"This is what the Lord, the Lord God All-Powerful, says: ‘People will be crying in all the streets; they will be saying, "Oh, no!" in the public places. They will call the farmers to come and weep and will pay people to cry out loud for them. People will be crying in all the vineyards, because I will pass among you to punish you,’ says the Lord." (NCV).
I recently read an op-ed about the rioting that’s been occurring in a small Missouri town as a result of the police officer shooting of a young man. While the details are so confused in the media (and I’m not, in this study, dealing with the original event), this op-ed is what drew my attention. Apparently, in sociology, history, and political science classes (check out the Internet), looting as a political statement (looting as being an ethical behavior) is being taught. Here’s a snippet of what this editorialist said:
"On a less abstract level there is a practical and tactical benefit to looting. Whenever people worry about looting, there is an implicit sense that the looter must necessarily be acting selfishly, "opportunistically," and in excess. But why is it bad to grab an opportunity to improve well-being, to make life better, easier, or more comfortable? Or, as Hannah Black put it on Twitter: "Cops exist so people can’t loot ie have nice things for free so idk why it’s so confusing that people loot when they protest against cops" [sic]. Only if you believe that having nice things for free is amoral, if you believe, in short, that the current (white-supremacist, settler-colonialist) regime of property is just, can you believe that looting is amoral in itself." (from http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/in-defense-of-looting/)
"Why is it bad to grab an opportunity to improve well-being (through looting)?"
While the author presents some interesting points about the issues of differences in culture, I think there is a more important underlying issue that we, as a society, are failing to address. We are failing to address it because we want to believe that God is non-existent, or if He exists, He truly doesn’t care to be involved in our affairs. We don’t want a God Who is a moral being, who insists on ruling His creation with moral laws, and who, if thwarted, will bring about punishment.
We don’t want to believe that there are behaviors that are immoral because we don’t want to be punished for our actions.
Currently, there is, sweeping the country, a philosophy in our public schools that bad behavior shouldn’t be punished. This philosophy is based on the premise that everyone is born good and really wants to do good if only they were given what they needed. (Perhaps even you believe that?) In schools, we are told to evaluate student behavior based on that student’s "inherent" need and then asked to change the environment in such a way that the need is met. The assumption is that when the need is met, the behavior will change from "bad" to "good."
I’m sorry, but that’s a crock! Why? Because scripture tells us that the unsaved will act only according to their nature (Romans 8). It’s not much better for the saved. We are told to choose righteousness, but also given admonitions to seek forgiveness when we sin. In other words, we are told that we will do bad (evil) things. We are born into sin and we will want to sin until we come to that place where, in humility and gratitude, we throw ourselves completely on the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting Him to become in us what we cannot become on our own.
The other choice is punishment.
The Lord will not—can not—allow sin to continue unchecked. "The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy" (Psalm 145:8 NKJV). He is slow to anger, but at some point, His anger will be fulfilled.
While the scripture in Amos is unclear about timing, I have to wonder if the Lord is predicting that the people will cry out even before the punishment begins. Obviously the punishment hasn’t fallen full bore because they paid people to cry out for them. (Perhaps like we pay people in the media to express our opinions about things?) The people here weren’t crying so much in pain over the punishment as in protest of it and they wanted to hear the voices of others agree with them.
They wanted to believe that punishment wasn’t coming.
Is that what we believe? I think so. I often think we believe we are so privileged that God will simply tolerate our faults and allow us to continue in our sin because it makes us feel so good. The fact is, the Lord is aware that if we continue and continue and continue to sin, we will reach a point where we will choose not to stop. Our sins will be so familiar and comfortable, we would rather face a future punishment than give up our sin. The original King James Bible calls this a "reprobate mind" (Romans 1:28). The dictionary defines "reprobate" as "to condemn strongly as unworthy, unacceptable, or evil; to foreordain as damnation; to refuse to accept." A reprobate mind is a mind that has so rejected God that the possibilities of this person turning to accept salvation are zero.
There is a point where we can so turn away from God that we will never want to turn back to Him again.
We want to believe that punishment isn’t coming.
Rather than pay people to agree with us—rather than believe, as the editorialist appears to believe, that immoral acts can somehow be moral—perhaps it’s time we understand that we aren’t in control. That the Almighty God of the universe is the only One who can establish the rules of life and that His morality will demand punishment if we continue to disobey Him. Thankfully, rather than face our punishment, we can throw ourselves on God’s mercy, embracing the salvation given so freely through the death of our Savior, and avoid the punishment we so hate. But we should never believe punishment isn’t coming. Because it is and when it comes, it is always righteous and just.
© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.
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