Tag: justice

The Accuser and The Advocate

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“Give yourself some grace!”

“Be kind to yourself!”

“Have more realistic expectations—be gentler on yourself.”

“Cut yourself some slack!”

“Stop being so judgmental of yourself.”

If I’m honest, those phrases make me cringe. They feel like hollow platitudes someone says to make you feel better when you’ve failed. They’re a consolation prize that says, “You messed up, but you can’t fix it. So just try to feel better about yourself since you can’t change anything now.”

Maybe those thoughts are unique to me, and maybe I’m harsher on myself than most people are, but from what I’ve gathered, lots of us deal with our own inner-critic. It’s the voice in our head that tells us we aren’t good enough, that we can’t learn from our mistakes, that we’re deeply broken enough it makes us unfit or unworthy or unwelcome.

From a secular perspective, we’d call this problem low self-esteem. We recognize it can be crippling, so we feed ourselves feel-better messages about our worth as a human and our general goodness at heart. “Girl, wash your face.” “You are a QUEEN.” “You deserve to be happy.” “You are your own worst critic!”

From a scriptural perspective, we just call it plain sin. Of course we’re broken; we’re sinners, even if we’ve been redeemed. We don’t deserve grace. Our sin deserves to be called out and punished. And until we’ve been sanctified and glorified in heaven, we can reliably count on our own sin to cause us to fail again and again.

But that’s not the WHOLE story of Scripture. Of course, we have inherent worth and value because we’ve been made in the image of God. And of course Jesus conferred value on our lives when he gave his to save ours. But the Bible teaches much more holistically that even though all the above things about sin are true, if we see our sin and failures as an insuperable barrier in our relationship with God or to spiritual growth, we give too much credit. Or, more to the point, we credit Satan with the win if we think God sees our sin first when he looks at us.

Recently trauma has loomed large in my own life. The stress of pandemic and national lockdown has uncovered buried traumas for many local friends and acquaintances, especially for refugees. Several people I’m close to—local, expat, and international friends—are working through their own traumas. And some of my own past trauma has been shaken loose by an accumulation of stressors and triggering reminders. Heck, the whole world is struggling right now. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had more or different stress this year than you’ve had in a long time. It’s not unlikely that you’re struggling to get a handle on some trauma of your own.

For many of us, these traumas and their recent resurfacing have tipped us farther away from a place of mental health. Especially where abuse or sexual trauma were concerned, we tend to lean into self-blame, harsh judgment, or setting high standards for ourselves that are impossible to meet. Our inner-critic plays on loud-speaker in our minds, sometimes drowning out even rational defenses. Maybe since our brain can’t cope with what happened, we try to blame ourselves when we experience sin so evil and destructive it seems to defy explanation. We’re just trying to make sense of the broken world around us, so we ask ourselves, “DID I do something to cause this sin against me?” Or, even worse, we skip the question and jump straight to, “I should have known better.”

That assumption, and all of its brothers, are destructive: I should have planned better; why didn’t I see this coming; this is all my fault; I caused this; I should have listened; I am too naïve; why am I still so immature; I wasn’t praying enough; I should have worked harder; if only I hadn’t…; if I had just done…

The TRUTH of the matter is the Bible doesn’t leave room for ANY of these accusations. Sure, we should let the Holy Spirit convict us of our sin. But a proper response to that is repentance, forgiveness, and praise for our redemption. Nowhere does scripture teach us that self-judgment or self-accusation for our sin is productive or God-honoring. In fact, 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” You know what that whole list of accusations brings? Regret. And a morbid sorrow. Blaming ourselves in these ways—either for sins we committed or for sins committed against us—fills us with a living death instead of the abundant life the Lord intends for us.

Scripture is VERY clear that, if we follow God as our Lord, we have an unquestionable standing before him, and no accusations against us hold up. No matter how broken or dirty or at-fault we feel, we have a place in the heavenly throne room. We’re invited to approach God’s throne boldly.

In Zephaniah, the Lord gives the prophet a message to tell his people how they will suffer. He foretells judgment and devastation that will be a consequence of the people’s own sin but also of the sins of their leaders and ancestors. In the midst of describing justice and punishment that is surely due, among the threats and warnings of suffering to come, the Lord comforts his people with some of the tenderest words in the whole Bible.

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

No matter how broken or full of blame we feel, the Lord is kind to see and treat us in these ways if we are his. He is our mighty protector. He saves us from disaster. He is delighted with us. He loves us deeply. He is so full of joy when he considers us that he bursts into song! Eternal God, ever-present in the always-now, sat with his people the Israelites BOTH in their time of suffering and in their time of redemption. He saw them in the depths of trauma they felt from the consequences of their own sin AND in trauma they felt from others’ sin against them, and he consoled them. We aren’t the Israelites, but we are God’s people if we follow him as Lord. And since his character never changes, we know his care for his loved ones remains the same, whether it is directed at us or at the Israelites.

He told them that despite their sin, he saw them as precious. As worth protecting. As worth saving. As delightful. As worthy of love. As a muse to inspire singing. He saw them this way before their trauma, after their trauma, and in their trauma. When we can see nothing good in ourselves and focus only on judgment we think we deserve, God sees these good things in us instead of the blame we heap on ourselves. But perhaps we aren’t the only one working to shovel to bury ourselves in accusations. Maybe it’s more sinister than that.

In Zechariah 3, another prophet describes the throne room of God himself, as seen in a vision. The high priest Joshua stands before the Lord, dressed in filthy clothes that make him unclean and unfit to be in the Lord’s presence. But he does not stand alone. To his right stands Satan, the Accuser. And the Angel of the Lord is also there (some understand him to be Jesus). Satan accuses the man, but the Lord will hear none of it. He rebukes the Devil and silences him. Before everyone present, the Lord claims Joshua as his own. He rebukes Satan and says he has chosen Joshua, and saved him from destruction. Then the Lord takes away the man’s clothes that display his sin and mark he does not belong. The Lord gives him new, clean clothes to give him a sense of dignity and belonging—things he did not deserve, but that the Lord gave graciously.

Perhaps Satan had grounds to accuse the man in Zechariah’s vision, but the Lord would hear none of it. Instead, God listened to the angel and cleansed and gave the man a place in the throne room despite his sin. In case we are tempted to dismiss these ideas from Zechariah and Zephaniah as only an Old Testament theme that doesn’t follow to the New, listen to John’s words.

The name “Satan” itself means accuser. This is a fitting depiction of Satan’s actions in the Old Testament. The first chapter of Job presents a vivid picture of The Accuser appearing before the Lord to report, as if this were his habit. Zechariah also describes Satan in the Lord’s throne room, waiting by to accuse Joshua. These and other passages build a picture of Satan as a character in a courtroom, the formal accuser.  

But when Jesus comes, he promises another character to stand beside us in the courtroom. As John recounts Jesus’ encouraging words to the disciples in the upper room just before his death, he tells us much about the Holy Spirit and the role he will play after Jesus’ resurrection. In John 14:16 Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to be with you forever—the Spirit of Truth.” The word Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit there is a legal one. It refers to legal counsel, but also to someone in the courtroom who would formally stand up against the accuser and defend or advocate for the person on trial. Even here, before his death and the means of our justification, Jesus promises that the Spirit will stand with us and advocate for us before the Lord, against The Accuser.

