“Let Justice Roll like a River” is the title of my new single, and has also been the prayer I've gone around actively praying for nearly a year now.
The title is taken from a line in Amos 5. In this chapter, Amos – a shepherd prophet – delivers a message from God to his people. God states that he's not only uninterested in their sacrifices, peace offerings, praise music, and their observances of feasts and festivals, but that they actually disgust him. Why? Wasn't it God himself who ordained many of these things? Because they are neglecting to uphold justice in the land. Because their courts are corrupt, they hate the prophets who speak at the temple gates, they oppress the poor – taxing them viciously – they fail to protect widows and orphans, they take bribes, they love violence and slavery, they obstruct justice. Amos echoes what God says to his people again and again throughout the era of the prophets (and beyond). He is stating in clear terms what he cares about – how to honour him.
I wrote “Let Justice Roll Like a River” as an anthem for the Palestinians who are currently dying in Gaza concentration camp, who are being driven from their homes, tortured, raped, murdered. And it's specifically about how Christians in the West are responding to this holocaust. Amos chapter 5 seemed, in fact, eerily relevant to today. It was chilling to read through its lines. Christians worldwide are supporting the Palestinian genocide, or else being completely silent and pussyfooting around the colonisation and ethnic cleansing they are and have been suffering for 75+ years.
The line which particularly struck me in Amos 5 was the mention of the people's “peace offerings”.
So many Christians today are saying they love peace and that they “just want peace” when confronted about their stance on Palestine. But the truth remains that there is no true peace without justice. There never has been. Many Christians today are covering themselves with talk of loving peace and seeking “peace in the Middle East”, as though this robe of pretend-righteousness will save them from personal responsibility and hide their bloodstained hands and complicity.
Calling for “peace” in Gaza is as absurd as insisting that the Jews being slaughtered in Auschwitz make peace and “just play nice” with their concentration camp prison guards. And if there is any question as to what God's stance is on peace without justice, in Amos 5 God says the Israelite's peace offerings are a stench in his nostrils. This same thought is echoed in Jeremiah 6:14: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”
Amos and the stories in the other prophetic books demonstrates where God's heart lies and his values: no peace with justice. Worshiping, pleasing, following God will always revolve around social justice. Without justice, all that devotion and religious observance not only becomes empty: God says it is a stench in his nostrils. He is literally disgusted by it.
The Lord is not interested in our songs, worship, church programs, sermons, tithes, camp meetings, prayer meetings, Sabbaths, and other acts of devotion if we fail to be just. Act justly, love mercy, work humbly with God.
Amos 5 closes on those lines: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
This is what God wants. He states is plain and simple. He wants justice and doing what is right to abound. This is how we worship him, this is how we follow him. And continuing on with 'business as usual' is an abomination to him. Christians, wake up, wake up!
May God's healing, liberating justice roll over the Palestinians like healing waters. May we stand loudly, publicly and boldly with the Palestinians until they are delivered from their oppressors – until they truly are free from the river to the sea.
Free Palestine, O God of justice!
You can now listen to "Let Justice Roll Like a River" here:
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