{"id":56086,"date":"2021-10-28T14:57:36","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T18:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=56086"},"modified":"2021-10-28T14:57:36","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T18:57:36","slug":"kids-these-days-with-their-unholy-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2021\/10\/28\/kids-these-days-with-their-unholy-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Kids these days with their unholy justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

One of our neighbors at Patheos Evangelical channel has another one of those posts about another one of those articles about another one of those surveys<\/a> about younger people leaving [white] churches.\u00a0Kids these days, he frets, are obsessed with \u201cpersonal freedom for licentious behaviors and ideals.\u201d That\u2019s a weird way to spell justice.<\/p>\n

The oddest thing about this post is that our friend basically agrees with the complaints of these young people he condemns as \u201cworldly.\u201d They say the church has a notion of divine and personal \u201choliness\u201d that is incompatible with justice and goodness, and he says, Yep,<\/em> you\u2019ve got to choose between the two.<\/p>\n

The muddled banalities of posts like this help to clarify the disagreement here. Our friend seems sure that every concern about justice \u2014 or, redundantly, \u201csocial justice\u201d \u2014 is \u201cworldly,\u201d some secular ideology of secular origin poisoning the thinking of our youth. That\u2019s a familiar refrain in that it\u2019s exactly<\/em> the accusation that was hurled at, for example, William Lloyd Garrison and Benjamin Lay, but it would still be baffling to any of the biblical writers who spoke of a contrast between \u201cthe world\u201d and the reign of God.<\/p>\n

The lecture here about holiness vs. \u201cworldly\u201d justice can\u2019t be directed at the apostate youth of today without also being applied to Isaiah and Amos and Philip the Evangelist and Paul, all of whom articulated their angry contempt for any idea of \u201choliness\u201d that tolerated injustice. The very same rejection of unjust \u201choliness\u201d our friend condemns as \u201cmodern moral interpretation\u201d can be found in the Bronze Age sermons of the prophets and in the first-century Gospels, Acts, and epistles, in which this supposedly \u201cmodern morality\u201d is attributed, at various points, to every member of the Trinity.<\/p>\n

Consider this statement from our friend\u2019s post: \u201cThe moment we determine that scripture is unreliable on any moral issue, we will abandon its credibility on all of them.\u201d That\u2019s almost a perfect summary of the losing side in the shouting match between Peter and Paul. White American Gentile Christians making that argument are literally sawing off the grafted branch on which they\u2019re sitting. And Paul gets so angry at their nonsense that he invites them to saw something else<\/em> off as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, here is water!\u201d the Black queer Gentile says to Philip the Evangelist, \u201cWhat is to prevent me from being baptized?\u201d And modern, worldly Philip determines that scripture is unreliable on this moral issue. He determines that Deuteronomy 23 and its prohibition against eunuchs entering the assembly of the Lord are unreliable and irrelevant. He elevates his worldly standard of justice and love and unholy goodness and just baptizes the guy without a moment\u2019s hesitation.<\/p>\n

Philip and the eunuch had been reading together from the words of Isaiah \u2014 a particularly pernicious book for anyone like our friend who is offended by this modern morality of justice. So let\u2019s turn to Isaiah here, to the very first chapter. Here it is in Eugene Peterson\u2019s colloquial translation The Message. This is, Isaiah insists, the voice of God:<\/p>\n

