Hoeing the rows of depravity
This week's verse is Amos 6:12:
In these verses, God is explaining why he has turned against Israel. The people were living comfortably, even extravagantly, but they were neglecting justice. This is more common than you might think. A lot of societies follow a trajectory from rough beginnings to a sort of righteous golden age, to a period of decadent depravity, and then they either get invaded or collapse from within. Here God is telling Israel that their special status won't protect them from this built-in process. The blessing doesn't mean getting spoiled.
God gives a variety of reasons, but in this verse he focuses on their lack of justice. He asks if a horse can run on rocky cliffs. The obvious answer is no. Horses aren't great on rough rocky terrain, at least not compared to donkeys. If you tried it, your horse would break a leg and be worthless. He asks if oxen can be used to plow the sea like a field. Obviously not. If you tried it, the water would be unaffected, but the oxen would drown.
Even in their disconnected condition from the necessities of life, the rich people knew that these everyday animals had certain constraints they had to operate under, if their master was to get them to perform as designed. If you wouldn't expect a horse to perform well when outside of his zone of effectiveness, and you wouldn't expect oxen to perform well when outside of their operating environment, why would you expect society to operate well if it was equally misused?
God tells them they have turned justice into a poisonous plant, and the fruit of righteous actions into a bitter plant. That's exactly what favoritism and injustice do to the society that is infected by it. If you're a farmer tending a garden, are you going to want to invest your resources in caring for a poisonous plant, or one which doesn't taste good? Obviously not! They're worse than useless!
When a society becomes corrupt, the tools of justice are used more for revenge or eliminating the opposition than they are for justice. Instead of restoring balance and protecting the weak, they push for imbalance and enrich those already in power. It's no longer a medicine to restore society's health when someone acts out of bounds. Instead it is a poison plant that looks like a healthy one and kills or sickens those who turn to it for help.
Two men commit a crime but only one is punished, because of his ethnicity or his political affiliation. Two men are eligible for a lucrative post but suddenly a sex scandal appears out of nowhere and removes one from consideration. Two ethnic groups are constantly fighting, but only the crimes of one side are ever reported. These seem like brand new problems, but they are as old as mankind. They are human problems.
If justice is no longer balanced, but the courts and the enforcement are still revered as though it is, it's like poison. You can no longer trust that if your neighbor cheats you he will be punished, so you begin to mistrust him, or to try to cheat him before he cheats you. You become less generous, because you know that if you sue someone for stealing from you, you may not get made whole, and worse, you may get sued for having the audacity to sue someone from the same community as the judge. The money you would have spent on the poor gets spent on bars for your windows, or a security system, or some weapons to defend yourself and your family. Eventually there is no society left.
The fruit of righteous action is turned into a bitter plant. Maybe you've worked all of your life to get to a certain level in your career, but nobody will hire you anymore because it's no longer fashionable to hire people of your ethnicity. Maybe you study hard in school, get good grades, etc but all of the good universities are closed to people of your heritage or political affiliation. Maybe you try to reach out to your neighbors and your community to bless them, but you get sued or slandered instead, because they don't like your kind, or you mentioned a religion they don't like, or someone on the city council wants your house. Eventually you decide that it doesn't pay to do the right thing, so you stop trying. If something is bitter, you can only stomach so much of it before you put your spoon down.
The people God was talking to probably had no idea it was them he was addressing. "Corrupt people? Yeah I know exactly who you're talking about! That guy across the street keeps robbing the courier who brings me my drug money!" They were so comfortable in their own luxurious living that they couldn't see how depraved they had become. But not only were they doing the wrong thing, they were making it difficult for other people to be righteous. They were worse than useless!
I talk about this a lot, but it's easy for us to get in a sort of Christian bubble and assume we're the good guys. Do we never show favoritism? Do we never ignore truths that paint us or "our guys" unfavorably? It's even harder now to keep a balanced view with corrupt, one-sided "fake news" being increasingly the norm and social media censoring news that doesn't fit what it thinks you'll want to read. We could be massively corrupt without even knowing it! We all live in little algorithmically defined bubbles now.
Because we're isolated, like Israel was in Amos' time, we have to ask ourselves if we're also unjust. Is there anyone whose voice you would refuse to hear? Is there anyone who you would automatically assume is wrong, before they even open their mouth? Is there anyone, famous or otherwise, for whom you feel hatred, without ever having met them? These are signs of a hardened heart. The more we nurse those feelings and attitudes, the more we hoe the rows of our society's depravity. We cultivate the bitter poison fruits of injustice and prevent anything good from sprouting.
If you're thinking you might be one of those unjust people, ask God to change your heart and mind. Be nice to those people you think aren't worth it. Speak truth as a trustworthy witness and cultivate God's garden with him, not Satan's toxic counterfeits.
Can horses run on rocky cliffs?
