Paul Poulton comments

Paul Poulton

In my last article for Cross Rhythms I spoke about justice in the wake of the street riots in England. I want to say a little more about justice.

God made the universe. One of the things we know about God is that he is just and thinks fairness is important; so those who cheat, steal, lie or think they don't have to live an honest life are going against the grain of life. They are working against the primeval order of the universe. The universe is heading in a righteous direction and those who engage in wickedness are like men standing in the current of a strong river trying to stop the flow with only their hands.

We know that God is honest so it follows that the universe he has made will run along lines that are straight and true and this is what we do in fact find.

When the apostle Paul was confronted by Jesus because he was unjustly rounding up Christians and putting them in prison Jesus said something very interesting to Paul, (whose name was actually Saul at that point), he said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads." (Goads were used to prod cattle and livestock forward, and the cattle would sometimes kick back at them, only causing themselves more injury.) Saul was blinded by his own zeal and became a man who was unjust, cruel and heartless. That kind of person is not going to gel well with the environment that God has designed for him to live in. God has made humans and the universe itself to respond to goodness not badness.

Some parts of the Bible talk about people being under a curse if they do certain bad things; for instance we read, "Cursed is the man who moves his neighbour's boundary stone". It's not that God is sitting on high pronouncing curses on the man who nudges his fence over a few inches to get a bit more space in his own back yard; it's simply the fact that life works when we are honest and it doesn't work when we are dishonest. When we cheat, we find that we don't fit snugly into the cosmos anymore.

I have a friend who took $50,000 that didn't belong to her. The person she stole it from wrote it off (he had a lot of cash), but my friend didn't know this and found she couldn't enjoy the cash she had taken. At night she couldn't sleep properly; she felt hounded. She awoke one night with the house shaking and she felt sure the police, or worse, the man she had taken the money from had found her. She was relieved to discover it was a Californian earthquake. Probably the only person in LA to be relieved she was in an earthquake.

We don't all go round stealing vast quantities of money, do we? Nevertheless what works on a big level scales down so that it works on a smaller level, too. If we are involved in iniquity it will be a weight upon our shoulders, stopping us, in some way, moving freely about.

That is God's aim; he wants us to be free and not hemmed in by wrong things in our lives. God is good at setting us free from those things that bind us, but it's good and important for us to come to him before he comes to us.

John the Baptist cried out that every valley shall be filled in and every mountain and hill made low. In other words, God is levelling things out. Have you been the subject of injustice in some way? It will all even out in the end. That is God's promise. You can't read the Bible without the feeling creeping upon you that God is intensely interested in justice and will pursue it to the end.

People who have stood up for justice shine like beacons throughout history. Those who do choose to stand up will not always find it easy going, but God helps those who are on the side of justice because that's the direction the universe is flowing in.

Martin Luther King stood up for justice. In 1957 he received a death threat; feeling the stress he went into his kitchen poured a coffee and opened himself up to God. He said, "Almost out of nowhere I heard a voice, 'Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And I will be with you, even until the end of the world.'" Afterward, he said, "I was ready to face anything."