Faith can help you push through divisions
The great prophet Amos in the Hebrew Scriptures speaks a word of wisdom to America in the wake of a bitter and divisive election cycle. In Amos 5:18-24, the prophet speaks for God with strong words of condemnation and judgment. “I hate,” God says “I, despise your festivals and take no delight in your solemn assemblies.” The prophetic outrage continues to state that God has no use for the good-faith sacrifices, worship, and dedications Israel was making in order to demonstrate their fidelity in God.
To say that God “hates,” is pretty harsh language, but one’s distain for such strong judgment from on high does not simply remove the indictment from the pages of God’s word. For the Christian, it is vital that we understand the critical message behind this strong cautionary prophesy from God. In the aftermath of the most recent election and the contentious ground upon which the nation treads with such trepidation as we move forward, heeding the prophetic wisdom of Amos is essential.
On the surface, Amos criticizes the worship practices of Israel. Direct application can extend to how Christians choose to worship God in modern America. The worship life of the people had become narcissistic, self-serving, and focused on things other than God. In calling out the fact that worship had ceased to focus on God, the prophet warns that God will reject the worship because it is misguided. A similar theme is echoed in Revelation 2:14-22 when Jesus Christ warns the church at Laodicea that, because of their misguided ways and idolatrous focus on power, wealth, and prosperity over God, Christ would simply vomit them out.
Regardless of how one personally feels about the outcome of Tuesday’s election, one reality is very clear. America is in a very dangerous place—perhaps the most dangerous precipice of failure we have seen since the Civil War. We are bitterly, and almost evenly, divided between allegiances to two sectarian political parties that have nothing to do with Jesus Christ. In spite of the fact that neither party is a truly Christian expression of biblical faith, adherents to each party has triumphantly touted the blessing of Christ over their party in total denunciation of the other for being hostile to the Christian faith. As with distorted worship, when people confuse their allegiance to partisan politics with fidelity to God, they engage in a false religion that Amos definitively says God hates!
The measure of faith is not pushing through a political agenda or making absolutist demands in the name of Jesus Christ. It is, as Amos says in verse 24, to “let justice flow down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
When Amos speaks of justice, it has nothing to do with what many Americans presume justice to mean. God’s justice is not about individuals getting revenge, having courts rule in their favor, or criminals doing hard time. Rather, it is about aligning the world in concert with God’s will for humanity—an alignment that requires equality, an end to discrimination, care for the Creation, economic fairness, peace, and unity. These are principles that matter to God—not one or the other party being in control. When Amos speaks of righteousness, he simply means living rightly. Standing in opposition to systems and structures that create injustice, upholding the human dignity of the least of these, caring for the orphan and the widow, welcoming the stranger and alien, and living out of an ethic of God’s love, not one of human hate and power.
If America is to survive this election, the division and blind loyalty to partisan politics must stop. Amos has warned us. What will be our choice?