Jesus models this again clearly in the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:2-11). She is dragged into the temple and humiliated, put on display in front of all the Jews and religious leaders gathered there. She is singled out alone—the man she must have been caught with was not brought along and accused in the same way. As the religious leaders repeatedly ask Jesus to condemn the woman for her sin, he repeatedly ignores or refuses their questions. In perhaps what was embarrassment or indignation on the woman’s behalf, Jesus awkwardly doodles in the dirt while her accusers wait. Finally Jesus tells them if there is anyone sinless among them, throw the first stone and begin to execute her punishment.

As everyone slowly goes on their way, the woman is left with the only sinless one among the crowd, at her feet, playing in the dirt. The only one with the right to condemn and punish her stands up not to take her life, but to address her with dignity, as a human. He protected her from fatal judgment. He advocated for her and stood his ground even when his own reputation and life were at stake because the religious leaders were trying to find fault and accuse him. “Where have they all gone?” he asks. “Has no one condemned you? Then neither do I.” He frees her to leave that place and her sin behind, to live in the freedom of repentance and forgiveness. Jesus had every right to accuse her, but instead chose to offer his wordless, calming presence as an embodiment of grace. He stood by her, included in the halo of her shame, when all looked to her to condemn and judge. And instead of accusing and serving fatal justice, Jesus freed her from the dragging weight of her sin and accusations.

So what do we learn from all of these passages about accusation—merited or unmerited? Simply this: God desires grace and forgiveness for us. He does not hunger to bury us under the weight of vindictive accusation. The running dialogue of crippling judgment in our heads is not from him if it leads to regret or a deadly weight or anything other than joyful repentance. So if the inner-critic, the voice in our heads, judges us more harshly than Jesus does, we hear nothing but the voice of The Accuser himself. And the only appropriate response is what Jesus said when Peter rebuked him: “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me… ”

So friends, believers, whether you’re dealing with an overly judgmental trauma brain, or wounded thought processes that bite at you from stress, or unhealthy mental patterns that come from anxiety and depression, or just your average level of self-criticism, dig into these scriptures for yourselves. DON’T give yourself some grace, because it’s not yours to give. But remember the grace the Lord offers you, even knowing full-well the depths of your sin or your innocence in the situation you’re concerned about. He is a just God and he doesn’t blindly dismiss the things you judge yourself for. He is a gracious and loving God, full of compassionate mercy. He dismisses the accusations leveled against you because your sin has no hold on you—it has already been paid for and punished through Jesus’ work on the cross. Nothing you or Satan accuse you of should weigh you down, because Jesus stands before you and the Spirit advocates for you in the great cosmic courtroom. Listen for the voice of the Advocate through your prayers, rather than the jarring voice of The Accuser. God has already silenced him and his accusations, so you have privilege to ignore him as well.

Habakkuk Storied

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Sometimes the words in our Bibles become stale. I don’t mean that the words lose any power; I mean that we become so familiar with the cadences and phrases they lose some of their freshness for us.

Recently as I was studying justice, lament, faith, and abiding in the presence of God through difficult circumstances, I landed in Habakkuk. This short Old Testament book deals deeply with each of those topics. To ‘freshen up’ the words for myself, I went through the book phrase by phrase to soak in the meaning and re-word the Scripture as if I were preparing to learn it well enough to share Habakkuk’s call and response with the Lord as it was meant to be heard and shared originally. Below you’ll find my manuscript for a ‘storied’ version of Habakkuk, with no content changed from the Biblical narrative and only small phrasal changes. I hope you enjoy a fresh look at this incredibly timely book of the Bible. Try reading it aloud to yourself to give the text some extra life.

The prophet Habakkuk received this burden:

Habakkuk: God, how long do I have to call for help and you refuse to listen?

I yell for help: “Violence!” but you don’t save?

Why do you turn my head and force me to watch injustice?

Why do you let sin pass?

Ruin and hurt are in my face: there is too much fighting and division.

Because of it, the law is impotent and frozen, and right never wins.

The evil rope up and surround the good so that right and fair become crooked.

God: Watch the world and be completely shocked.

I’ll do something in your time you wouldn’t believe if I told you.

I’m grooming the Babylonians — merciless, rude, and unpredictable —

to burn through the earth and make foreign homes their own.

They fill people with terror, make their own rules, and make a name for themselves.

Their horses are faster than cheetahs and more fearless than wolves at nightfall.

They come at top speeds from farther than the eye can see.

They swoop down like a hawk to the kill, focused only on death.

Their armies oppress like a desert wind, catching hostages like dust.

They lecture kings and humiliate leaders.

They laugh tat fortresses and move the earth itself to conquer them.

They barrel through like wind with no obstacles, convicted men who deify their own power.

Habakkuk: Lord, haven’t you been around forever?

My God, my perfect God, we can’t die.

You elected them to carry out retribution.

Steady and Unchanging One, you picked them to punish.

Your gaze is too pure to look on evil.

Why do you let them betray?

Why do you sit quietly by while evil people eat up others better than themselves?

You make people like fish in a barrel, like fish with no leader, no one in charge.

The evil enemy catches all of them in traps,

lures all of them in, nets them with ease. 

So he is giddy with delight, and he worships his net.

He offers it food and rituals because his net lets him live like a king and feast like one too.

You’re going to let him keep pillaging the sea — wiping out empires ruthlessly?

I will be at my station on the watchtower of the defensive wall.

I’ll look for his answer, and for how I should reply to these concerns.

Then the Lord replied:

God: You’re going to want to write this down, plain for all to see and hear.

This message is ready for the right time — it’s about the End, and this one will prove true.

Even if it’s a long time coming, wait for it.

It is certain to be on time.

Look at him, all big-headed—he wants crooked things,

But a good man will live by faith—

Alcohol is a traitor to him. He is proud and never sits still.

He’s as hungry as the grave and like death, he’s a bottomless pit.

He gathers all the nations and steals from all the people to make prisoners of them.

Won’t all these people want retribution, and mock him with humiliating sarcasm:

“Look out, if you hoard loot and get rich manipulating people!

How long will you keep this up? Won’t the people—who you owe—rise up?

Won’t you shiver when they wake up?

Then it’ll be your turn to be the victim, 

because you have looted many countries.

And the people you overlooked will loot you.

The blood you spilled was from people.

You have flattened fields and cities, along with their people.”

“Look out, if you build your kingdom on foundations of slavery and injustice,

To try and build it high out of reach,

so you can dodge the claws of destruction!

You planned to destroy many people,

so you shamed your home and gave up your right to life.

The stones in these walls will testify against you,

 and the wooden beams will affirm them.”

“Look out, if spilled blood has built your city, and crime founds your town.

Hasn’t the Lord said peoples’ work just feeds the fire,

and the countries wear themselves out for nothing?

Regardless, the full earth will know the glory of the Lord,

like the oceans know water.”

