Like a never-failing stream

“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 that dissimilar from Amos’ warning to the governing powers in Israel. We don’t really need to have this defined to know what it is; economies are so arranged that the essentials of food, shelter, healthcare, education, leisure, etc. are affordable to everyone.

“Well that sounds like Socialism,” is bound to be a reaction by many. The fact is that virtually all economies are mixtures of capitalism and socialism; the important issue is the matter of deciding what mix works best in a specific culture to achieve the desired fairness, ie. economic justice. In Saskatchewan, phone networks, power grids operate under the socialist model; in Alberta, corporate capitalism plays the same role. With a few exceptions, roads and highways are built and maintained in Canada under the socialist model while the Toronto Bypass #407 is owned by private capital, and tolls (ca. $38.00 for about 1 hour of driving) fund maintenance and shareholder profits. Bernie Sanders, Democratic candidate for the presidency, is an advocate for socializing health insurance as has been done by most Western countries; it’s a fairer system than current capitalist insurance schemes since the “premiums” are paid equally for everyone through the national tax system. Medical care is provided as needed, not as can be afforded.

Getting back to Amos, the practices of debt slavery (foreclosing on failed mortgages by selling the mortgagee as a slave to the highest bidder and confiscating property) is one of the major culprits in a culture where injustice has become endemic. The effects are, of course, that land gradually accrues to the wealthiest few and victims of crop failure, natural disaster or bad luck lose their freedom and independence while an elitism is born and grows. The signs of a similar trend in our day can be seen in the massive power and wealth attained by the proverbial 1% while in this land of plenty, thousands of children go to school hungry because a meagre income can't be stretched to the full length of a month.

Some have said that systems can’t guarantee justice, that a change in the heart of humankind is the answer. I agree on the one hand and say, “Good luck with that” on the other. A change of heart, a rebirth in thinking and behaviour is well and good but the chasm between those who pump for “you get what you deserve, and we’ll decide what you deserve.” and those who genuinely work at economic fairness is unfortunately as deep in the Christian Church as anywhere else. “Born again” in America doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve embraced the way of justice and righteousness, that I'm committed to the way of Jesus; what it appears to mean is that “I (us) have bought a ticket to heaven and you (them) haven’t.”

God declares (through an angry Amos in Chapter 5) that He’s sick and tired of people’s offerings and sacrifices plus any and all the rituals of pious worship because they simply combine to underline the hypocrisy of those who claim to preach justice and righteousness and then fail to practice it. So if the time comes, when it comes, that “justice rolls on like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream,” will the followers of Jesus have been instrumental in breaking down the dam?

• Probably not before Christians learn about and pay attention to political sciences, political history and the news, and
• not before Christians actually read their Bibles with the neighbour in mind, and
• not before Christians jointly insist with whatever means are available that justice and righteousness be built into every political/economic system, and
• not before Christians deliberately extricate themselves from the consumerism, waste and environmental degradation that characterize our age, and purposefully model a just, a righteous way.