Listen! The Lord’s arm is not too weak to save you, nor is his ear too deaf to hear you call. It’s your sins that have cut you off from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not listen anymore. Your hands are the hands of murderers, and your fingers are filthy with sin. Your lips are full of lies, and your mouth spews corruption.
No one cares about being fair and honest.
The people’s lawsuits are based on lies. They conceive evil deeds and then give birth to sin. They hatch deadly snakes and weave spiders’ webs. Whoever falls into their webs will die, and there’s danger even in getting near them. Their webs can’t be made into clothing, and nothing they do is productive. All their activity is filled with sin, and violence is their trademark. Their feet run to do evil, and they rush to commit murder. They think only about sinning. Misery and destruction always follow them. They don’t know where to find peace or what it means to be just and good. They have mapped out crooked roads, and no one who follows them knows a moment’s peace. So there is no justice among us, and we know nothing about right living. We look for light but find only darkness. We look for bright skies but walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall, feeling our way like people without eyes. Even at brightest noontime, we stumble as though it were dark. Among the living, we are like the dead. We growl like hungry bears; we moan like mournful doves. We look for justice, but it never comes. We look for rescue, but it is far away from us. For our sins are piled up before God and testify against us. Yes, we know what sinners we are. We know we have rebelled and have denied the Lord. We have turned our backs on our God. We know how unfair and oppressive we have been, carefully planning our deceitful lies. Our courts oppose the righteous, and justice is nowhere to be found. Truth stumbles in the streets, and honesty has been outlawed. Yes, truth is gone, and anyone who renounces evil is attacked. The Lord looked and was displeased to find there was no justice. He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm, and his justice sustained him.
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The problem is sin. From time to time you'll run into a person who looks at the world around them and concludes, there must be no God. They'll say they've come to that conclusion because of all the pain and suffering in the world. They have wrongly assumed a number of things. First they might say if there was a God, he'd stop all the evil in the world. God would not let all the children die of hunger that do everyday. God wouldn’t allow evil men to rape and kill innocent women and children in war-torn countries around the globe. If there was a God, he'd put an end to the painful, evil diseases that devastate lovely people, even Christians suffer with.
Strangely, I've actually had a person tell me this while shoveling their third plate of food into their mouth at a meal someone else had paid for.
So let's assume for just a moment there is no God. And let's also assume this sentiment to save the world from suffering is right. So we'll call this person who decries the evil of the world for a moment God, because they are good and can see evil.
What have they done to relieve suffering?
Most of us in the wealthy west live a life that creates the very pain and evil that had been indicted. The argument is a smoke screen.
Interestingly, one of the most profound and enduring stories told by Jesus was that of the good Samaritan. And even without the far more powerful cultural context of the story that many people will understand or feel, it still makes a lasting statement.
God says in the passage above through Isaiah, I can save. But what really needs to happen is I need to save the world from you!
Have you ever taken ownership of the problem of evil in the world? The problem of pain and suffering is You! You are greedy, self indulgent, indifferent. Your life, history and desires have caused the pain you rail at God against. And what have you done to alleviate it?
Have you fed the starving? Clothed the naked, housed the homeless, visited the sick, or paid for thier medical care? Really? Has your contribution to the cure actually even amounted to anything compared to your contribution to the problem?
And who was Isaiah talking to? He was talking to the people who should have known better. He was talking to the actual 'children of God', the religious people. The message of anti-oppression to the oppressors was preached to the supposed goody two shoes.
Before you go pointing the pious finger, look in the mirror.
God is saying, "If I wipe out the problem, I have to wipe out you!"
(https://soundcloud.com/wkbode/consider-the-following-whats)
(https://soundcloud.com/wkbode/consider-the-following-whats)
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