Listen to my Message,
\nyou Sodom-schooled leaders.
\nReceive God\u2019s revelation,
\nyou Gomorrah-schooled people.
\nWhy this frenzy of sacrifices?
\nGod\u2019s\u00a0asking.
\nDon\u2019t you think I\u2019ve had my fill of burnt sacrifices,
\nrams and plump grain-fed calves?
\nDon\u2019t you think I\u2019ve had my fill
\nof blood from bulls, lambs, and goats?
\nWhen you come before me,
\nwhoever gave you the idea of acting like this,
\nRunning here and there, doing this and that\u2014
\nall this sheer\u00a0commotion\u00a0in the place provided for worship?
\nQuit your worship charades.
\nI can\u2019t stand your trivial religious games:
\nMonthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings\u2014
\nmeetings, meetings, meetings\u2014I can\u2019t stand one more!
\nMeetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!
\nYou\u2019ve worn me out!
\nI\u2019m sick of your religion, religion, religion,
\nwhile you go right on sinning.
\nWhen you put on your next prayer-performance,
\nI\u2019ll be looking the other way.
\nNo matter how long or loud or often you pray,
\nI\u2019ll not be listening.
\nAnd do you know why? Because you\u2019ve been tearing
\npeople to pieces, and your hands are bloody.
\nGo home and wash up.
\nClean up your act.
\nSweep your lives clean of your evildoings
\nso I don\u2019t have to look at them any longer.
\nSay no to wrong.
\nLearn to do good.
\nWork for justice.
\nHelp the down-and-out.
\nStand up for the homeless.
\nGo to bat for the defenseless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That passage, Isaiah 1:10-17<\/a>, is everything that needs to be said to any church or denomination worrying about the young people leaving \u201cin droves,\u201d or about \u201cthe rise of the nones,\u201d or about \u201cexvangelicals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why are those young people leaving? Read Isaiah 1:10-17. What should we do about it? Read Isaiah 1:10-17.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not suggesting that the admonition there from Isaiah\/God \u2014 \u201cCease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow\u201d \u2014 will be an effective, practical strategy for attracting or retaining younger members. I\u2019m just saying that heeding this call might make your church or denomination worthy of their respect in a way that it\u2019s not worthy now.<\/p>\n

And for people like our friend at the evangelical channel \u2014 people convinced that there is some standard of divine \u201choliness\u201d that opposes justice, or some unjust standard that must be defended as<\/em> \u201choliness\u201d \u2014 I want to narrow in on one specific verse. \u201cWho asked this from your hand?\u201d God says in Isaiah 1:12.<\/p>\n

Our various English translations offer several versions of this rhetorical question. \u201cWho has asked this of you?\u201d \u201cWho has required this of you?\u201d \u201cWho has required these things?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"That\u2019s a rhetorical question, and God\u2019s on way too much of a roll here to pause to wait for an answer.<\/p>\n

But the question does have an answer \u2014 an obvious, straightforward, chapter-and-verse answer that comes directly from the Bible itself. You did,<\/em> God. You<\/em> asked this of us. You<\/em> required this of us, required and commanded all<\/em> of these things You\u2019re contemptuously dismissing here as nothing more than exasperating nonsense.<\/p>\n

You<\/em> taught us to do this and commanded<\/em> us to do this. And now, God, you\u2019ve got the nerve to turn around and dismiss it all as nothing but the babble of clanging gongs and tinkling cymbals? That\u2019s worldly<\/em>, God. It\u2019s unbiblical. You\u2019re flip-flopping the value system and thereby undermining every word and doctrine of the Bible. And once You do that, determining that scripture is unreliable on any moral issue, You abandon its credibility on all of them.<\/p>\n

I personally wouldn\u2019t recommend answering that question in that way, but if everything our friend says in his post is true \u2014 all that stuff about God\u2019s holiness, and a \u201cbiblical worldview,\u201d and all of the evils of a \u201cmodern morality\u201d that rejects injustice \u2014 then we have to answer it this way. We have to lecture God in the same terms we lecture these worldly, modern, apostate youth.<\/p>\n

And that means telling God that God\u2019s problem is \u201cthat there is no fear of God\u201d before God\u2019s eyes. Yikes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Somebody<\/em> here has an insufficient fear of God, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s Isaiah, or Amos, or Paul, or Philip. And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the exvangelicals or the nones or the kids these days, either.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the whole Isaiah 1:10-17 rant again. Because we could say this all day every day and still need to say it again tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[81,165,77],"class_list":["post-56086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-acts-10","tag-isaiah","tag-justice"],"yoast_head":"\nKids these days with their unholy justice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's the whole Isaiah 1:10-17 rant again. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Kids these days with their unholy justice","description":"It's the whole Isaiah 1:10-17 rant again. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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