“Look out, if you push drinks on your friends,

refilling till they’re drunk so you can feed your hungry eyes with their naked bodies.

You will be full of shame instead of triumph.

Take your turn! Drink and be naked!

The Lord’s strong hand brings the cup to you, and disgrace will cover up your power.

Your violence to Lebanon will sweep you away,

and your slaughter of animals will haunt you.

Because you have drained human blood—

you destroyed fields and cities still full of people.”

“What is an idol worth, since it is only carved by man?

What about a figurine that only reinforces lies?

Whoever makes them trusts the work of her own hands.

She makes mute godlets. 

Look out, if you try to make wood come to life

Or to make stone wake up.

Can it lead you?

It’s covered in gold and silver—it doesn’t breathe!

But the Lord is alive and well in his holy temple.

Let the whole earth fall silent for him!”

The prophet Habakkuk’s prayer:

Habakkuk: Lord, I have heard the stories they tell about you.

Your work has me stock still with amazement.

Do these things again in our time!

Let people these days know your works!

Remember to show mercy in your retribution.

God comes in holiness from the south as of old.

His throne-glory spreads over the skies

and his court-fanfare sounds from all the earth.

His radiance like sunrise gleams from his hand where he hides his power.

Plague makes a way for him, and disease carries his train.

When he stands, he shakes the earth.

Under his gaze the nations tremble.

The time-strong mountains crumble,

and the time-worn hills fall in on themselves.

He has eternal work.

Ethiopia’s tents are disarrayed, and Midian’s homes are distressed.

Lord, were you angry at the rivers?

Did the streams provoke your rage?

Was your wrath toward the sea when you rode with triumphal horses and chariots?

You unwrap your bow and call for endless arrows.

You carve the earth with rivers and mountains writhe under your glance.

Rushing water roars by and raises waves high.

The sun and moon in the sky are paralyzed

as your arrows glint and fly, and as your spear flashes lightning.

You march through the earth with rage and your wrath culls the nations.

But you sought out your people to deliver them.

You rescued your chosen one.

You trampled the leader of the wicked land and stripped him of everything—head to toe.

You crushed his head with his spear when his warriors made their move to scatter us.

They gloated as they prepared to prey on the weak in hiding.

Your horses disturbed the sea and frothed the wide waters.

I heard the stories and my heart pounded.

The words made my lips tremble.

My bones rotted hollow and my legs quivered.

But I will patiently wait for the day of disaster to crash over our invaders.

If the fig tree doesn’t even bud, and the grape vines hang empty,

If the olive harvest fails and the farms lie bare,

If the barns shelter no sheep and the cow stalls are vacant,

STILL the Lord is my joy:

I rejoice in my Savior.

My strength comes from the powerfully ruling Lord.

He gives me stable footing like the deer

And prepares me to climb the summit.

The Years the Locusts have Eaten

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animal antenna biology close up
Photo by Egor Kamelev on Pexels.com

Our oldest living grandparents have never seen anything like this. The alcoholics can’t drink it away or numb it. It’s making history and parents imagine what they’ll tell their children or their children’s children in days to come. A new dread has overtaken the land—so unknown that people feel powerless in its wake. The grief for all that’s been lost is so painful it feels like a virgin widow mourning her husband instead of enjoying her wedding night. Our pockets are so empty there is nothing to put in the church’s offering plate. The store shelves and market stands are empty. Our joy feels withered, like fruit on the vine in drought.

Worldwide 21st century pandemic, or the first chapter of Joel? Both.

The Old Testament prophecies of Joel are easy to overlook. It’s a short, 3-chapter book in the minor prophets about a locust plague that decimated the land and its people. It’s very apocalyptic and, honestly, hard to relate to—that is, unless you’ve lived through a global calamity yourself.

Reading Joel in the shadow of international tragedy was a unique experience. The first half chapter summarized above left me wide-eyed with shock. This ancient text came alive now that I shared a similar experience with its original audience. The first chapter goes on to describe religious leaders in open anguish before their people, and fasting and repentance because no one knows why calamity has struck except for our sin. The food sources are dried up. The land and its people and animals all go hungry and are left parched. There’s a fair bit of aimless wandering, widespread suffering, and storehouses and gathering places left empty and in ruins.

All of those experiences sound so familiar. No matter how much bread we bake or research we read, we can’t ignore that we still don’t understand what is happening around our world, nor how to stop it or minimize the damage. Our economies are crashing. Our marketplaces have empty shelves too. Our religious leaders desperately try to point us back to God, but the places of worship lie empty. Here in Uganda I’ve seen the empty market stalls. The land isn’t suffering here, as under a drought, but the livestock are thinner and sicker as limited resources have been given to people instead of land and animals.

Joel closes chapter 1 speaking about fire that has devoured the fields. We joke about our world being on fire. We have seen protests and riots, because the world has slowed down its spin enough for us to step back and notice our oppressive systems. Violent and opportunistic crime is on the rise as people become more desperate with hunger and poverty. People starve in slums and refugee camps. Treatable diseases are overlooked and untreated more than ever as our hospitals fill with pandemic victims. Global mental health is in crisis. Dictatorial governments have seized even more power. Marginalized people who already lived on the edge struggle for plain survival. Our world IS on fire.

A theme from the first chapter of Joel rings true for us too: large-scale disaster overlooks nothing and no one. The land in Joel’s day was ravaged by drought, famine, and locusts. But it wasn’t just the food that was affected—young and old, wealthy and poor, people and animals, land and water—all suffered. Even though our pandemic has been a global health disaster, it has hit our economies, governments, communities, and every other sphere of society, with crippling force. Every sector has taken a beating. All the destruction and brokenness has left our literal and metaphorical fields dried, shriveled, and unprotected: just waiting for fire to blaze through and pile calamity upon calamity. Catastrophe reminds us how little control we actually have.

But chapter 2.

The second chapter of Joel reminds us that the Lord is in complete control. Yes, he sends the locusts. Yes, he is holy and just and must punish sin. But he is also merciful and good.

The chapter opens with a nightmarish horror scene. Alarm bells ring and trumpets sound to announce an invading army, but the army is locusts. They black out the sun and moon and break over the mountaintops like a grisly dawn. The land that was lush like Eden before them is a barren desert waste behind them. They move and sound like an untamed wildfire crackling and leaping, like soldiers whose formation is not broken by obstacles, enemies, or defense walls. They pour over and through everything and the earth quakes beneath them.

These images depict the utter helplessness Joel’s people felt in the face of their plague. Nothing could stop the onslaught, and nothing was spared in its path. The locusts even crept into homes through windows, like thieves in the night, violating any sense of privacy or security the people felt. There was no refuge.

But then comes the great parenthesis of Joel. Between talks of plague, judgment, and devastation, the Lord gives an offering of mercy: “Even now, return to me with all your heart…,” “tear your heart and not your garments.” Why? Why should the people trust to the mercy of a God who has only measured out judgment? Because of the ancient name of God, the name he gave to Moses in the burning bush as he was sent to deliver God’s people from slavery.

Return to the Lord your God

for he is gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and abounding in love,

and he relents from sending calamity.

