Tag Archives: injustice

WHY DOES GOD SIT ON HIS HANDS?

Bible Study, ,

WHY DOES GOD SIT ON HIS HANDS?

The prophecy that Habakkuk the prophet received.

‘How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralysed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted (Hab. 1: 1-4).

I have chosen this short prophetic book from the Old Testament for our next meditation because it is as relevant for us today as today’s newspaper. In my country, I could be reflecting on information from any of our national newspapers. If ever there was a time for us to heed this message, it’s now because it would be so easy for God’s children to be thrown off balance without God’s perspective on earthly circumstances.

This short message was not directed at the prophet’s people or the nations round about him. This was his personal encounter with God. From his perspective, things looked pretty bad. In spite of the fact that his people were God’s people, wherever he looked, he saw violence and injustice. They were in a covenant relationship with God. They were supposed to obey Him and follow His ways so that they could be a witness to the ungodly people around them that their God was the true God and that He was holy.

But they were no different from the heathen. Why? Because they had abandoned the God who delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and replaced Him with the vile idol gods of their neighbours. Wherever Habakkuk looked, he saw the effects of their idolatry. His own people were just as evil as the heathen and he could not understand why God allowed them to carry on living wicked lives. Why did He not step in and do something?

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? How often I hear the same complaint, not only from God’s people but also from those who don’t even acknowledge Him. “If God is a God of love, why did He allow this, that or the other to happen?” For His own people, the goings on around them is a cause for doubt and fear. For the unbeliever, it’s an excuse to reject His authority and ignore their accountability to Him.

First of all, this way of thinking comes from a misunderstanding of who God is and how He works. People, and even His own people, think that God is some kind of puppeteer who has people on a string and makes them move the way He wants them to move. They forget that God honours the gift He gave humankind when He made the first man – free will – and He never overrides their freedom to choose, not matter what they do. He cannot and will not make people do what they do not choose to do or be.

Secondly, they forget that man chose to overthrow God’s authority over hm. Adam was deceived. He listened to the devil’s insinuation that God was unloving and unfair. The result is the mess the world is in right now. What goes on in the world is not God’s fault – it’s ours. Human wickedness created the chaos without God’s help because we chose to make our own rules, and now the world is ensnared in its own evil ways.

Thirdly, God must follow His own rules. He is perfectly just. He cannot simply step in and arbitrarily change the way people behave. He is not indifferent to their suffering. In fact, He has reassured His people again and again that He is always with them. He suffers with them. He grieves over what people do to each other. This is not what He intended the world to be like.

However, He can only work through people’s choices.  Does this mean that God is powerless to intervene in an apparently hopeless situation? Is He subject to human beings? What kind of a God is He? How can we have confidence in Him when it seems that man is in charge? What’s the use of praying when God seems not to hear us or when He sits on His hands and does nothing?

Don’t you love Habakkuk’s honesty? God did! He did not swat him out of existence for questioning Him. He is like that. We are allowed to question Him as long as it not in defiance or disrespect. God always responds to us when we come to Him in humility – remembering that He is God and we are not. Whatever we may think, and however wrong we may be, there is no excuse for losing our holy fear of God or speaking to Him disrespectfully.

Habakkuk was genuinely looking for answers. So was another of God’s righteous people, Job, but God did not answer Job in the way He answered Habbakuk. Job accused God of being unjust and God did not take his accusation lightly. In Habakkuk’s situation, he was puzzled because of God’s seeming indifference to the situation and His inactivity in spite of the prophet’s urgent pleas for help. God wanted him to understand the bigger picture because, as a prophet, he had a job to do – to be a spokesman for God to the people. He had to interpret current events in the light of God’s character and ways.

God responded to Habbakuk’s questions with a surprising and disturbing answer – which we shall discuss tomorrow.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

FORGIVENESS – A TRUE STORY  

Testimonies, , ,

The scene is a Truth and Reconciliation courtroom in South Africa. 

