. The huge dirt-floor barn that housed William Seymor's [Afro American] church attracted scores of ethnic groups from their separate enclaves across Los Angeles. . . . This sincere and loving man [Parham]---Seymor's friend---was afflicted with the blindness of his generation. He admired the Ku Klux Klan and believed that the besetting sin of humanity was racial mixing. . . . After denouncing Seymor, he continues in his ministry, preaching against racial mixing and proclaiming the baptism of the Holy Spirit. . . . Pentecostalism divided into
two groups, one black and one white, between 1908 and 1914. Glossolalia became the new emphasis. . . . and God's true purpose went down the memory hole.
A flawed church that preaches and practices a partial vacuum. Evil floods in to fill that vacuum. Only a fully biblical church preaching and practicing a comprehensive gospel can do God's will on earth. In 1989, Billy Graham (Transformation) wrote: "I can no longer proclaim the Cross and Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the kingdom which is justice for all."
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
The Kingdom of God, no.3
After Jesus was so well received because of his Isaiah 61 sermon in the Nazareth synagogue, the conversation continued. Jesus moved from preaching good news to the oppressed poor to meddling, or so the Nazareth Jews thought. To address another type of social evil, Jesus recounted two familiar OT stories. First, "there were many widows in Israel in the day of Elijah [a time of famine] and Elijah was sent to none of them." Instead, he was sent to a widow in the land of Sidon. The second story: "And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." After Jesus told these two true stories with his interpretation of them, "all in the synagogue were filled with wrath," Then they tried to throw Jesus over a cliff and kill him. From "all spoke well of him," to "all were filled with wrath," in the space of a few minutes. Why this sudden change?
The Jews were God's chosen people---chosen to be a servant people who were to bring the Messiah into the world to bless all peoples, Jew and Gentile. Over the years some of the Jews had corrupted their high calling. They reinterpreted their calling from being a servant people to being a superior people. They saw themselves as a superior ethnos---people, nation, culture. Non-Jews or Gentiles were now regarded as unclean, idolatrous heathen. God was the God of the Jews alone. To keep themselves pure, they separated themselves from the unclean Gentiles. In a word, this distorted sense of superiority is called ethnocentrism.
In these two OT stories that Jesus summarized, he made the point that God made a special effort to reach out to minister to Gentiles. Jesus was directly exposing and attacking Jewish ethnocentrism. In the eyes of the biased Jews, Jesus had committed heresy so they tried to kill him on the spot.
In Luke four, then, we find two social evils that the kingdom of God here on earth must confront: 1) the oppression of the poor, and 2) the ethnocentrism of the Jews. These evils must not only be exposed, but something better must be put in their place. The oppression of the poor must be replaced by Jubilee justice. The ethnocentrism against other ethnic groups must be replaced by reconciliation and equality. At the end of Luke four, Jesus says, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose." Our purpose, our calling today, is also to preach and practice the kingdom of God---the kingdom of justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit.
The third key verse to understanding the kingdom of God is Rom. 14:17. In the NIV, it reads: "The kingdom of God is . . . righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." However, the New English Bible translates this verse as: "The kingdom of God is . . . justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." The Greek word dikiaosune means both justice and righteousness. The traditional English translation of righteousness is understood by most readers as: "I am made individually righteous through Christ."
My paraphrase of Rom. 14:17 reads: "The kingdom of God is . . . . justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit." This translation communicates that the kingdom of God includes justice and that shalom is more than inner or spiritual peace. Shalom also means harmonious social relationships, a total sense of well-being which includes physical health and economic sufficiency. The individual-in-community experiences justice and shalom (See Perry Yoder's Shalom for an indepth analysis of shalom.)
If a person in community experiences justice and shalom, this is solid ground for authentic joy. A person receiving only charity may experience a fleeting joy, dependent on a handout each day.
