This is the fourth entry in our new series, TIKKUN OLAM. In it, we intend to explore what justice looks like in the eyes of God, and how we are called to partner with God in the healing of the world. We began by recognizing that the cry for justice does not begin with practical solutions, but grief that things are not as they should be, the way God desires them to be. When then discussed how the pursuit of justice begins with a deep conviction that God created the world and called it all “good”, understanding that “evil” is a corruption of nature. Last week we parsed out mishpat and tzedakah to understand God’s full view of justice in the biblical narrative.
At the beginning of this series I mentioned how, at some point or another, we may get uncomfortable or offended by what we explore together in the name of justice. I myself really struggle with bringing up difficult subjects when I anticipate they might be offensive to some. However, it is in that discomfort that we learn to face our shadows and step into the light.
On June 21st of this year, the Florida state government converted an unused airstrip in the Everglades into a temporary holding facility that was initially jokingly called “Alligator Alcatraz”. The mandate from the federal government to increase deportations of immigrants by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has necessitated several such temporary structures around the country. While initially built to hold up to 3,000 detainees, it could be expanded quickly to 5,000 if needed. The buildings themselves are the same sorts of tent-like shelters erected for natural disasters, with everything on the premise running off generators.
The quick-moving nature of the project has been controversial to say the least. Reports on the conditions inside the facility have been sadly mixed, depending on party affiliation. What was particularly shocking for me was the way in which our state government explained the project. Jeremy Redfern, spokesperson for the Attorney General's office, said on an interview with Fox News that, "the reality is that there are monsters awaiting deportation within Alligator Alcatraz far worse than the monsters lurking in the surrounding Everglades.”
Reports, however, have painted a very different picture. Of the released lists of 700 detainees, about one third have been found to have criminal convictions. 250 people, however, appear to only have immigration violations, which are a civil offense and not criminal. For example, one detainee is a 36 year-old man who lives right here in Orange County, our home. He was brought to the US by his parents from Mexico at the age of eight, and has protected status under the DREAM Act. He was picked up for driving on a suspended license, and promptly sent to Alligator Alcatraz.
The conditions within the facility, as reported by the men being held their to their families and lawyers, are abysmal. The tents are sweltering in the heat, the lights are on 24/7 with 32 people to a cage. There is persistent water leakage from rain, problems with mosquitoes and cockroaches. The food is insufficient and some even claim they have been denied their access to life-saving medications. Just this week it was reported that our governor has been giving contracts to build and run the facility to his donors, and that there does not seem to be a clear hurricane evacuation plan just as we enter the season. As I type this, about a dozen men have been on a hunger strike for almost two weeks, demanding better conditions.
Egregiously, we have seen the memeification of Alligator Alcatraz and other deportation endeavors that actively stir up partisan thinking and dehumanize those who have been detained. A quick search online brings up options for “funny” t-shirts and other memorabilia in support of Alligator Alcatraz. We have also seen images and videos posted by the official White House social media team that show people being marched in chains onto an airplane with the tagline: “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.”
Now, pause for a moment. As you read this, what are you feeling? What is happening inside your mind and heart? It is a temptation to take new information and run it through our political lenses in order to keep a distance from possibly painful realities. I wanted to begin with this relatively local and contemporary story in order to help us explore the intersection between God’s justice and the world, specifically government. We’ll start here:
God is not limited to only working through Christians to bring justice upon the world. Last week I talked about how a glimpse of “the common good” maybe be the very thing that reveal’s God’s glory to those who don’t know God yet. It is important to recognize that God can work through anyone God chooses to if they align with God’s heart for humanity. We should bless this. We cannot limit God to only the work of the church or Christian para-church organizations. This helps us gain insight into what I would say might be seven of the most misunderstood verses in the Bible:
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. (Romans 13:1-7)
This passage has been abused time and again for political purposes. It was one often used in South Africa during apartheid to justify suppression of Black citizens. Not too many years ago, when I still used to engage in debates online, an older gentleman who I did not know challenged me on a comment I made about an action of the president that I considered insulting to Christians. He brought up this passage from Paul as a way to claim I had no right to criticize the president because God put him in power. When I asked if he applied the same logic to the president’s predecessor, he demurred and said he heard that guy was a liar. I pointed out how, if his interpretation of Romans 13 is accurate, it must apply to all leaders regardless of one’s personal opinion. As we continued our back-and-forth we arrived at “Godwin’s Law” - I asked if he believed God ordained Hitler to lead Germany in the 1930’s, to which he said he supposed it was so. That was the point at which I knew we would not get anywhere.