Who knows? He may turn and have pity

And leave behind a blessing…

Joel tells us that this wrathful God shows grace and compassion. His anger is slow, but his love overflows. He can cancel calamity. And if you return to him, he may himself turn and deliver blessing instead of punishment. Joel tells the people to gather, young and old. No one is exempt. Help along the tottering elders. Bring in the nursing babies. Interrupt the honeymooners. Weep openly as a people. Repent of your sin and pray for the Lord to spare his people, not to prevent their shame, but the Lord’s. Beg him to relent so that the world will know the Lord’s character and his unchanging love for his people.

Then, Joel says, the Lord will reply with abundance. Food will once again be plentiful in the land. The people and the whole land and its animals can rejoice. The rain returns. The storehouses and places of harvest are full.

Unlike Joel’s people, we are not under the Old Testament covenant promises. Our plague is not necessarily covenant punishment. But the book’s prophecy is filled with God’s truths nonetheless. We too have faced nightmarish scenarios as Coronavirus has overtaken the land. We feel helpless and desperate. We don’t know how to halt it, or how to stop up the holes in our defenses. Our homes don’t even feel safe after we were locked inside them and our privacy and security there feels violated.

Our situation is not the same, but the Lord’s character IS. He is still gracious and compassionate. He is still merciful. Our lives, too, have been interrupted and changed. But just like Joel promised, ‘normal’ can return and we can live in abundance. Disaster has made us desperate, and in our desperation we have new reason to turn to the Lord.

It is here in narrative that the Lord says something startling: “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.” What does he mean? How can you repay devastation, lost life, trauma? He quickly answers with a beautiful passage that gives me chills. Peter quotes it at Pentecost.

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth… And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the survivors whom the Lord calls.

Wow. Will the Lord repay in material abundance after a calamity? Perhaps. But he promises an even greater repayment for the trauma we have endured. If we repent, if we use this calamitous interruption to dig into our own hearts and submit them to the Lord, he will repay us with his Spirit.

The years the locusts have eaten—the difficult days we have experienced—will be repaid. Many of us have found a deeper relationship with God during this time of confusion and tragedy. Our life is enriched for the time we have spent with the Lord. We can use the interruption and the unquestionable grief and fear to drive us deeper into our need for Him and his constantly present Spirit with us.

Not only that, but this is a time of new pioneering for our churches. As they have closed and services have moved online or into homes, we have sifted our ‘religious practices.’ What church traditions are actually life-giving to us? Which ones prop up unnecessary cultural habits we can do without and still have abundant life with the Spirit of God? We have seen and felt the Spirit moving amongst God’s people as we have worshipped at home or with our own instruments together with our families and small communities. This is a time of refreshing and renewal—a time of God pouring out his Spirit abundantly on his people who seek him and repent of the hidden sins these times have forced us to face.

Yes, the Lord sent the locust plague to Joel’s people, and yes, he sent the Covid plague to us. The third chapter promises judgment on the Lord’s enemies just as the first two chapters promise it for his own people. He abhors the sins of selling people or trading them for goods. He is disgusted when defenseless people are abused and taken advantage of. The Lord prepares for war on his enemies and will scythe down even the most powerful among them like grass in a field. Where wickedness is ripe, the Lord is ready to cut it down.

But that does not mean he is not merciful. God is just and cannot abide sin, but he delights to show grace. When he does, the world stage will know of his unconditional, redeeming love to people who rely on him to save them. Unlike with the locust plague, God promises this time during judgment that he will dwell with his people and be their place of refuge. He is sovereign over the disasters of the world. But he is also sovereign over their outcomes. The Lord delivers us. He fills us with his Spirit. He gives us life abundant after calamity. He offers hope. He repays the years the locusts have eaten.

What Does the Bible Say about Oppression, Racism, and Racial Justice?: A Bible Study Resource List

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The Bible is very political. But not in the way some might mean when they say that word. Scripture understands and overrides our politics. It challenges them and should shape them. Scripture teaches us what the Kingdom of God should be like here on earth as we wait for all things to be made new, as we groan with creation. We redeem the time by maturing in Christlikeness, pointing our neighbors toward God, and proclaiming and working toward healing to the broken world around us.

Scripture doesn’t take sides like we want it to. It consistently defies our attempts to assign it to one party or another, to use it to back a political platform, to twist it and cut it into tiny pieces to be used in arguments to validate our own opinions. The commander of the Lord’s army said it best in Joshua 5:13-14:

“… a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, ‘Are you for us, or for our adversaries?’ And he said, ‘No, but I am the commander of the army of the Lord.”

So is Scripture on my side in an argument? Does the Bible justify my war or political cause? Do the Lord’s armies fight for me or my country? The simple, emphatic answer is, “NO.” The Lord is on his own side, and we pick whether or not we join him in our political decisions, our social actions, the systems we build, the communities we create.

The Lord may not side with our agendas, but he cares deeply about and works on the side of justice. As we seek to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before our God, his Scripture should renew our minds. It should replace the broken pieces of our culture and worldview with Kingdom Culture.

There is a lot to be said in our current moment of history in the United States. Words fly thick and fast in personal conversations, social media posts, blogs, and articles. I have nothing new to offer. But I do think in stories. And these stories have greatly shaped the way I understand social justice, riots, power dynamics, privilege, violence, protest, civil disobedience, oppression, racism, and righteous anger and outrage. My hope is that you take this list of stories as a resource, and use them for your own devotional and prayer time. Sit in them. Let them make you uncomfortable and challenge your ideas. If we approach God’s word correctly, it will cut us to the heart and can remake what we think of the political and social context we find ourselves in. Let the focus not be my words, but only on the Lord’s words renewing your mind and heart.

Father, may these stories help us to remove the logs in our own eye. May we see the consistencies and themes of how your Word speaks against oppression and injustice. May we humbly approach your Word, willing to be undone by it. May the scales fall from our eyes so we are no longer blind to the horrific sins we commit and how deeply they grieve you. May we seek restoration finally in you as we repent, confess, and turn our lives over to you in obedient submission to your character of perfect justice and goodness. Amen.

Hagar and Ishmael: Genesis 16, 21:8-20. In this story, after Abram, a patriarch of our faith, knocked up his wife’s servant, the family decides they don’t want her or her baby around. In a disgusting statement, Abram says to his wife, “your servant is in your power, do to her as you please.” They mistreat Hagar so much that she flees into the wilderness. When she thought no one saw or heard her, the Lord calls out. He promises her a family line. He says he has heard her affliction. Hagar is the first person in the Bible to call God by a name that signifies a personal relationship with him. She names him “The God who Sees” because she had seen the one who saw her. And she later names her son “God Hears.” This story teaches us much about who God sides with, who he cares for, and how he treats people abused by those in power.

Joseph falsely accused and imprisoned: Genesis 37, 39-50. Joseph was sold and enslaved in a foreign land to a master of a different ethnicity. He worked hard and God gave him favor in the household, but as a slave no one believed him when he was falsely accused of a crime. After years of working hard in prison, we see again that the Lord gave him favor with the authorities over him. The Lord rescued Joseph and delivered him from the position of an enslaved prisoner and elevated him to the second-in-command over the country. The Lord continued to give Joseph favor in this foreign government and he eventually held their lives in his hand as he graciously rationed them through a famine. He used the position of power the Lord gave him to provide a safe home for his family. In this story God is the one who gives Joseph favor and influence, which he uses both as a slave and a prisoner and as ruler of the land. Joseph uses his power to save lives and provide for the hungry and the foreigner, and God is with him.

