Tag: arrogance

“Don’t fret”

But God calls leaders to account for their treatment of the poor, helpless, and oppressed

Hosea 5:1, 4, 5, 7-8, 15 Hear this, you priests. Pay attention, you leaders. … You have led the people into a snare by worshipping idols. … Your arrogance testifies against you. … You have betrayed the honor of the Lord. … Sound the alarm! … Admit your guilt and return to me.

Amos 2:4-7; 5:15, 21, 24 This is what the Lord says: “The people have been led astray by lies. … They sell honorable people for silver and poor people for a pair of sandals. They trample helpless people in the dust and shove the oppressed out of the way. … You twist justice, making it a bitter pill for the oppressed. … You trample the poor. …  Instead, hate evil and love what is good: turn your courts into true halls of justice. … I hate all your show and pretense. … Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.”

Before I went to sleep, my friend said, “Don’t fret.”

But several times I woke up in distress.

I kept dreaming that I was with friends in a church, or a school, or a home, when ICE came and dragged my friends away. Not criminals. Not illegals. My friends, who had followed all the protocols to enter this country legally. Friends who love the Lord and their families, who work hard and pay taxes, even though they don’t yet receive the benefits of citizenship. Friends who were suddenly jerked away from their children, leaving them in shock and confusion.

Each time, an ICE person yelled, “Sorry, we can’t find enough criminals so we need you to meet our quota!”

Distraught, I went to the Lord. It seemed that current events fit alarmingly well into the prophets I’ve been studying: Hosea and his early contemporary, Amos.

When Hosea and Amos prophesied, King Jeroboam II of Israel had expanded its territory and its trade, making some people very wealthy and many others poor and destitute, ignoring the laws of Moses that would have preserved a level of economic equality. Instead of caring for all people equally, the king and his cronies engaged in and fostered syncretism. They pretended belief in God, while in fact practicing idolatry. They did all kinds of horrible things (including sexual slavery) to keep their god Baal happy, since they credited him with being the source of their prosperity. Instead of protecting needy people through the courts, the needy were “trampled” (Amos 2:7), used and abused and treated unjustly.

Amos preached at Bethel (“House of God”), which Hosea often calls Beth-Aven (“House of Wickedness”) because of the syncretism at this place of worship. Amos was not poor himself: the Hebrew words he uses in calling himself a shepherd denote an owner of sheep and orchards, not a laborer. Yet he anguished over the oppression inherent in the wealth gap of his day. He quotes God as saying, in the words of Eugene Peterson, “I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music … 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” (Amos 5:24, The Message).

Curious about parallels to our time, I discovered that the wealth disparity in the United States has shifted dramatically in the last forty years. “Trickle down” economics hasn’t worked. The most recent figures I found show that the top 10% control 67% of the wealth, whereas the bottom 50% has access to only 2.5%. And this disparity continues to increase, as those with money and power control the laws and the courts to benefit themselves.

Can we expect God’s blessing on us under these conditions?

Interesting in terms of timing: the lesson this week for my international Zoom discipleship group includes Acts 2:42-47 and 4:32-37. “There were no needy people among them” (Acts 4:34), because everyone shared what they had, voluntarily and joyously.

How did this early church portrait become so distorted in practice over time? I know there are still many, many followers of Jesus—we ourselves are supported in missions by these beloved ones—who lovingly and generously share what they have in order to further the work of the Kingdom. Yet I’m left wondering what has happened to the community of believers, that we have supported such a different model nationally.

Don’t fret? “Trust God,” my friend told me. “Everything will work out fine in the end.”

I believe that is true. Ultimately God will bring justice to the world. Come, Lord Jesus. Meanwhile, though, people’s lives, already traumatized, are being smashed to pieces.

I appreciated a song we sang in worship yesterday (God of All Comfort, Resound Worship):

God of all comfort, God of compassion, reveal your mercy through us your church;

Disturb our slumber, move us to action, to show your kingdom on the earth.

Make us like Jesus, full of your Spirit, declaring good news to the poor,

Proclaiming freedom for every captive and the favor of the Lord.

Show us the value of every person, show us your image in every face.

We all are equal, we all are broken, and need the kindness of your grace.

We stand together, here in the margins, here in the hardship and the pain.

We cry for justice and restoration, until the silent sing again.

Dog and cat theology

But God still loves his people

Hosea 3:1, 5 The Lord still loves his people, even though they have turned to other gods and love to worship them. … But afterward they will return and devote themselves to the Lord their God. … In the last days, they will tremble in awe of the Lord and of his goodness.

You feed and walk your dog and give it affection and shelter.

Your dog thinks, “You must be God.”

You feed and care for your cat and give it affection and shelter.

Your cat thinks, “I must be God.”

Shutterstock: Bachkova Natalia

We, too, inevitably worship. If not ourselves, then something or someone else.

We worship what we most prize or most fear, that which at our core orients and motivates us, that which we count on and build our lives on. Our highest value may be our own pleasure or happiness or “fulfillment,” which we think we can obtain on our own or we manipulate others into creating for us.

Hosea talks a LOT about the misplaced worship of the people of his day—which doesn’t end well. Yet he keeps repeating this message of hope: God still loves you. He invites you to turn to him, so that he can heal you and share his goodness with you (Hosea 3:5; 5:4, 15; 6:1; 7:10; 11:5; 14:1-2).

Humans fight with each other over what or whom they worship, fearful, often, that if others get more, we will get less. We take sides to defend what we have and are often aggressive in taking from others what we tell ourselves the “others” don’t deserve or have obtained unjustly. We even claim God is on our side (making him into our image, rather than God making us into his) and decide the others are not only wrong; they are evil.

Thinking about this, I received an email from Jim Hobby (houseofgladness.com). Jim wrote, “The question for us is never whether the Lord is on our side. Human “sides” will never circumscribe the Lord’s side. Every human ‘side’ will always fall short of God’s kingdom. The question is whether we are on His side. Are we following Him, imitating Him, listening to His voice, being transformed by His presence, transcending our ‘side’?”

God keeps on inviting us to his side. Not because we deserve it. Simply because he loves us. And when we choose to worship him above all else and all others, including ourselves, we may discover those “others” aren’t so very different from us. We all need God’s provision and care and affection and shelter. And forgiveness for our arrogance.