Hopewit

The Lord said to Moses, “Soon you will lie down with your ancestors. Then this people will begin to prostitute themselves to the foreign gods in their midst, the gods of the land into which they are going; they will forsake me, breaking my covenant that I have made with them. My anger will be kindled against them in that day. I will forsake them and hide my face from them; they will become easy prey, and many terrible troubles will come upon them. In that day they will say, ‘Have not these troubles come upon us because our God is not in our midst?’ On that day I will surely hide my face on account of all the evil they have done by turning to other gods. Deuteronomy 31:16-18 (NRSV) We are firmly embraced in the arms of a world crisis , and many a Christian pundit will try to convince us that “. . . these troubles [have] come upon us because our God is not in our midst.” True, I firmly believe with others that many of our problems would vanish if we all carried a God-consciousne...

“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” - Amos 5:24 Our current Adult Bible Study has taken us to the minor prophets: Amos, Habakkuk, Micah, Malachi. It’s territory we don’t traverse a lot. In summary: Amos deals with a peaceful time in the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel and warns—particularly the leadership—that their abandoning of the justice and righteousness that God demands of his children is going to have dire consequences. It’s easy, after reading Amos to conclude that the essentials of justice practiced in the everyday are so important that the very survival of the nation and culture are dependent upon it. Beverley McLaughlin traces her search  for the meaning of justice  in her biography, Truth be Told. McLaughlin was chief justice of the Supreme Court in Canada for 17 years. She concluded early on in her law career that a standard of economic fairness was fundamental to justice, a conclusion not...