Moses and the Exodus from Egypt: Exodus 1-13. The Israelites were oppressed and lived as slaves in Egypt. God heard their cries and planned to deliver them. Moses grew up in a position of power in the king’s household, but as an adopted son of a different ethnicity. He tried to address the injustice on his own and murdered a slave-driver before fleeing to the desert. There the Lord met Moses and told him of the plan to save his people. Through appropriate political channels, Moses and Aaron asked for freedom but were only further oppressed. The king hardened his heart, the Lord sent plagues to disrupt his power and government, and finally he deemed the Israelites more of a nuisance and let them leave for their own country. Again in this story, God hears people who suffer, and he makes a way to keep his promise and deliver them.

Moses and Miriam lead in worship: Exodus 15:1-21. In one of the earliest examples of worship music, we find God’s people praising the Lord as their salvation and their rescuer. But deep in the heart of this early example of worship, God’s people praise him for his wrath against their oppressors. They praise God for the death of their enemies. This story can teach us a lot about what topics are appropriate in our praise, and what God’s people first learned about his character as slaves who had been set free.

Miriam complains about Moses’ dark-skinned wife: Numbers 12. In this power struggle, siblings Miriam and Aaron wish to be as important as Moses, for the Lord to use them and speak through them in the same ways. To achieve this goal, they complain about Moses’ wife of a different ethnicity. As a Cushite, Zipporah’s skin would have been very dark, and the Israelites would have been a few shades lighter. In this story we hear Moses described as the meekest man on earth. Unwilling to confront his siblings and defend himself, the Lord defends Moses instead. After rebuking the siblings, the Lord punishes Miriam in kind, making her skin the object of ridicule. God strikes Miriam with a skin disease that turns her white as snow, a white the brothers look at in horror and beg God to remove, a whiteness associated with disease and decay, with sin and corruption, a twisted parody of the ambition Miriam expressed over and above her dark-skinned sister-in-law. In some strong language, God says about Miriam, “Even if her father had only spit in her face, wouldn’t she be shamed for 7 days?” He agrees to heal her after Moses begs. This story teaches us how disgusting our power-mongering is to the Lord, and how he despises our desires to elevate ourselves over someone different from us.

The Ephraimite Genocide: Judges 12:1-7. In a prime example of tribalism, the people of the nation refuse to help each other in battle. After the enemy is defeated, the tribes turn on each other. On the basis of their dialect or accent, Ephraimites were profiled and caught at border crossings and slaughtered. 42,000 Ephraimites were killed in this genocide, at the hands of a corrupt judge who should have led the people in godliness. This story is one of many examples in the book of Judges of the Israelites’ sinfulness and corruption. A brother tribe was systematically murdered in an act of ‘state-sponsored’ genocide.

The deaths of Jezebel and Ahab: 1 Kings 22, 2 Kings 9. This king and queen of Israel were incredibly corrupt. They used their position for selfish gain and feeding their own vices. Ahab imprisons or kills prophets who speak against him, and he pridefully thinks he can outrun the death the Lord promises him. But the Lord’s words come true, and after he dies, dogs lick up his blood and prostitutes bathe in the pool where it was spilled. His queen Jezebel fares little better. Three men (whom she had castrated to serve her) throw her out of a tower window. Her body is left there only for a few moments, trampled by horses, and eaten by dogs. This story teaches us about God’s sense of justice and punishment. The idea of poetic justice is born in us as a reflection of our Maker. This story and many others build up a biblical understanding that only God can execute righteous judgment. By taking that responsibility from our hands, he doesn’t set justice aside, he takes the responsibility for himself as the perfect judge.

Daniel and the three friends in exile: Daniel 1. Daniel and his three friends were taken captive from their homeland to a foreign country. Placed in a systematic education meant to overwrite their culture, language, heritage, and even their own names, Daniel and his friends peacefully and creatively resist these forms of oppression. God gives Daniel favor with the authorities and after a trial run, the four friends are able to keep to their own cultural dietary restrictions. This story teaches us about peaceful resistance, and what it can look like to resist other forms of oppression besides religious persecution.

The fiery furnace: Daniel 3. Daniel has been promoted and separated from his friends, but when the king takes away their religious freedoms and forces them to worship an idol, they peacefully but visibly resist. The three friends refuse to worship, even when given a second chance. They tell the king their God is able to rescue them from his punishment, but even if He does not, they will not submit and worship as the king wishes. They go willingly into the furnace without a word from God, but he meets them in the fire and saves them so that the whole kingdom will know and worship him. This story models civil disobedience for the sake of religious liberty.

Daniel in the lion’s den: Daniel 6. With a new king on the throne, Daniel is still in a position of authority but has no rapport with the new conquerors. Rivals set a trap for him so he will be condemned to hungry lions if he prays to God. When Daniel knows this new law has been signed, he carries on with his public and visible prayers, just as he did before the decree. Again, God gives Daniel favor in the eyes of the new king who wishes to save Daniel’s life but cannot. God miraculously rescues Daniel and again the whole kingdom learns of God’s might and power. This story deals with a complicated political scenario of denied religious liberties, entrapment, peaceful resistance, a public show of civil disobedience, and Daniel’s refusal to bend his morals to ease his situation.

Daniel serves the kings: Daniel 2, 4-6. Daniel serves under a handful of kings and two different conquering powers. Even as they oppress him and refuse him freedoms, Daniel serves them with integrity and honestly recounts the Lord’s words to them, even when it puts him in danger. God gives him favor and uses him as a redeeming influence in these governments. Without his firm stances about the freedom to worship God, Daniel and the other Israelites may have been more persecuted than they were. These stories deal with the complicated issues of how to serve in and under oppressive and unrighteous governments, even if the government is foreign and you are a captive.

God uses Esther to rescue her people: Esther. Esther and her uncle Mordecai were captives just after Daniel, under the same government. The king ‘fired’ his queen and conducted a kingdom-wide search for virgins (sex slaves) to add to his harem so he can choose a queen. Esther was chosen and kept her Hebrew identity a secret. The Lord gave her and Mordecai favor with the government as they lived with integrity, respected people those around them, and saved the king’s life once. When a political rival whispers fear-mongering racism in the king’s ear, the two of them decree a day of state sponsored looting and genocide against the Jews. All the Jews fast and pray, and some demonstrate their grief by wearing sackcloth and ashes in public places. Esther uses her privilege and influence, risking her life, to beg the king’s mercy. In a cautious and calculated move, she reveals the plot and her own identity as a Jew. The king executes the political rival on the gallows he meant for Mordecai, and the Jews are saved. The king elevates Mordecai to his rival’s position and allows him to write a decree for the Jews to battle their attackers on the declared genocide day. They fight back and loot their enemies, keeping none of the goods for themselves.