Can one plow the sea with oxen?
Yet you have turned justice into a poisonous plant,
and the fruit of righteous actions into a bitter plant.
In these verses, God is explaining why he has turned against Israel. The people were living comfortably, even extravagantly, but they were neglecting justice. This is more common than you might think. A lot of societies follow a trajectory from rough beginnings to a sort of righteous golden age, to a period of decadent depravity, and then they either get invaded or collapse from within. Here God is telling Israel that their special status won't protect them from this built-in process. The blessing doesn't mean getting spoiled.
God gives a variety of reasons, but in this verse he focuses on their lack of justice. He asks if a horse can run on rocky cliffs. The obvious answer is no. Horses aren't great on rough rocky terrain, at least not compared to donkeys. If you tried it, your horse would break a leg and be worthless. He asks if oxen can be used to plow the sea like a field. Obviously not. If you tried it, the water would be unaffected, but the oxen would drown.
Even in their disconnected condition from the necessities of life, the rich people knew that these everyday animals had certain constraints they had to operate under, if their master was to get them to perform as designed. If you wouldn't expect a horse to perform well when outside of his zone of effectiveness, and you wouldn't expect oxen to perform well when outside of their operating environment, why would you expect society to operate well if it was equally misused?
God tells them they have turned justice into a poisonous plant, and the fruit of righteous actions into a bitter plant. That's exactly what favoritism and injustice do to the society that is infected by it. If you're a farmer tending a garden, are you going to want to invest your resources in caring for a poisonous plant, or one which doesn't taste good? Obviously not! They're worse than useless!
When a society becomes corrupt, the tools of justice are used more for revenge or eliminating the opposition than they are for justice. Instead of restoring balance and protecting the weak, they push for imbalance and enrich those already in power. It's no longer a medicine to restore society's health when someone acts out of bounds. Instead it is a poison plant that looks like a healthy one and kills or sickens those who turn to it for help.
Two men commit a crime but only one is punished, because of his ethnicity or his political affiliation. Two men are eligible for a lucrative post but suddenly a sex scandal appears out of nowhere and removes one from consideration. Two ethnic groups are constantly fighting, but only the crimes of one side are ever reported. These seem like brand new problems, but they are as old as mankind. They are human problems.
If justice is no longer balanced, but the courts and the enforcement are still revered as though it is, it's like poison. You can no longer trust that if your neighbor cheats you he will be punished, so you begin to mistrust him, or to try to cheat him before he cheats you. You become less generous, because you know that if you sue someone for stealing from you, you may not get made whole, and worse, you may get sued for having the audacity to sue someone from the same community as the judge. The money you would have spent on the poor gets spent on bars for your windows, or a security system, or some weapons to defend yourself and your family. Eventually there is no society left.
The fruit of righteous action is turned into a bitter plant. Maybe you've worked all of your life to get to a certain level in your career, but nobody will hire you anymore because it's no longer fashionable to hire people of your ethnicity. Maybe you study hard in school, get good grades, etc but all of the good universities are closed to people of your heritage or political affiliation. Maybe you try to reach out to your neighbors and your community to bless them, but you get sued or slandered instead, because they don't like your kind, or you mentioned a religion they don't like, or someone on the city council wants your house. Eventually you decide that it doesn't pay to do the right thing, so you stop trying. If something is bitter, you can only stomach so much of it before you put your spoon down.
The people God was talking to probably had no idea it was them he was addressing. "Corrupt people? Yeah I know exactly who you're talking about! That guy across the street keeps robbing the courier who brings me my drug money!" They were so comfortable in their own luxurious living that they couldn't see how depraved they had become. But not only were they doing the wrong thing, they were making it difficult for other people to be righteous. They were worse than useless!
I talk about this a lot, but it's easy for us to get in a sort of Christian bubble and assume we're the good guys. Do we never show favoritism? Do we never ignore truths that paint us or "our guys" unfavorably? It's even harder now to keep a balanced view with corrupt, one-sided "fake news" being increasingly the norm and social media censoring news that doesn't fit what it thinks you'll want to read. We could be massively corrupt without even knowing it! We all live in little algorithmically defined bubbles now.
Because we're isolated, like Israel was in Amos' time, we have to ask ourselves if we're also unjust. Is there anyone whose voice you would refuse to hear? Is there anyone who you would automatically assume is wrong, before they even open their mouth? Is there anyone, famous or otherwise, for whom you feel hatred, without ever having met them? These are signs of a hardened heart. The more we nurse those feelings and attitudes, the more we hoe the rows of our society's depravity. We cultivate the bitter poison fruits of injustice and prevent anything good from sprouting.
If you're thinking you might be one of those unjust people, ask God to change your heart and mind. Be nice to those people you think aren't worth it. Speak truth as a trustworthy witness and cultivate God's garden with him, not Satan's toxic counterfeits.
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