(This is a serialization of the draft for my book, Expectations, Hopes and Dreams.)
Justice
Western Civilization is, so far, the pinnacle achievement of fallen human nature. It has become a moral black hole imploding upon its own materialism. This world cannot get better, only worse.
A critical element in what Jesus taught was that finding the proper exit from this world requires learning how God meant for us to live while here. Sure, you can just take your own life, but His teaching excluded that option. It was excluded by the broader general requirement of embracing His Father’s moral frame of reference.
The various Law Covenants in the Bible are not the definition of divine morality, but expressions of it. That is the Hebrew mystical understanding. Those who understood God best said things like, “Do you not realize that Jehovah wants your personal loyalty to Him, not some legalistic pursuit of ritual law?” The Prophet Samuel said as much to King Saul (1 Samuel 15:22), and it was inherent in all of the Hebrew Scripture. No surprise, then, that it characterizes the teaching of Christ. The purpose of the whole code of law was to change us individually, not the world in which we live. The Law presumed a tribal society as a fundamental requirement for dealing most effectively with those who don’t change.
The New Testament goes on in many places bluntly saying Christ saves us out of this world for a life in the Spirit Realm. We are bluntly warned against attachment to this world. A primary expression of that reorientation is operating according to something in this world that remains invisible to those who lack such an orientation. We join an invisible tribe. The structure of the tribe is the moral fabric that controls how God designed things to run. Human reason cannot possibly arrive at that understanding without first absorbing the message inherent in revelation. Once properly trained, the mind can then factor in the overwhelming power of divine moral character in shaping both expectations and results.
The world is awash in all sorts of substitutes. Foremost in the mythology of Western people is a wide variation of moral ideas arising from the Anglo-Saxons specifically, but from the various other German tribes generally as a whole. Such defines the whole of Western social morals, however varied they may seem. They are all varied expressions of the same underlying worldview. It’s a worldview radically different from that of Christ. Somewhere along the way, organized Christianity was hijacked by that pagan morality so that almost everyone today claiming to follow Christ is utterly certain the Lord’s morals were little different from the Anglo-Saxon. They persist in reading those morals back into the Bible, and can turn combative when challenged on it.
Sanity requires we bail out of that. It does require a bit of study to learn the differences (one of my longest books barely introduces it), but the morals of Christ are within reach. One of the most fundamental differences, as already noted, is rejecting the mythology of objectivity. We can share a common academic understanding of a genuine Hebrew moral worldview, but that worldview presumes a personal commitment that inevitably results in some human variation. In case you weren’t paying attention, this is precisely contrary to the viewpoint of Judean government and social leadership in Jesus’ day. They had codified and objectified God to the point it was no longer Him. They had drifted into an idolatry of some imaginary deity that responded to their logical demands. In cultural and intellectual terms, they weren’t even Hebrew any more. Judaism simply continues along that same path.
One of the primary demands on us today is that we properly evaluate the narrative of modern Israel and Judaism and Jews. Whatever those words mean today, it’s not at all a proper expression of what’s in the Bible. It’s bad enough those terms are used as weapons to compel all sorts of false EH&D, but none of the current meanings are a valid reflection of what Jesus or the Hebrew prophets before Him taught. If we return to the ancient Hebrew understanding of revelation as God gave it, we are forced to reject the claims of modern Jews on just about everything to do with any meaning of the label “Jew.” We cannot allow anyone to use that word, or related terms, to make claims on our EH&D.
Rather, all that noise is just a collection of narratives, an expression of the individual EH&D of each person making the noise. It’s neither lie nor truth, just noise, just people. Nothing in this world can demand your ultimate loyalty, and you need not invest your EH&D in any agenda claimed by anyone’s narrative. Sanity demands you make every effort to disentangle yourself from their narrative claims and put some distance between yourself and the people involved. God’s moral character demands you deflate their significance in your narrative.
There is no objectively just answer to Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. Recognizing that such slaughter is unjust does not justify the Palestinian cause. Do not accept the false dichotomy common to Western reasoning. There are multiple moral questions on multiple levels; context is everything. The same can be said of every act of warfare transpiring in every part of the world today. You as an individual can offer a narrative of what you might do if given any measure of leverage over things, but you dare not pretend your answer is God’s answer for everyone else. Rather, you desire to make your answer as close to God’s moral character as is possible for you at any given point in time. Your answer cannot possibly bind any other human who does not voluntarily embrace your narrative, who does not voluntarily enter your domain.
Divine justice is not in the particulars, but in the broader orientation that says nothing in this world is worth your ultimate allegiance, not even your own continued existence.
