One point of prayer the past year has surrounded the idea of what is needful, to honor the Lord and others, when it comes to matters which are concerning.
Starting from the Gospel.
For one, knowing fear of God, we do plead with men. We do so in reverential deference--as, what a fearful thing to callously disregard God's edicts!
What He has given to each of us--that, we are to share: We are to make disciples. We are to take the talents which have been entrusted to us, and as a good servant, invest those talents to yield a return for Him. We enter His labors. And as any good servant, we are to be found busy and attendant for His return. Knowing fear of Him--His majesty and preeminence, His omnipotence, holiness, and omniscience, et al--we are to be vigilant and sober-minded, keeping that which was given to us, carrying our cross, serving, seeking justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with Him.
Then, too, fearing Him, we plead with men, knowingly--so that their blood will not be on our hands, though His wrath remains upon them while we are alongside them as possessors of a knowledge unto salvation, having been the recipients of unmerited favor, ourselves. If He grants sight and wisdom, what a dire matter to withhold that from others, knowing their consequence is sure...we are ever indebted to Him, unprofitable servants, and also to our fellow man, for possessing that knowledge apart from which they will enter His judgment.
What would it be, of moral obligation, to see a child playing on a trestle and say and do nothing if you possessed full knowledge of an oncoming train--in their ignorance and flippancy, they're sealing their own demise by ignoring the situation they've entered and refusing to acknowledge the tell-tale signs of oncoming traffic. But if you were absolutely certain a train is soon to come and you possessed full ability to urgently plead with them to immediately escape sure peril...what would it be for you to selfishly remain silent and avert your eyes, knowing their fate? And what, when that child's father also knows you had seen them in peril and refused to even try to plead with them? This is an inept analogy, but the point is that there is a sort of responsibility (even not being responsible for salvation, ourselves). Our position is of real awareness of an eternal, just punishment awaiting those around us (yes, by their own fault), and we were once just as they are and yet have been delivered out of that fate by merits which weren't our own: If God has shown us mercy, plucking us out of the fire--and has even been so gracious as to adopt us as children, showering us with love--how can we withhold the knowledge of His deliverance from those who remain under His wrath, knowing that His mercy is so sure, and their fate just as certain unless they turn to Him now?
We're indebted to Him and to those we're around. We should be cast into hell, ourselves. Fearing Him, fearing to fall short, fearing to have their blood on our hands...we should plead with mankind, that they would repent and seek God, receive His mercy...while there's time.
The further considerations are also that love compels and constrains us--this had ought to be the greatest of all compulsions, except that our hearts are so fickle and often cold. At least I find that in myself--sometimes fear is a necessary prod and restraint, keeping me from wickedness and compelling me to do what is honorable, until a clearer remembrance of Christ and His love once more enriches my vision and fills my heart to overflow with desire to serve Him and honor Him, thus others, once more.
But this compulsion to share the Gospel is also a compulsion to seek justice. Biblical justice, though--not culturally defined justice. God has made it clear, in His Word, that we are not to give favor to anyone based on either poverty or riches, otherwise we pervert justice--make it into something other than justice. So we can't divert from seeing what is actual of a situation, instance-by-instance, individually. Otherwise, characteristics drive decisions, again averting and diverting justice on the whole. Each situation has to be weighed for itself. Each instance. Even knowing that He has given us blatant moral commandments which stand true for all of humanity.
He hates haughty self-exaltation, deceptive speech, hands which slay the innocent, those who devise wickedness, swift turnings toward viciousness, perversions of justice through duplicity, and hostile (or generally evil) divisiveness. God despises injustice, malice, deception, duplicitousness, manipulation, vindictiveness, self-centered hostility toward others, and all such acts and presence of hatred wrought by and of a heart of pride.
God alone is in position to hate righteously. He alone is good. The anger of man does not work righteousness, rather if we are enraged we are to be slow to speak, and even to keep our silence, most often. For our anger is not generally just, whatever the inciting cause.
Even when we purport to a righteous anger, very often the heart of it is not righteousness but pride, and so that anger is not righteous and will not accomplish righteousness, but divisiveness.
We are to be angry and not sin. Not to let the sun go down on our anger, either. For vengeance is God's, not ours. Period.
We can only seek justice as we defer to Him. Hostile destruction of others--through defamation, ostracism, or material devastation--is not justice: That is conceited malice. Blatant disregard for others, giving reign to vicious vindictiveness--trampling on the innocent as much as the wicked: That is unmitigated evil, especially when calling itself righteous.
Evil many times calls itself good, though. And the world is so deluded, having been given over to worshipping those things which are not God, as wont, that there's not ability to discern good from evil. Evil is called good, and good evil, and all do what is right in their own eyes. And there is injustice in all the land, calling itself justice.
When unity is attempted by exalting conflict to the position of greatest honor, there can be no unity. When chaos and absolute destruction is being decreed as the new order, there will be no order, but only slavery to lawlessness. We are all either slaves to sin or to God. If we refuse His good law, refuse to submit to Him and serve Him, in serving ourselves, we are captive and slaves to death and destruction, and we sow these in everything we undertake.
And all the world cries, "Peace, peace," but there is no peace when at the inmost heart of purported unity is discord and divisiveness, condescension and conceit. Conflict theories cannot yield unity, but only further division--ever pitting one against one another.
Jesus said His kingdom is not as this world, though. God is King and Lord of all. And His order is that those who submit are those who are greatest. Those who are least of all. Theirs is no grasping, but only submission. To Him.
And through that death to self, God makes all one, in Christ. For as One died, we all died. And we live, yet not us...but Christ. There is no other life. No other peace. No other unity, and no reconciliation--all to all. The more we would unite around another fount of life, the more we divide, as dividing from Truth.
So what is a call to justice, then, if judges set aside regard for the dignity of culpability as individual responsibility, in favor of partisanship? May the Lord have mercy, each to each, otherwise all would be lost. Thank the Lord, then, through Jesus Christ that He does save some. And He calls us to be ambassadors of reconciliation: peacemakers in the midst of war.
Yet, we need not be troubled. He has overcome.
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