Day 14: Tue., 27 Feb. Jeremiah 6.9-16

Peter Walker has done a great job with his commentary on this passage, so I'll simply pick up on an aspect of it that has touched me personally. I do quite a lot of advocacy on different issues of social justice on Facebook. From Adani's high-handed attempts to buy influence, wreck local environments and impoverish local people to Donald Trump's obvious narcissism, from the NSW government contractors' sale of building waste for disposal in Queensland to our unthinking acceptance of more and more plastic packaging, there is some appalling behaviour both abroad and here at home.

From time to time I have no doubt gone too far in my criticisms. The rule of thumb is to stick to the issue and not to denigrate people. If you engage in argument ad hominem you have just lost the argument. But even when I've tried to do this I've on occasion earned the ire of some. I've had someone ask whether I hated the previous Australian prime minister. (No! I just disagreed with him rather vigorously on some things!) A similar accusation concerned the current US President. (Ironically, on this occasion I was doing my best to present a small target!) But two linked accusations have made me think the most about whether what I do is justified. One is, essentially, that by criticising or critiquing people I am judging them, and as a Christian I should be aware of Matthew 7.1-3.: If we judge others, so we'll be judged ourselves. The other criticism was that I was more interested in politics than in religion. That felt kind of like "Who shall rid me of this turbulent priest?"

Now admittedly it's difficult to know from what follows of today's text what to attribute to God, and what to God's mouthpiece the prophet Jeremiah, but this really reads like criticism to me:

"10 To whom shall I speak and give warning,
    that they may hear?
Behold, their ears are uncircumcised,
    they cannot listen;
behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn;
    they take no pleasure in it.
11 Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord;
    I am weary of holding it in.
“Pour it out upon the children in the street,
    and upon the gatherings of young men, also;
both husband and wife shall be taken,
    the elderly and the very aged." (NRSV-UK)

And could not the phrases translated as "the word of the Lord" and "the wrath of the Lord" rather than "My Word" and "My wrath" indicate that it was Jeremiah who was weary of holding in God's wrath? The bible, particularly the writings of the prophets and of Paul, and the words of Jesus are replete with criticism and judgement. That is hardly surprising; we humans are hard core wrongdoers. We certainly need lots of positive reinforcement; love must be primary. But I cannot believe that when Jesus said that we should not judge lest we be judged, what he actually meant was a moral and ethical "live and let live". My Facebook critic appeared to be advocating that, but I can't think that the right course of action with respect to, say, the civil war in Syria is to stand around, passive and silent, while a government bombs its own people into submission, aided by the armed forces of another country that is intent on restoring its imperial interests in that part of the world.

As for the criticism that I appeared to be more political than religious, well, given the previous paragraph, mea culpa! But I hope that my critic who made this point has been reading these blogs, that they have redressed the balance for her somewhat, but that they have demonstrated the intimate links between the Gospel and social and ecological justice.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 39, Sat, 24 Mar.: Philippians 2.5-11

I call this passage "The Big Vee".  I'm not comparing it with St George Rugby League team's jersey, with its big red V on a white background. Far from it! In the world of biblical studies the study of who Jesus Christ is and was is called "Christology". Christology plays between the two poles of Jesus' humanity and His divinity. If you consider that Jesus was simply a human being, a man who may have said and done wonderful things and made an impact for good on the world, but ultimately was as the rest of us, you are said to have a "low" Christology. If, on the other hand, you are convinced that Jesus was God, who came to earth in the guise of a human, but was actually a heavenly being, then you are said to have a "high" Christology. Most Christologies situate Jesus somewhere between these two poles, though the differences between the poles seem paradoxical and irreconcilable. "The Big Vee" that this famous hymn describes ...
Read more

Day 35, Tue., 20 Mar.: Psalm 71.1-14

I remember being told that one of the main differences between Asian countries that are not majority Christian and western cultures that are is that the former are shame-based and the latter are guilt-based. To dig a bit deeper, "in cultural anthropology," says Mr Wikipedia, (who continues for some time here, while incurring no sense either of shame or of guilt in the author of this post!) "a shame society, also called shame culture or honour-shame culture, is a society in which the primary device for gaining control over children and maintaining social order is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism. A shame society is contrasted with a guilt society, in which control is maintained by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt (and the expectation of punishment now or in the afterlife) for certain condemned behaviors, and with a fear society, in which control is kept by the fear of retribution." Shame is a painful, soci...
Read more

Day 16, Thu., 1 Mar.: John 2.13-22

I've lived my life according to the principles of reasonability and moderation. I can't ever becoming so angry that I've made a public spectacle of myself, as Jesus did in this passage. I do have passions. The environment is one; fairness and consideration of each other is another. "What you see depends upon where you stand" is a self-evident, guiding truth for me. Care of children is a third. There is little that enrages me more than the abuse of the powerless and helpless by the powerful, and that takes a poignantly obvious shape in the abuse of children. But although I become angry I've never behaved in such a way that I've been at risk of harm, gaol or even death. I have a friend who, a few years ago, found herself chained to a gate in the Hunter Valley in her effort to prevent trains taking their kilometre long loads of coal to Port Newcastle and out into the world for burning and the release of carbon over against the provision of energy and the r...
Read more