 A frail black woman rises slowly to her feet. She is something over 70 years of age. Facing across the room are several white security police officers, one of whom, Mr van der Broek, has just been tried and found implicated in the murders of both the woman’s son and her husband some years before. He had come to the woman’s home, taken her son, shot him at point blank range and then set the young man’s body on fire while he and his officers partied nearby.

Several years later, van der Broek and his cohorts had returned to take away her husband as well. For many months she heard nothing of his whereabouts. Then almost two years after her husband’s disappearance, van der Broek came to her house to fetch the woman herself. How vividly she remembers that evening, going to a place beside a river where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten, but still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words she heard from his lips as the officers poured petrol over his body and set him aflame were,” Father,  forgive them…”

Now the woman stands in the courtroom and listens to the confessions offered by Mr van der Broek. A member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission turns to her and asks “So what do you want? How should justice be done to this man who has so brutally destroyed your family?”

“I want three things,” begins the old woman calmly but confidently. “I want first to be taken to the place where my husband’s body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial.”

She pauses, and then continues. “My husband and son were my only family, I want secondly, therefore, for Mr van der Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to our township to spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining in me.”

“And finally,” she says, “ I want a third thing. This is also the wish of my husband. I would like someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom. I wish to take Mr van der Broek in my arms and embrace him, to let him know that he is truly forgiven.” As the court assistants come to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr van der Broek, overwhelmed by what he has just heard, faints. As he does, those in the courtroom, family, friends, neighbours – all victims of decades of oppression and injustice – begin to sing, softly but assuredly, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

Why Does God Sit On His Hands?

Bible Study, , , ,

WHY DOES GOD SIT ON HIS HANDS?

The prophecy that Habakkuk the prophet received.

‘How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralysed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted (Hab. 1: 1-4).

I have chosen this short prophetic book from the Old Testament for our next meditation because it is as relevant for us today as today’s newspaper. In my country I could be reflecting on information from any of our national newspapers.

This short message was not directed at the prophet’s people or the nations round about him. This was his personal encounter with God. From his perspective, things looked pretty bad. In spite of the fact that his people were God’s people, wherever he looked he saw violence and injustice. They were in a covenant relationship with God. They were supposed to obey Him and follow His ways so that they could be a witness to the ungodly people around them that their God was the true God and that He was holy.

But they were no different from the heathen. Why? Because they had abandoned the God who delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and replaced Him with the vile idol gods of their neighbours. Wherever Habakkuk looked, he saw the effects of their idolatry. His own people were just as evil as the heathen and he could not understand why God allowed them to carry on living wicked lives. Why did He not step in and do something?

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? How often I hear the same complaint, not only from God’s people but also from those who don’t even acknowledge Him. “If God is a God of love, why did He allow this, that or the other to happen?” For His own people, the goings on around them is a cause for doubt and fear. For the unbeliever, it’s an excuse to reject His authority and ignore their accountability to Him.

First of all, this way of thinking comes from a misunderstanding of who God is and how He works. People, and even His own people, think that God is some kind of puppeteer who has people on a string and makes them move the way He wants them to move. They forget that God honours the gift He gave humankind when He made the first man – free will – and He never overrides their freedom to choose, not matter what they do.

Secondly, they forget that man chose to overthrow God’s authority over hm. Adam was deceived. He listened to the devil’s insinuation that God was unloving and unfair. The result is the mess the world is in right now. What goes on in the world is not God’s fault – it’s ours. Human wickedness created the chaos without God’s help because we chose to make our own rules, and now the world is ensnared in its own evil ways.

Thirdly, God must follow His own rules. He is perfectly just. He cannot simply step in and arbitrarily change the way people behave. He is not indifferent to their suffering. In fact He has reassured His people again and again that He is always with them. He suffers with them. He grieves over what people do to each other. This is not what He intended the world to be like.

But He can only work through people’s choices.  Does this mean that God is powerless to intervene in an apparently hopeless situation? Is He subject to human beings? What kind of a God is He? How can we have confidence in Him when it seems that man is in charge? What’s the use of praying when God does not hear us or when He sits on His hands and does nothing?