This book is FULL of commentary on how the Lord’s people can respond under oppression and how the Lord views power dynamics and punishes people who abuse their power. This book shows God’s deep value for all life—lives of sinners and righteous, different ethnicities, wealthy and poor, powerful and meek. You can spend weeks digging into this rich book to challenge your own understanding of privilege, voice, power, oppression, protest, looting, civil disobedience, violet resistance, and slavery.

Nehemiah’s prayer: Nehemiah 1. Nehemiah was an Israelite in exile. When he heard of the brokenness of his homeland, he mourned, fasted, and prayed. His prayer is startling to many of us today, because he confessed the sins of his people, his nation, and his ancestors as his own. This story teaches us about Nehemiah’s character as a leader and rebuilder of broken things. He acknowledged his past and the past of his people so that they could move forward in obedience and dedication to the Lord, fully confessing, repairing, and leaving their sin behind them.

Sackcloth and ashes, torn clothes and dust: Esther 4:3, Job 2:11-13, Daniel 9:3, Matthew 11:21, Isaiah 58:5, Jeremiah 6:26, Jonah 3:6. This is less of a story than a theme of Scripture. God’s people many times wear rough sackcloth clothes and put ashes on their heads. They did it for many reasons: repentance, prayer, fasting, demonstrations, mourning. This theme of Scripture teaches us that sometimes God’s people express corporate emotions or spiritual state outwardly. They mourn together, confess and repent together, signify to their oppressors that they stand together (Esther). Sometimes bandwagon demonstrations may feel forced or disingenuous to us. But time and again God’s people—from peasants to prophets to kings—express solidarity, brokenness, and their utter dependence on the Lord for change by dressing alike and breaking social conventions by standing out in uncomfortable ways.

Mary’s Song: Luke 1:46-56. Mary learns she is pregnant with the Messiah, and after her cousin Elizabeth greets her prophetically she sings a song of praise. In this tender moment of worship, Mary, a young, impoverished, ethnically oppressed, pregnant unmarried woman, sings to her Lord on topics most would call ‘social justice.’ She recognizes her lowly place and how the Lord has chosen to exalt her as his servant. This brief praise song teaches us about how deeply connected the Messiah’s salvation and the healing of broken communities are—the Kingdom includes both.

The Woman at the Well: John 4:1-42. In this story Jesus breaks social barriers to spend time alone with a woman in a public space. Not just any woman, but one his own people would have ignored or worse based on her ethnicity. Even her own society had marginalized her. She was at the bottom of the privilege ladder. But Jesus engages her kindly and personally. He confers value on her as a witness to and preacher of the gospel. He looks past the stigmas society had put on her and sees the woman as valuable and important in his Kingdom. He even gets a bit cheeky with her, when he opens by demanding water from her, as she would have expected from a man like him, but then instead offering her living water and abundant life. This story teaches us to value people and understand their cultural, ethnic, and personal background, but to see their true value as a person made in the image of God.

The Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5-7. This teaching is the charter for the Kingdom of God. It clarifies Kingdom values and describes what our life should be like as followers of Jesus. There is so much meat to this teaching, and so much is counter-intuitive even to mature believers. But in part Jesus encourages retaliatory love, revolutionary obedience, generous justice, and shocking patterns of integrity and dignity as we live our lives as children of God. Famously Jesus improves upon ‘eye for an eye’ justice by telling listeners to turn the other cheek, to give up the shirt off their back to someone who wrongfully sues, to go the extra mile, to love their enemies, and to share with those in need quietly without thought of reward. Without context we’ve forgotten the revolutionary aspect of these commands.

But Jesus’ teaching here restores dignity to oppressed peoples. A second slap on a second cheek forced a Roman to follow a backhand with an open palm slap, treating the Hebrew as an equal rather than a slave. Responding to a wrongful law suit by giving up your last article of clothing brought public shame on the litigator and was a demonstration of the deep way this action dehumanized and stole the dignity of the Hebrew. Going the extra mile was beyond the distance Romans were legally allowed to force Hebrews to carry their loads. It would have been an act of resistance, of taking initiative, of choosing to act beyond the forced action. Peaceful resistance like this would have given oppressors pause and forced them to consider if the person they abused was actually a human too, with the same thoughts and feelings and dignity.

The Bleeding Woman: Luke 8:40-56/Mark 5:21-43/Matthew 9:18-34. In this story a woman who truly lived on the margins of society approached Jesus. She recognized him for Who he was, but because her culture had repeatedly communicated to her how ‘little she was worth’, she came to Jesus afraid and trembling. She’d lived as a woman unclean, bearing chronic pain, socially stigmatized, used to ducking through crowds, impoverished, weak, sick, shunned. Jesus cared about her and her story, and he gave away the attention focused on him to her when he told her to speak in the middle of the crowd. He gave her a voice, and then he called her “Daughter” and signified to everyone around that her relationship to her Lord made her important. This story teaches us about leveraging privilege to acknowledge those without, and giving away our voice and platform to people who have none of their own.

The good Samaritan: Luke 10:25-37. This parable is a zinger. But unfortunately many of us have heard it so many times we are numb to the sting of its application. When Jesus speaks about loving our neighbor, a man asks him who his neighbor is. Jesus tells the story of an innocent man beaten and left for dead. A priest passes the man and chooses the far side of the road rather than aiding the man in need. A Levite responds the same way. And then a Samaritan, the Jews’ despised brother tribes, saves the man. The Samaritan saved his life, tended his wounds, and paid for his lodging.

To best understand what this story teaches us, we should imagine ourselves as the innocent, helpless, beaten man. Ask yourself who makes you scoff loudest and say, “THEY would never help me. Count on it.” If that man, woman, liberal, conservative, transgendered, gay, foreign, ethnic, Muslim, hippie, whoever it was—person—helped you, how could you ever repay that deed of kindness, that debt of your life? This parable teaches us to rewrite our own narratives by cultivating personal relationships, as neighbors, with the people most unlike us and most unlikely to agree with us.

Cast the first stone: John 8:1-12. In this story a mob gathers to condemn and carry out a public execution. The woman in question was caught in adultery, but she was alone in the dirt, cowering before the stones of her angry accusers. She was dragged there to make a scene and send a statement. Even though she was a sinner and Jesus could judge her, he respected her dignity and gave her the chance at redemption and forgiveness. The man she was with was nowhere to be found. Instead Jesus stood up in the crowd to advocate for her, and to point out the sin and punishment all the crowd-members deserved themselves. It is impossible to read this story today without reading the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery in between the lines, to notice the similarities and differences. This story teaches us that we are all of us sinners. We have no right to take the life of another because we deserve punishment and death ourselves but for our Lord’s mercy. Only our Perfect Judge has the right to deal out life and death, and as he demonstrates in this story, he often chooses mercy, forgiveness, and redemption over death and punishment. 