Just as we cannot be born again apart from the Spirit of God, so we cannot experience the fullness of the kingdom of God apart from the Spirit of God. There is more to the biblical ministry of the Holy Spirit than personal blessing. The person and power of the Spirit is essential to provide the wisdom and power necessary to destroy ethnocentrism and oppression. These social evils are deeply embedded in the cultural values and social institutions of our society. It is more difficult to cast out these demonic values from society that it is to cast an evil spirit from an individual person.
Often ethnocentrism and oppression are cleverly disguised and portrayed as good by mixing them with the religion of society. Lee Harper said the following about her life in Mississippi: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among these things that appeared just." The supposed superiority of Euro Americans is covered by an appeal to out Judeo-Christian heritage. It takes divine wisdom from the Spirit of truth to sort this out. Once ethnocentrism and oppression are recognized and exposed, it will still take enormous power to destroy these negative values and replace them with justice and shalom. Here again the person of the Holy Spirit is crucial.
The Jews were God's chosen people---chosen to be a servant people who were to bring the Messiah into the world to bless all peoples, Jew and Gentile. Over the years some of the Jews had corrupted their high calling. They reinterpreted their calling from being a servant people to being a superior people. They saw themselves as a superior ethnos---people, nation, culture. Non-Jews or Gentiles were now regarded as unclean, idolatrous heathen. God was the God of the Jews alone. To keep themselves pure, they separated themselves from the unclean Gentiles. In a word, this distorted sense of superiority is called ethnocentrism.
In these two OT stories that Jesus summarized, he made the point that God made a special effort to reach out to minister to Gentiles. Jesus was directly exposing and attacking Jewish ethnocentrism. In the eyes of the biased Jews, Jesus had committed heresy so they tried to kill him on the spot.
In Luke four, then, we find two social evils that the kingdom of God here on earth must confront: 1) the oppression of the poor, and 2) the ethnocentrism of the Jews. These evils must not only be exposed, but something better must be put in their place. The oppression of the poor must be replaced by Jubilee justice. The ethnocentrism against other ethnic groups must be replaced by reconciliation and equality. At the end of Luke four, Jesus says, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose." Our purpose, our calling today, is also to preach and practice the kingdom of God---the kingdom of justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit.
The third key verse to understanding the kingdom of God is Rom. 14:17. In the NIV, it reads: "The kingdom of God is . . . righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." However, the New English Bible translates this verse as: "The kingdom of God is . . . justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." The Greek word dikiaosune means both justice and righteousness. The traditional English translation of righteousness is understood by most readers as: "I am made individually righteous through Christ."
My paraphrase of Rom. 14:17 reads: "The kingdom of God is . . . . justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit." This translation communicates that the kingdom of God includes justice and that shalom is more than inner or spiritual peace. Shalom also means harmonious social relationships, a total sense of well-being which includes physical health and economic sufficiency. The individual-in-community experiences justice and shalom (See Perry Yoder's Shalom for an indepth analysis of shalom.)
If a person in community experiences justice and shalom, this is solid ground for authentic joy. A person receiving only charity may experience a fleeting joy, dependent on a handout each day.
Just as we cannot be born again apart from the Spirit of God, so we cannot experience the fullness of the kingdom of God apart from the Spirit of God. There is more to the biblical ministry of the Holy Spirit than personal blessing. The person and power of the Spirit is essential to provide the wisdom and power necessary to destroy ethnocentrism and oppression. These social evils are deeply embedded in the cultural values and social institutions of our society. It is more difficult to cast out these demonic values from society that it is to cast an evil spirit from an individual person.
Often ethnocentrism and oppression are cleverly disguised and portrayed as good by mixing them with the religion of society. Lee Harper said the following about her life in Mississippi: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among these things that appeared just." The supposed superiority of Euro Americans is covered by an appeal to out Judeo-Christian heritage. It takes divine wisdom from the Spirit of truth to sort this out. Once ethnocentrism and oppression are recognized and exposed, it will still take enormous power to destroy these negative values and replace them with justice and shalom. Here again the person of the Holy Spirit is crucial.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)