What Defines an Unjust Nation?

A previous column explored how determined obedience to Jesus and the way of the cross may require Christians to engage in non-violent civil disobedience when the way of the government becomes irreconcilable with the way of the cross. I also said that God had high standards for what makes a nation just but writing about it was for another time. This is the other time.

We live in a world of nation-states, countries bounded by borders and defined by specific sets of laws and constitutions. When God, speaking through the prophets, declared the standards by which nations were judged, he did not mean a nation-state in the modern sense but the entire people of a place that consider themselves a nation. The important question when reading the prophets is to examine what made God angry about the injustices of a nation. 

Speaking through the prophets,God has defined injustice that creates a perimeter within which nations are to work out what is just for their people,  approximating what it means to in workable ways love God, love one’s neighbors, and love oneself. I think Amos  provided the most concise listing of what God makes for an unjust nation. My interpretation of them is as follows:

• Destruction of an enemy’s food supply
• Ethnic cleansing
• Betrayal of treaties
• Promoting cival violence
• Manipulating the poor into the bondage of debt
• Cheating the poor out of the necessities of life
• Denying the poor a full measure of justice
• Oppression of the marginalized
• Having a society in which the rich behave with contempt toward the lower classes
• Conducting elaborate, meaningless religious ceremonies
• Presuming God’s grace for oneself while oppressing others
• Condoning corrupt courts and judges
• Taxation that benefits the rich and burdens the poor
• Tolerating an excessive wealth gap between the rich and poor

Other prophets recorded God’s word condemning land grabs, self-aggrandizing rulers, and ostentatious lifestyles of the wealthy.   It is an uncomfortable indictment  of many in our own day. God has heard every excuse and self-righteous justification for why none of this applies to them. It must be meant for somebody else. He has heard every angry protestation that they have been offended, mistreated, misunderstood, and lied about. He heard it all in the time of the prophets and wasn’t fooled then and isn’t fooled now.

I have no illusion that society’s malefactors would do more than sneer derisively at everything written so far. I expect Christians will take it to heart, adjusting their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors accordingly, not for their own benefit but for the common good. It will not mean marching in drill formation unity. We will remain a people muddling through as best we can, arguing about the right thing to do and the way to do it. Our unity will always be in coherence around God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the way of the cross. It is a coherence through which nations can be moved toward godly justice.