Parable of the Vineyard Workers: Matthew 20:1-16. Jesus tells this parable about a vineyard owner who hires day-workers. To those hired earliest in the morning, he promises a day’s wage. He hires many throughout the day, and some are only hired an hour before the work ends. At the end of the day he pays all a full day’s wage, and the earliest workers grumble. The man says it is his choice to pay as he wishes, and that he does no wrong in giving the early workers the day’s wage they agreed upon. This story teaches us that perhaps we don’t understand the Lord’s idea of justice and fairness as well as we think we do. It explains that the Lord’s justice has more to do with mercy, grace, and generosity than we realize. His idea of fairness if different from our own. This parable can help us think through affirmative action, economic disparity, fair wage, migrant workers, generosity, business principles, and just plain kindness.

Jesus Protests at the Temple: Matthew 21:12-17/Mark 11:15-18/John 2:13-22/Luke 19:45-48. This short account happens in the week immediately before Jesus’ death. Political and religious tensions are high, and Jesus has warned his disciples he will be assassinated soon. Jesus has been recognized by many as the Messiah, and he comes into his own as he enters the temple, the Holy High Priest himself, the King of Kings, and the Eternal Prophet. Enraged at the commerce taking place in the courtyard where non-Jews could gather, Jesus chases out the merchants and customers. He makes his own whip and drives out the people and livestock. He turned over their tables, dumped out and confused their money, and upset the chairs they sat in. He blockaded the temple and refused to allow anyone to pass carrying merchandise. He was angered and said that his house (the Temple) should be a house of prayer, not a den of robbers. Some would call Jesus’ extreme actions ‘looting,’ but it should be made clear that Jesus neither stole nor profited from what he did here. This story is so complicated and interesting. It should shape our understanding of righteous anger, zeal, and outrage at the things that outrage God. It gives us the opportunity to talk about protest, looting, and physical violence. This is the only time Jesus ever raises a hand against anyone.

This story gives us a chance to evaluate what circumstances justify taking action like Jesus took in the story. We should also consider that Jesus called the merchants robbers. What were they robbing, and from whom? The answers seem to be deeper than just monetary or material robbery. If we let this Scripture cut us to the heart, we should consider how we conduct our businesses and whether or not we rob people of opportunities, employment, spiritual growth, and the chance to know the Lord.

Parable of the Talents: Matthew 25:14-30/Luke 19:11-27. Most of us know this story well: a man leaves on a journey and entrusts his money to three servants—5 talents to one, 2 to another, and 1 to the last. When he later returns, he asks them to account for their talents (worth 20 years’ wages apiece). The first two servants deliver the man twice what he originally entrusted them with. The third had hidden his talent away and delivers it up, dirty from being buried in the ground, hidden away and useless. The man rewards and honors the first two servants, but takes the money from the third and condemns him to death. This story can be interpreted to mean so many things, but it is essentially about stewarding, and how the Kingdom of God calls us to be accountable for the resources we have.

The parable teaches us to invest our money, time, energy, effort, skills, etc. for Kingdom purposes, yes. But it’s more than that. We are to steward our knowledge of the gospel well, investing it, mentoring, and reaping returns. Might I also suggest we look at this parable from the lens of privilege? If we are born with social and cultural privilege because of our gender or the color of our skin or the economic class of our parents, we must use it to multiply the voices and platforms of those around us, to share an even footing with our Kingdom brothers and sisters. The worst thing we can do is hide that privilege in the ground because we are ashamed of it or fearful that we might make mistakes with it.

Incarcerated in Philippi: Acts 16:16-40. This story finds Paul and Silas in a jail in Philippi for a crime they did not commit. After they cast out a demon, the men were falsely accused, harassed by a mob, and beaten before they were thrown in jail. They sing in chains through the night. The Lord miraculously frees them, and they lead their jailer to repentance and faith in the Lord. The next morning, after all these events, they calmly remind the jailer’s superiors that as Roman citizens they have rights and cannot be imprisoned and punished without a proper trial and condemnation. Paul and Silas are then set free and continue on in their mission work. This story teaches us about how to consider our rights during religious persecution, how to leverage the liberties we do have, but to hold them loosely and submit them all to Kingdom purposes. We should be aware of our political and cultural rights, but ready to advocate them or set them aside to take opportunities to build the Kingdom.  

Riot in Ephesus: Acts 19:21-41. In this story, believers live out their faith in the community and there are economic repercussions. The idol-makers of the town organize a mob, sow lies, and become violent. They gather in a central point of the city and riot against the Christians. Paul is prevented from addressing the crowd or even going out to them. The people are confused about what they want or what has happened, but are so agitated it takes hours to calm and disperse them. This story helps us consider the difference between a protest and a riot, and cautions against assuming rational motives of a large gathered crowd.

Paul urges a master to free a slave: Philemon. Paul wrote this letter to Philemon, a fellow believer, to urge him to set free his servant/slave, Onesimus. Paul wrote from prison, where he met Onesimus—a runaway slave who had become a believer. Paul thanks and praises Philemon for his work for the gospel and his faith. Then Paul praises Onesimus, whom he had mentored in the faith. Paul asks Philemon to accept this letter Onesimus is delivering to him, and to begin to see and treat Onesimus as brother instead of a bondservant. Paul asks Philemon to treat Onesimus as he would treat Paul himself, and he expresses confidence Philemon will do this and more.

This letter teaches us so much about confronting sin, especially oppressive sin, in our believing brothers and sisters. Paul treats Philemon with respect and thanks him for his faithfulness, but does not shy away from confronting the way Philemon relates to another man as if he were a slave. We learn from this letter that we cannot force conviction on someone, or compel them to change their sin behaviors. But if we respect them as a brother or sister in the Lord, we should call them into greater Christlikeness as we humbly challenge them to repent of sin. We learn that this difficult conversation occurred in the context of a greater friendship and hospitality, as Paul asks to stay at Philemon’s house soon. Change in this case comes through relational conversations. And Paul hopefully expects change in Philemon based on his confidence in the man’s obedience to the Spirit. Paul simply asks Philemon to honor and receive Onesimus as if he were the same as Paul—Paul humanizes Onesimus for Philemon so he will understand the former slave is no less important than his friend and mentor Paul in the rankings of the Kingdom of God.

********These are just a handful of stories from Scripture that address violence and oppression, war and slavery, privilege and power, protest and resistance. My prayer is that they dig deep in us as we submit ourselves to the Lord in obedience and do the hard work of building Kingdom communities. May we reflect and pursue the justice of our Maker, and may we live our days honoring God by acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly before our God.

For Esther. For Khalila. For Hikmat. For Pastor White. For Leah. For Mandi. For Regina. For Grace. For Gina. For my Stara Zagora kids.

This post is dedicated to my BIPOC brothers and sisters who have opened my eyes to the realities they experience, and the fresh ways they understand Scripture in light of those experiences. Thank you for gently and patiently teaching me. Thank you for trusting me with your experiences. Thank you for inviting me in to share the rich ways you live in obedience while honoring your spiritual heritage. Whether you knew it or not, your character and manifestation of the Image of God has shaped me more into an image-bearer of Christ as well.

