The other day I was driving along and I felt the Lord show me something. Right now we are witnessing the flipping of justice. What is good is bad, what is bad is good, and law doesn’t really matter as much if it violates what is trendy culturally.
(If you’re reading this and you are from the US, you know what I mean, If you are reading this and you are outside of the US, know that the ripple will reach you as well. Not to the same intensity, but I believe it will come wherever you are too. It’s the times, not the nation, that we are in.)
What this means is that at any moment, we can accidentally become a global news story. It doesn’t take much other than a bazaar incident, people with their camera phones, and a news media eager for sensationalism.
Not only that but even in general, something weird could happen and we come to get sued. One can get sued for anything.
Regardless, I believe as Christians and ones who hold to Biblical values, we will be brought more and more to the courtrooms of our countries. And when we do, even if there are laws on the books that appear like they could protect us, I believe we will be sentenced, fined, jailed or whatever.
But how will we handle injustice?
The Navy Seals are some of the toughest trained people in the world in the military. They undergo rigorous physical training as well as mental training. One thing I personally laugh at is that they have to listen to hours and hours of a baby crying on tape, testing their nerves. Sometimes I think a week without sleep doing countless physical obstacles in freezing cold water may be easier.
But another non-traditional test they have is how will they handle injustice? At some point in their training, from what I’ve read from the stories, they are falsely accused of something and punished severely for it. Will they complain, moan, whine, fight it? Or will they take the punishment and move on? It’s harder than one things to suffer for injustice.
There’s certainly a time to fight injustice. There are many injustices in the world today that should be rigorusly and ceaselessly fought. Sex trafficking should be a moral outrage of the world but somehow it’s too easily overlooked for other more “interesting” issues.
But sometimes, injustice will happen to the people of God. Should it be fought? Most of the time, yes. The question is what is our personal and emotional state because of the injustice? Will we self-destruct in anger? Will we reject God?
I believe a time is coming when we as Christians will suffer more and more and more injustices. We will go to courtrooms with foolish and false accusations and be sentenced. Yes, we should fight for justice. But again, how will we handle these things internally?
I sensed that the Lord was showing me that with these things to come, we will need to at a greater level, and at a deeply personal level, “entrust ourselves to him who judges justly.” We may receive injustice on this earth, but all will receive a reckoning day before God.
We will need to remember this. Or internally we may implode.
But this is the way of Jesus. He too experienced grotesque injustice. Everyday he taught in the temple courts and publicly, and when they tried to accuse him, they had to dig deep to find anything “wrong.”
That is the nature of injustice. Those who are serving up false accusations must feel a way to “justify” their own actions to live with their conscious. So they have to dig deep and twist hard until they find something that will satisfy their minds.
In the end, with the perfect man of Jesus, they found it. Blasphemy. Had had committed blasphemy according to them and so was worthy of death. So they dragged him to Pilate.
Pilate couldn’t find anything wrong he had done (Lk 23:4). Pilate had to justify it that he was preventing a rebellion.
At the end of the day, Jesus was sentenced and killed. But when this happened, he didn’t internally implode in self-righteous anger. It says this of him:
“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” 1 Pet 2:23
In the day of our injustice, let’s remember this.
