Hey All,
Sorry we've been away for a while... been tying up some loose ends. Here's plenty to chew on a while.
So, this most recent line of thought about violence, peace, justice, etc. got me thinking. Then the whole season of 24 and especially the finale got viewers thinking about the ethics of means, ends, and justice. Then this weekend, a good friend told me that someone perceived him to be a prophet in some sense. After talking, we were comfortably unclear about exactly what that meant and if and how he ought to take that.
So, I read the Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel and kept thinking:
"The things that horrified the prophets are even now daily occurring all over the world. There is no society to which Amos' words do not apply:
4 Hear this, you who trample on the needy
and bring the poor of the land to an end,
5 saying, “When will the new moon be over,
that we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath,
that we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
6 that we may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals
and sell the chaff of the wheat?
(ESV)
Indeed the sort of crimes that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, typical social dynamics. To us, a single act of injustice- cheating in business, exploitation of the poor- is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us, injustice is injustice to the welfare of the people; to the prophet it is a deathblow to existence: to us an episode; to them a catastrophe, a threat to the world.
Their breathless impatience with injustice may strike us as hysteria. We witness continually acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage, misery, but we rarely grow indignant or overly excited. To the prophets, even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions."
Jack Bauer seems to think that ends justify means as long as we can "Live with the decisions we've made"
The prophets seem to be speaking to a group of people who's simultaneously hold religious convictions and blatantly practice injustice. Not only are they able to live with this, they don't seem to mind, nor think that God minds. Some assume this about unethical business practices, infidelity, torture, etc.
For us, we must continue to ask ourselves, and as a community of faith:
How have we lived as if ends justify means, though we follow a Jesus who is deeply concerned with means? What have learned to "live with", in our society and ourselves, about which Jesus would not remain silent.
To what extent ought we be the voice that radically articulates and demonstrates against injustice?
To what extent do we need the same voice to fall on our ears, so that we might see the injustice in which we participate?
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