The prophet Amos is often referred to as the great
social justice prophet of the Old Testament. In the modern world, we are
inclined to split off social justice from its Jewish-Christian source. We talk
about “principles for a just society.” We refer to “gospel” or “kingdom” values,
as though these can be lived out in isolation from the God who makes them
possible. We have, in many ways, lost the essential link between acting justly and being just, or if you will, holy, as though just actions were
something external to us or our faith.
This was not so to the people of the Old Testament.
For them, loving God and loving neighbour were two sides of the same coin,
forming the unity we know as the Great
Commandment. In Amos, how frequently God promises justice to those whom
Israel mistreats, how often does he warn Israel to act justly? But it is not quite
so simple, for the Old Testament emphasises the holiness of God, who calls his people to be like him. In the New Testament Jesus expresses it like this: “Be
perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Amos is unsparing in his attack on Israel for its
injustice to the poor and needy: “They have sold the upright for silver, and
the poor for a pair of sandals; they have crushed the heads of the weak into
the dust, and thrust the rights of the oppressed to one side!” A powerful,
angry message; yet Amos’s primary interest is not social, but religious; the core of his message is not only “act
justly” but especially “be just [or holy].”
In Amos’s time, Israel had been divided into two
kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom had been tainted by a long period of pagan infiltration,
and its worship had become corrupted. It is this that Amos attacks. Worshipping
ISRAEL’S God, the one true God, the God of truth and justice, makes one just and truthful. Worshipping
the other false gods, makes one become unjust and false. In the words of the
Psalm, makers and worshippers of false gods “…will come to be like them, and so
will all who trust in them.” For Amos, the true need is not for just-ice, so much as just-ness [or holiness]. Only just-ness leads
to true just-ice, and justness can only come from true worship of God.
We become like the gods we worship. Like the
people in Amos’s day, we are faced with this big question: do we worship the
God who said “Let us make man in our own image,” or the one of whom man says,
“Let us make god in our own image.”?
We are blessed in receiving the whole truth about God
through the Lord Jesus Christ in his Church. This truth is before us whenever
we need or wish to discover it. Through the Church we can remain in a relationship with God. In the terms of modern
technology, our relationship with God is not a dial-up connection, but a permanent
open line. We can be in no doubt as
to whom the true God is, what we are to believe of him, and how we are consequently
to live.
But every time we put brackets around some aspect of
God we find difficult, or do not like, and change his teaching to suit
ourselves, we are recreating God in our
image. And the more we recreate God in our own – sinful – image, the
further we move from his truth and his justice. We become ultimately like the
god we have created out of our own desires, false and unjust. Even justice,
when it becomes more important than Truth, ultimately ends by becoming unjust.
We can only serve God in justice by serving him in truth; by following him
and his teachings with all our hearts. We must allow God to recreate us in his
image. Only when we have been made just, or holy, by God, will we be able to
act with true justice. Let us ask him
today to bring us to holiness, to
transform us, that we might be “perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect,” that
we might not merely act justly, but become people of true justice.
Fr Phillip