Don’t you love Habakkuk’s honesty? God did! He did not swat him out of existence for questioning Him. He is like that. We are allowed to question Him as long as it not in defiance or disrespect. God always responds to us when we come to Him in humility – remembering that He is God and we are not. Whatever we may think, and however wrong we may be, there is no excuse for losing our holy fear of God or speaking to Him disrespectfully.

Habakkuk was genuinely looking for answers. So was another of God’s righteous people, Job, but God did not answer Job in the way He answered Habbakuk. Job accused God of being unjust and God did not take his accusation lightly. In Habakkuk’s situation, he was puzzled because of God’s seeming indifference to the situation and His inactivity in spite of the prophet’s urgent pleas for help. God wanted him to understand the bigger picture because, as a prophet, he had a job to do – be a spokesman for God to the people. He had to interpret current events in the light of God’s character and ways.

God responded to Habbakuk’s questions with a surprising and disturbing answer – which we shall discuss tomorrow.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

 

Available on www.amazon.com or www.kalahari.com in paperback, e-book or kindle format, or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

 

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

Who Said Life Is Fair?

Christian Life, ,

WHO SAID LIFE IS FAIR?

“That stirred up the people, the religious leaders and religion scholars. They grabbed Stephen and took him before the High Council. They put forward their bribed witnesses to testify. ‘This man talks nonstop against this Holy Place and God’s Law. We even heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth would tear this place down and throw out all the customs Moses gave us.’

“As all those who sat on the High Council looked at Stephen, they found they couldn’t take their eyes off him — his face was like the face of an angel.” Acts 6:12-15 (The Message).

Talk about bribery and corruption! The gloves were off and from now on the fight was on, not only against the leaders of the church, but also against anyone who claimed allegiance to Jesus.

Because of his godly life and powerful witness, backed up by the miracles God was doing through him as a testimony to the truth about Jesus, Stephen got the unwelcome attention of a group of freed Jewish slaves who were members of the synagogue of Freed Men, according to Luke. With lies and bribery they cooked up a story about him and dragged him before the Sanhedrin — the same group of men who had it in for Jesus and His followers.

Was there any hope of justice from these prejudiced leaders who had already shown their true colours in their dealings with Jesus and with the apostles? Their agenda was not about what was right but about who was right, and they thought they were and they used their clout to prove it, or so they thought.

They were willing to give their ear to anyone who told stories to their advantage. At least these men who had arrested Stephen had the good sense to bribe more than one witness! Jewish law demanded the testimony of two or three witnesses to find a man guilty of the charge. Interesting that their charge was the same one that was thrown at Jesus, a twisted version of His statement, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” John 2:10 (NIV)

The first question we are tempted to ask in this terrible situation is: ‘Where was God in all this?’ How can God allow this kind of thing to happen to His own followers? It’s the same question we ask when we are treated unfairly. Why does God sit on His hands when life throws us a curved ball?

God is sovereign. He has the power to intervene in any situation but He doesn’t. Why? Firstly, He gave man the gift of choice and He will not override that even to prevent people from destroying themselves or others but…every person will have to give an account of the choices they made.

Secondly, in a way beyond our understanding, He turns even the worst that humans can do to His children to our good and to His glory. What they did to Jesus is a case in point. Even losing our lives is not the worst that God-haters can do to us. Our lives are secure in Him, but His kingdom grows on the testimony of those whose love and loyalty cannot be destroyed by the threat of death.

The story of Stephen is an illustration of the miracle of God’s ways. Every seed sown in the ground produces a multiplicity of seeds. It was so with the life of Jesus and it so with every person who lays down his life for the Master.

Does that mean we have to die to be of any value in God’s kingdom? Yes, but not necessarily in the literal sense. A true disciple of Jesus is one who denies himself, takes up the cross daily and follows Him. Perhaps the daily inward dying is more difficult than the once-off physical dying for Him.

A dead person is beyond resenting the unfairness that life dishes up to us. Dying to ourselves frees us from the emotional storms we experience at the choices other people make that affect us. Our times are in God’s hands and He is able to make all things work for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, because He is shaping us into sons like Jesus.