Monday, June 29, 2020

No Justice, No Peace: what a wild ass boy and his brother Giggles can teach us.

The place of rage in the face of injustice is not a theme unknown in the Bible.  Divine justice sometimes takes our breath away.  Psalm137:8-9 is perhaps the best example of harsh justice and the frightening nature of Divine retribution. 
O daughter of Babylon doomed to destruction,
Happy is he who repays your for what you have done to us,
He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

It is part of our nature to become angry when we are the victims of injustice.  However, Psalm 137:8-9 must give way to Isaiah 11:6 and Matthew 5:10-12, 43-48 to name a few.  While no one doubts that over the last 400 years black people have suffered injustice, the question is how is that injustice going to be corrected?

One of the cries associated with BLM has been, “No justice, no peace.”  While a pretty catchy cliché it has some fundamental problems.  Because it is so catchy it is easy to remember, chant, and take up as a battle cry.  But this statement is fundamentally flawed and without examination can be a seedbed for great harm.  It is in and of itself a dangerous proposition and if you wanted to excite people to violence and vigilante action a better slogan would be hard to imagine. 

In order to address the application of this statement we need to have a definition of both Justice and Peace.  Until we know what is justice we can’t know if it has been accomplished.  What is meant by peace and how is it achieved? To examine this I need to share two stories.  The first is about a wild ass boy and his half brother Giggles, the second is about a Roman soldier and a Jewish man outside of Jerusalem. 

Justice: the wild ass boy and his half-brother Giggles.

Let there be no doubt these brother’s hated each other and they did so with good cause.  The older one was ripped off and treated badly by his dad and his stepmom.  The family was so messed up that they could have done a whole week of Jerry Springer shows.  It all started when his dad and his mom, who was a domestic help, had a roll in the sheets.  His step mom knew about it and as we might expect developed some real hatred for the younger woman who had her husband’s son.  This wild ass boy grew up in a home that was some where between crazy and miserable.  His bio mom and stepmom were always at it, so much so, his mom decided to run away.  If that wasn’t bad enough his stepmom got pregnant and the new baby, “Giggles” was the favorite of the old man.  By now you may recognize the boys and will recall their actually names of Ishmael and Isaac. Hated and being hated the older boy took it out on his little brother on his special day by sexually molesting him.  (The word “mocking” in Genesis 21:9 is exactly the same word “caressing” in Genesis 26:8.  Whatever Isaac did to Rebecca that convinced Abimelech that they were not brother and sister, but husband and wife is what Sarah caught Ishmael doing to Isaac.)  Sarah wanted to send both of them out in the desert, sort of a slow death sentence. On top of that, Ishmael was disinherited.  Abraham left all he had to Isaac contrary to the custom of the day and the Law of Moses that would come later, in which the eldest son receives a double portion of the inheritance.  Ishmael had received no justice and had a right to feel enraged.  Interestingly, the family dysfunction continues in that the Midianites that bought Joseph and took him to Egypt were descendants of Abraham by his son Midian.

Within this family there is an act of injustice that is responded to by an act that is seen as retribution by one side and by the other as an act of injustice which must be responded to by an act of retribution.  The cycle is endless.  The injustices of Isaac and Ishmael have passed down generation to generation in a cycle of violence.  Both sides saying in effect, “Until we get justice there will be no peace.”  Take a moment and Google “Arab-Israeli violence”, my guess is that you can do this any time and find an event that has transpired in the last 24 hours. 

Which brings us to the question, “What is justice?”  Is it a bad cop being arrested?  Is it retribution for policies from 20, 30, 50 or 150 years ago?  How do we decide if justice means an equal opportunity moving into the future or retribution for past wrongs? Who decides what is enough retribution for past wrongs?  Who is to be punished and who is to be compensated?  Who do we blame: Confederate officers or enlisted men, slave owners, northern ship owners who transported the slaves, Arab and African tribesmen who captured the slaves, the person who first domesticated cotton, sugar cane and rice, or Darwin who gave the scientific justification for racism?  While I am not trying to be trite or disrespectful until we know what is justice we can never know if it has been achieved.

