Some True Things, A Series : Part One.

God hates oppressive systems that take advantage of the vulnerable. Has hated, does hate, will hate. Oppression or violence against the powerless makes the Creator of all things furious. He also hates it when people worship money or things made with hands (and then use their worship of these things as a reason to oppress others.) 

“The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow
to bring down the poor and needy, 
to slay those whose ways are upright. 
But their swords will pierce their own hearts,
and their bows will be broken.” Psalm 37: 14 and 15

“The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery;
they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, deny them justice.” Ezekiel 22:29

“Whoever mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker;
whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished.” Proverbs 17:5

God became incarnate as a dark-skinned poor man in a specific time and a particular system. He arrived in this system as an infant in one of the bottom layers under several layers of hierarchy, including the colonial forces of Rome. 

Jesus, God With Us, lived without societal power and continually moved toward those who were even farther in the margins that he was—women, mentally ill or disabled people, criminals, other racial groups. He also reached out to the hated oppressors themselves.

Jesus showed immense, copious amounts of tender-hearted love to everyone he met, but got fiery and angry when people in authority were putting heavy burdens on those who already carried heavy loads.

A few examples of heavy burdens carried by Black and Indigenous people in modern racist times:

-Receiving unequal pay or acknowledgment for doing the same amount of work as a white person.

-Defending your humanity or your right not to be shot without trial when another police brutality news story comes out, and people want to argue why brutality was justified. 

-Struggling with trauma-inducing poverty in a world that blatantly insists the worthy are wealthy, and needing to prove that you are deserving of help, even while barely being able to take a breath because of the compiling tragedy of need.

-Not having space to be safe, to expand and be free without worry, to live out our days in the full array of human possibility. This is what all people long for. This is what it means to be human.

(Theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes, “The divine Spirit is experienced as the Lord who sets free, and as the free space in which “there is no more cramping.” That is why it can also be said that “Though encompasseth me from every side” (Psalm 139:5); and people who have this experience know that they are kept safe and set free in the broad place of the Spirit in which they can breathe deeply and unfurl their potentialities.”)

God’s ultimate desire for us is that we become dwelling places for the magnificence of the great mystery, Christ within us, the hope of glory. Our current moment bears the marks of God’s longing for justice and equality for humanity. Let us never align ourselves with racism, mockery of the poor, or mistreatment of the foreigner. That is not who we are meant to be. 

Let’s fling ourselves into the push for justice because we are moved by the things that move God.