Keeping mum and how it hurts - Part 1

If there is one thing above all else about our God, it is He hates injustice.

Hate in this case is the understatement of the millennium. So let me rephrase that.

God loathes injustice. To Him, it is a stench to the perfect world He created.

¹⁰ Because of the violence against your brother Jacob,
you will be covered with shame;
you will be destroyed forever.

¹¹ On the day you stood aloof
while strangers carried off his wealth
and foreigners entered his gates
and cast lots for Jerusalem,
you were like one of them.

¹² You should not look down on your brother
in the day of his misfortune,
nor rejoice over the people of Judah
in the day of their destruction,
nor boast so much
in the day of their trouble.

¹³ You should not march through the gates of my people
in the day of their disaster,
nor look down on them in their calamity
in the day of their disaster,
nor seize their wealth
in the day of their disaster.

¹⁴ You should not wait at the crossroads
to cut down their fugitives,
nor hand over their survivors
in the day of their trouble.

Obadiah 1 : 10 - 14

God, as we know is a God of righteousness and only the righteous shall behold Him. But no matter how much a person deserves punishment, God will never tolerate exploitation of even the accused or the guilty. He sees it as great sin against His righteousness as it is in direct opposition of His will.

When the Edomites chose to look the other way whilst their distant relatives, Jacob was being brutally raided on and invaded, they incurred God's anger towards their total (and intentional) apathy towards this absurdity.

Whenever we think of injustice, what comes to mind is the evil that is being done around us. But try thinking about it this way, there is greater injustice done when we choose to keep quiet and ignore what is going around us. God's promised judgement (and warning) to the Edomites was concerning their decision to keep silent and assisting the enemy in conquering the Israelites.

We might say, "How is all this related to me and how I live my life?"

The apostle John brings it all closer to home in his first letter.

¹⁷If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? ¹⁸Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3 : 17 -18

When we choose to close our hearts to the injustices happening around us, we do not have the love of God dwelling in us. For how come God's love, full of compassion and compulsion cause us to act so complacently and indifferently to other human beings?

Here is an analogy to bring it even close to home. A Christian of 20 years just exits his church after an uplifting worship and encouraging message on love. On the way out, he ponders what love is and asks God to give him an opportunity to love. As he enters his car, a homeless man shuffles by and immediately the Christian responds by cringing his nose and muttering "Freak" under his breath.

Sounds familiar eh?

So often, we choose to ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit to help people we see passing us day by day. And when we do that, we are actually putting a limit of God's love in our lives. We ask God for a bigger capacity to love and He willingly grants us our wish, yet do we realize that when we stifle the Holy Spirit, we reduce that capacity to merely an emotion.

Love is not just an emotion. And when we choose to limit it to an emotion, we run day in and day out looking for something to fill that emptiness in us, and yet, we miss the whole point of it.

The desire to seek change and to ACT for the sake of seeing it come to pass should come naturally to us Christians. We don't have to wait for the Holy Spirit to prompt us every time we see a beggar or an abusive act being carried out, big or small.

We need to ask ourselves, is keeping mum the solution or does it hurt the situation more compared to our speaking out for righteousness and justice?

Love in action and in deeds!

Signing off,

MarcusDS