I have previously written about “The Coming Collapse” and the sowing of injustice that operates like a parasite eating its host. It reaps the death it sows.
The words from Psalm 10 express this reality: “In arrogance, the wicked persecute the poor—let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.” They are caught in what they have devised! They reap what they sow and do not see it coming. But how much will evil destroy before there is nothing left to destroy? In the face of evil, love must act, doing the work of justice and mercy.
It does not matter how we think about what we are sowing, the seeds we sow will determine what is produced. We can put a religious facade over our actions and deceive ourselves about our oppressive ways, but the outcome will reveal what we have sown. We reap what we sow, and we know the activity of both love and evil by their fruits. The one will produce justice, mercy, and life, the other oppression and death.
The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures often proclaimed a “word of the Lord” directed to what is being sown—to the evil sown—and what is about to be reaped. The reaping is seen as God’s judgment, but that judgment is also inherent to human actions. If we act against our true selves, as beings created in the image of God, we experience God’s judgment as the judgment of our false selves, our phantom selves that are being wasted away by evil.
It is possible to think of human history in this way—and our present time. Frederick Douglass recognized the destruction that slavery brought not only to those enslaved but to slave owners. Abraham Lincoln viewed the Civil War, which brought a greater loss of life than all other American wars combined, as the judgment of God inherent to the evil of slavery.
In our own time, we see democracy—which our nation has made so much of, whatever its form—being eaten away from within. A growing number of people would prefer autocracy if it were their autocracy, their hold over government, in order to maintain or achieve their positions over others. Many are afraid of equality in a multi-cultural nation. They are afraid of the voices they have sought to silence. In their actions, they end up silencing love and justice. They sow oppression and reap destruction, theirs and their nation’s.
With evil sown comes much hurt and breakdown and injustice. What we hear over and over again in the Hebrew prophets, the Psalms, and the New Testament is that God is with the broken: the poor, the needy, the outcasts, the imprisoned, those who are oppressed. God is their comforter, protector, and deliverer. If we want to be where God is, be with those experiencing oppression. Sit with those who hurt (It makes no difference, their class, ethnicity, gender identity, political party or any other way they may identify themselves). Be with those our former president called “losers.”
And also call out those who are oppressing others so that they may be warned of the coming judgment (the reaping) and turn back to their true humanity made in the image of God. Call them back to the love of God so that they may receive mercy and be changed. And then each of us must keep turning to God so that, in the words of the old Shaker hymn, “by turning, turning we come ’round right.”
God calls forth those who will be light in a world of oppression, who will do justice, love mercy, and operate with compassion. Such people may or may not have a set of “religious beliefs” but they will have the experience of real compassion which literally means to “suffer with” and which always comes from the God who is Love—as does all that is expressive of our true humanity, all that is real. Those who act with compassion will be witnesses to a humanity made in the image of God and will be light in the darkness.