State of the Union

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The rasping caw of a crow woke me up. Repeated. Insistent. It drowned out or drove away the occasional calls of other birds until it was the only voice to be heard. I opened my eyes to sunlight streaming in through slats in the blinds. I couldn’t remember why my stomach was in knots. The continued cawing grated on my ears. The first word to form itself in my sleepy mind was harbinger. Crows in legends and folklore are often harbingers: they announce death, war, storm, judgment. I have a funny mind. Who else’s first word of the day is harbinger? I sat up and shook my funny head to clear it. I laughed at myself. It was just a crow. But he did remind my why my stomach was in knots, why I lay awake last night with pictures of refugees flashing through my mind in hijabs, in rubble, with hunger in their eyes.

I fell asleep heartbroken, considering the damage our new President can do with a few strokes of a pen. I fell asleep mulling over the lives he can change, for good or for bad, and hoping his lack of demonstrated compassion in the past would not set the course for the future. I had seen articles and headlines all day by sensationalist media outlets confirming liberals’ worst fears and oozing smugness from conservatives. I had believed those articles to be exaggerations, until I read about the executive orders President Trump was projected to sign, including ones that could disrupt families, take land from Native Americans to whom it belongs, and deny war-torn Arabs asylum in our country. I fell asleep thinking on these things. It was the refugees who captured most of my thoughts, and my last coherent reflection before sleep was of Joseph and a pregnant Mary, Middle Easterners turned away at the doors of inns, given no safe place for a birth, and then driven away by a murderous government with no qualms against killing infants. I fell asleep seeing those characters in the streets of modern day Aleppo, wondering what country they could escape to. Our welcoming statue of liberty may soon no longer be the beacon of hope and welcome it once was to people such as them.

For better or for worse, our country has elected a new president. I don’t mean to divide us any further than we already are. Check your hearts and get rid of any ‘I told you so’ or ‘serves them right.’ Don’t look at those caricatured in the media with disgust or superiority. Christian, whether you lean right or you lean left, there is no place for us now to sit on our blessed assurance and do nothing. We elected this man. 81% of us evangelicals voted for him, breaking records even back to Bush campaigns. This is on our shoulders. As of my writing, you can view the orders the president has signed here, and here’s a look at what he plans for refugees. They will change lives.

Like it or not, the President’s actions and signatures will change the lives of the vulnerable first—those who have no home, those who are in poverty, those who have barely learned English, those who are barely born or barely alive, those who have different-colored skin. Those people were the heart and soul of Jesus’ ministry, the people he modeled that his followers should care for first, last, longest, and hardest. Whether you’re comfortable calling those people the oppressed, or the least of these, or some other title, Jesus was on their side. He defended them when no one else would. He experienced their world, born as that refugee baby who had to flee the country for his live before he could even talk. Read the gospels. Let Jesus’ love for such people come alive and burn in your heart. Read the Old Testament, and the prophets. See how God was a father and provider to those who had no one to hear their case.

After the crow woke me up, I did just that. I read Psalm 115, and it soothed my roiling soul. You should read it too, and soak in its words. The psalm teaches that people ask where our God is, because they cannot see him. It teaches that in His place some worship mute, blind, deaf, powerless idols they have made. They worship these things they have made, and they become like them. But the people who fear the Lord will be blessed by him; he will cause them to flourish. Perhaps our evangelicalism wants to flourish more than it wants to fear the Lord. So we fashion a God with our own hands who gives us cultural power and lets us feel politically secure. We fashion him and we worship him in our search for shalom, and as we strive to flourish, we no longer fear the true Lord, the Lord who crushes nations who neglect the powerless and poor and hungry. Perhaps we become more like this false god we have created, so when his prophet preaches peace for evangelicals and economic comfort, we vote him the leader of our nation, all the while forgetting that our help should come from the Lord, not from the white house.

I mean to be gentle with you, brothers and sisters, but I also mean to speak truth. And I don’t point a finger without recognizing my own faults. This post was originally meant to be a sort of ‘state of the union’ after spending a year back in my home country. I meant to examine how I had adjusted back home. But I realized when that crow woke me up that an actual state of the union, about the state of those united in Christ in our country, would be more appropriate. I’ve realized in this year back that I’m still in a foreign country. I was away when our new president first announced his campaign, and when news reached me I laughed because it could not be true. While I was away, I learned deeply of the sin in my own heart, and how pervasive, invisible, and abhorrent it could be. I came back home to the States to find myself in a foreign country, but I realized it felt so different because I am what’s foreign now. Just as I had learned to see more sin in myself, my distance had given me eyes to see it in my people and, like Nehemiah, to cry out for the sins of my people as my own.

My freshly foreign eyes have helped me to see the division and fear that pervade our country. We’re afraid of marches, we’re afraid of our President, we’re afraid for our safety, and we’re afraid of our neighbors. But Christian, it is in times like these when our light shines the brightest, because we follow and serve the light of the world, the light of all mankind that darkness cannot overcome. The only thing capable of replacing this paralyzing fear is faith. And that may be the only thing we have to give our nation right now. Our faith redeems us as well as others, and it leads to a love like Jesus’. There is no fear in that love because perfect love drives out fear.

Ultimately, if we do fear the Lord as he is rather than cherish the cultural Christianity we created, our weapon is not the government, but faith which blooms to love and drives out fear. We are to love our neighbor, and that includes the ones who marched on Washington. That includes the neighbors who are starving or illegal or want abortion rights or don’t fit our ideas of sexual orientation. If you don’t know any of these people, they’re your neighbors, and they’re afraid. Get to know them. Do something. Peer into their eyes and acknowledge you are just as broken and fearful and sinful as they. Ask them why they feel the way they do. Listen, don’t just hear.

In an excellent speech, which you should also read, here, Richard John Neuhaus explains what loving our neighbor and valuing their dignity looks like. As this presidency carries on, we should live by his words; they embody the ethic Jesus himself lived, which seems in very short supply these days.

“We contend relentlessly for the dignity of the human person, created in the image and likeness of God, destined from eternity for eternity—every human person, no matter how weak or how strong, no matter how young or how old, no matter how productive or how burdensome, no matter how welcome or inconvenient. Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us.”

Neuhaus’ repeated refrain is, “we shall not weary, we shall not rest,” not until every life created in the image of God is valued every step of the way from womb to tomb. If we think a life well-lived is healthy, stable, surrounded by family, economically secure, and filled with a productive career, and if we think any less of people who do not have those things, we are not pro-life. We do not value the dignity of a life so-lived. Not really.

If we do not value just as highly the lives of those we disagree with most strongly, we do not value the image of God. We do not value the image of God if we do not look for it in the faces of the women who marched on Washington for all their various reasons. We do not value the image of God if we do not look for it covered in skin of all different shades. We do not value the image of God if we do not look for it at all economic levels and among people whose convictions vary widely from ours. Each human who ever lived eternally carries this image of God. Christian, serve them. Meet their needs. Listen to them when you don’t understand or you think their views are extreme. Get to know their lives and why they believe the things they do. Point each human to Christ. Love each human. Each. Human. Make that your crusade, and I’ll march along with you. Value the lives our governments and churches don’t. Let us treat those lives with dignity and with our own hands make up for the hurt caused by a pen wielded by a man in a suit. In that pursuit of liberty and justice for all, we shall not weary, and we shall not rest.