Here is my servant whom I have chosen,
the one I love, in whom I take great delight.
I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
He will not quarrel or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.
He will not break a bruised reed or extinguish a smoldering wick,
until he brings justice to victory. (Matthew 12:18-21 NET)
In Chapter 12, Matthew quotes from Isaiah 42. The elder prophet throws out some hyperbole about Cyrus as God’s chosen instrument to set the Exiles free to return. Instead of fully crushing the Judeans living in the suburbs around Babylon, Cyrus would rescue them. Not right away, of course; it would take time to consolidate his hold over the imperial machinery. Once a measure of peace was secured and the changes in policy were implemented, there would be time to restore some measure of justice to the oppressed. Matthew was hardly the first to see this as a Messianic promise, but places it in the proper context.
Jesus could have handled the Pharisees, but it wasn’t time yet. He had already refused to play Satan’s game and become a political Messiah. His justice would be dying on the Cross, but not yet.
Divine justice is not a matter of asserting control. It’s not a matter of grand political charisma winning hearts and minds. His justice does not finish off the weak because they fail to respond immediately. It gives people time to recognize how it all works. God waits on us to break ourselves down at His feet voluntarily. Those who want to go to His Promised Land will have plenty of time to reorient and begin harvesting the power of full surrender. It has to be voluntary or it will not work. If you can’t find something inside you responding with a full depth of desire, then don’t pretend you are a part of it. It either owns you entirely or you aren’t involved. God gives you time to find your own fire for Him, but there will be an end point when He hesitates no longer.
Both as a contractor for the VA and privately, I’ve gone to people’s houses and helped them learn how to use their computers more effectively. There is very little of imposing on those users an extensive framework of computer knowledge and expertise. All of that is more like a library from which I choose individual lessons that fit the very real needs of the users. I’m not there to correct all their human mistakes and impose my sense of order on their lives.
One user’s main problem was his constant pursuit of porn. Visiting such sites always results in malware and viruses hitting a computer. The guy had no idea about the security risks; he just wanted the pictures. But he was too embarrassed to talk about his hobby, so I didn’t address it. I simply showed him how to use security software and malware cleaners. He was also a big fan of classical opera, so I showed him how to use YouTube to find his favorite recording artists.
There was no leverage for correcting his moral flaws. By helping him to secure his computer against the worst of his bad habits, I was helping to protect the rest of the Internet users from crooks who might use this man’s fast system and fast Internet connection to commit other crimes. I kept his computer from becoming a bot for other worse things. The least I could do was protect the rest of us from yet one more source of infection and criminal activity.
Many of us admire what Snowden did in exposing a lot of bad government behavior. In his place, I assure you I would have done everything possible to avoid even knowing about such things. It has nothing to do with whether he’s a hero and I’m a coward; I’m not judging him, either. God works in uncovering evil, but He also works by letting things run their course. I don’t even pretend to know whether Snowden understands any part of spiritual truth, and I don’t have any idea whether he considers his actions a just response to some divine calling. I know what God has shown me and called me to do, and my mission is what God says it is.
Because of how God has shown His hand to me, I am conscientiously unable to get too involved in moral judgments of anyone who doesn’t actively seek my counsel. Sometimes those who do ask aren’t going to get much of an answer because they aren’t ready to hear it. Most of the time that means they haven’t read enough of my stuff to have a clue where I’m coming from, so they would immediately get lost and receive no useful answer. It’s not a question of my being so far advanced beyond them, but a lack of shared background experience. On matters of faith and religion, I’m largely alien to most folks who speak English. There is a time and place for shocking people into awareness, but I seldom feel the impulse to do that. Virtually all of my best work in counseling and teaching faith comes by quietly and persistently working in the background until something calls out to them and they begin seeking. The burden on me is to be aware of all the different ways God can work and try to sense what that person needs at that moment.
It’s the same with how I teach computer use. I can’t give you answers I don’t have and won’t give you anything it seems you can’t use. I’ll always get something wrong in the process, but God is able to use me in ways I hardly comprehend. So I do the best I know in the moment and trust divine justice to carry it through. There are plenty of points in my past where I still have no idea why things didn’t come out differently than they did, why God didn’t do this or that. I’m not permitted to see all that much into the Spirit Realm, and only some small portion of the invisible moral fabric here. Even now I wonder why God hasn’t already done some of the things He revealed to me that are on His agenda.
God hesitates because He’s not ready to cut things off; His justice is not yet full revealed to His satisfaction.