Context is vital in interpreting scripture, especially the trickier bits that are prone to our contemporary lenses. Paul is writing in 57-58 AD to a young community living in the shadow of Nero’s Rome. Persecution of Christians is on the horizon, as they are not by law considered a state-approved religion and are therefore suspect. Paul’s admonition to the church is to not make matters worse for themselves by being trouble-makers; taking up the sword in rebellion would be using imperial tools against the imperial powers. It is also important to note that they lived in nothing resembling our modern democratic republic; the idea of Christians having a say in governing affairs would have been quite foreign to them. Paul’s larger point here, in addition to advocating for nonviolence, is to show how God does indeed use some government to keep evil in check by maintaining order. However, it is a far cry from a wholesale approval of everything that governments do as part of God’s Plan. When we zoom out we see in the sweep of scripture that God acts against governments who oppress and scatter, whether God’s own people or foreign empires. We see civil disobedience, like the refusal of Daniel’s friends to worship the Babylonian gods. Ironically, we know that later in his life Paul is thrown in prison by Rome for being a trouble-maker; his contemporary Peter is crucified upside down by the same authorities. Romans 13 requires nuance and a comprehensive understanding of biblical justice to help us maneuver the present day, our relationship to our government as citizens of heaven.
We can bless wherever we see God’s justice coming to the earth, and we can speak up when we see unjust practices perpetrated by human institutions. Part of our struggle in this country is that we are so entrenched in politics because it is the new religion, All the hallmarks are there - a sense of belonging, meaning, and a concrete worldview from which to read the world. Generally speaking, Christians in America tend to see “justice” through their preferred partisan lens because the adjective “progressive” or “conservative” attached to “Christian” has become their true identity marker, with religious window dressing draped around the edges to justify their convictions. Conservative Christians might want justice for the unborn, but would rather have governments deny women access to abortion than do the work to address the primary reasons for abortion - poverty and lack of a supportive partner. Progressive Christians might demand more financial support for the poor from the government, but studies show their generous giving to organizations has declined sharply over the years; while, ironically, conservatives far exceed them in charitable donations. I do not say this as some sort of enlightened moderate, nor is this an attempt to “both sides” the issue at hand in a false equivalency except to say the temptation is real for all of us. I strongly believe that part of the ongoing salvific work of God in the present age is to deliver us from lesser ideologies in the surrounding culture - the more we are able to find belonging and meaning “in Christ”, the better we are able to more clearly analyze and critique the claims of the pithy left/right divide in this country, and choose to align ourselves with the always-advancing Kingdom of God.
So God does indeed work in some limited capacity through earthly governments. But what about us as Christians? How are we called to live in the midst of empire? This is a difficult question, for as we have seen there is no clear single Bible verse we can apply to living in a democratic republic. However, we merely step back a chapter in Romans to find what is ours to do:
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:9-21)
While the first portion, verses 9-13, primarily address how we are to treat one another in the church, the rest of the passage is about our conduct in the public sphere. We bless, we rejoice, we mourn. We associate with the little guy. We make peace rather than merely keeping peace. We respond to evil (corruption of what God has called good!) with radical kindness that shows others there is an alternative to this dog-eat-dog mentality. In short, Paul reminds us that we are meant to show the world what it looks like to be genuinely human. We testify by our active presence in society that God’s law supersedes man’s law. This leads to my final point:
While God can and does work through human institutions for justice, we cannot abdicate our role as Christians in the repairing of the world. We can make an appeal to the social contract we have as Americans that “all men are created equal”, but as Christians we make an appeal on an even higher moral plane. Sadly, the Church in this country has been lulled to complacency, assuming someone else will fix things via legislation. Ultimately we remember that only God can save the world, however God desires to work; the question becomes - will we join God or assume someone else will do it for us?
I want to leave you with a lengthy meditation from one of the great prophets of our era. In the tradition of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke truth to power while also calling the faithful to account. In 1963, King wrote a letter specifically to faith leaders around the country who were critical of his rule-breaking ways. He articulates beautifully the church’s relationship to the governing authorities, and how we must keep our integrity:
“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an ‘I it’ relationship for an 'I thou’ relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
…I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Letter from A Birmingham Jail
I have been meditating a lot recently on the difference between regular shame and holy shame. We are all familiar with the former, a demonic tool meant to bind us up by insisting we are the totality of our sin, and we can never change or be set free. The scriptures speak powerfully to God’s work of forgiving sin and undoing this kind of shame as the two halves of redemption. However, I do hold space for a kind of holy shame that can be part of the process of conviction and repentance. The light of Christ shines into our lives and whispers to us tenderly, “this is who you think you are by your thoughts and actions, but I am showing you that you are so much more in me; you have been called to be and do so much more”. I want to encourage you, dear friends, not to hide from or dismiss that feeling of holy shame that might arise from the difficult conversations. It may be the very path to freedom and right action if we are attentive and responsive.