Peace: the Roman soldier and the Jewish man outside of Jerusalem.

We have no record of the name of the Roman, but what he saw had a profound impact on him and the rest of the Roman army.   In the days and the weeks ahead the experience of the army and a great many Jews would be impacted by what he saw or said he saw.  In fact, we can’t even be sure that the event actually happened.  But whether it happened or not the Romans acted as if it did.  The Roman soldier happened upon a Jewish man who was carefully searching through a pile of his own feces.  This Jewish man came out of the besieged city of Jerusalem to the army of Titus.  He was willing to surrender to the Romans rather than stay in the doomed city.  He was searched for weapons and valuables and then sent to the Jewish encampment.  So, why was he digging in his own feces?  Apparently, he was trying to smuggle jewels out of the city in his digestive track. Once found and recovered he could use them to secure a better life.  The fact or rumor of what happened spread through the army.  Perhaps in the belly of refugees coming out of the city there was treasure to be had.  As you might expect the Romans wanted the treasure, but were unwilling to wait for defecation to get it.  Refugees were searched inside and out; they were cut open to see if they had swallowed jewels prior to leaving the city.  The siege of Jerusalem was one of the most brutal, violent, blood thirsty, and ruthless battles in all of history.

So, what does this have to do with the chant, “No justice, No peace”?  The siege and the destruction of Jerusalem happened in the middle of what is called Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome.  What do we mean by peace?  For the Romans peace meant no resistance to power, the iron fist demands its way and if it is not given, monuments are pulled down, buildings and towns burned, and opposition is silenced, people are beaten and killed.  For the Romans peace was not a promise it was a threat.  Consider the violence enacted on Christians praying in St Louis this weekend.  Behold the ultimate expression of “No Justice, No Peace”.  https://youtu.be/yFvXJ8W93Cg
The chant of “No Justice, No Peace” is the near opposite of what the Old Testament calls Shalom and what Christ envisioned in His Kingdom. 

If a person or a group feels that they have not received justice are they allowed to arbitrarily act in ways that are violent till they feel they are satisfied?  Can a black man take it upon himself to deface a monument because it offends him for a wrong he feels he has suffered?  What if a monument to Dr. King offends someone, can they deface it?  Can the descendants of those who were the victims of war crimes at the hands of General Sherman or reconstruction burn federal buildings?  I am part Cherokee.  Does anyone doubt that American Indians have been denied justice?  May I scalp people?  After Alabama lost to Auburn and the statue of Bear Bryant was desecrated by having an Auburn jersey draped over it, Harvey Updyke was offended.  There would be no peace till justice was served, so Harvey poisoned the oak trees at Toomer’s Corner near Auburn’s campus.  It is universally agreed that Updyke is a lunatic, but his logic is the same.  “If I do not get what I perceive as justice, I will not allow peace.” 

There was No Justice, so there can be Peace

On another occasion outside of Jerusalem justice was denied to the absolute degree.  An innocent man was murdered by the powers of the state and the religious community.  He was completely innocent, but the punishment that we deserved fell on Him so that we can enjoy peace with God.  The cry of “No justice, No peace” is not the cry of the Gospel.  It is the cry of the Romans, the Arab-Israeli terrorist, of lunatics like Harvey Updyke, but it is emphatically not the message of the Gospel.  Every Christian needs to be very clear on this point, the threat of violence unless satisfied is not the message of the Church, the Scripture or the Gospel.  It must be condemned and receive no hearing or support within the family of God.  We do have a lot of work to do and the first things we must do is reject the damnable false teaching of “No Justice, No Peace” and replace it with the message of true peace because of the Cross.


Next week:  The Third Rail in Racial Tension

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