The High Cost of Social Injustice

Deuteronomy 24:17-18 (ESV) “You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow’s garment in pledge, 18 but you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.

Oh how much better we may treat one another if we all remembered that who we are is the result of God's grace and goodness. Israel was given many laws regarding how to treat each other in Deuteronomy. Here in chapter 24, all of the laws are horizontal in nature. Do not take essential items in pledge. Do not kidnap and slave trade another human being. Leave lots of leftovers from harvest for the poor. Let the punishment fit the crime (Deuteronomy 25).

The interesting thing about this particular set of laws is that right int he middle of the list is a call to remember where they came from. The Lord redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. Yet how did they get to Egypt in the first place? By seeing their ancestors break this list of laws repeatedly and without remorse. Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery taking his cloak. Egypt enslaved Israel once Egypt had been empowered with the resources from the labor of others. Egypt did not pay a fair wage (sadly beginning with Joseph's rule). The immoral behavior of their ancestors led them to enslavement and they above all others should know the deep cost of such terrible treatment of one another. All these laws are designed to keep humanity from degrading one another for selfish gain.

The point God is making here is clear: There is a high cost to social injustice. When you treat others as a means to your end (as Joseph's brothers did to him and Egypt did to Israel) the world and humanity fall into chaos! When you consider that taking advantage of another for your selfish gain is like a rock dropped in a pond with endless ripples affecting those far beyond its initial impact, you wake up to the reason the second commandment is loving your neighbor as you love yourself. When we see one another as competition or our enemy, we do things that cost us all deeply. The ripples spread and human history is rife with plenty of examples.

The bottom line is the narrative history of the Old Testament is to reveal the results of the curse and also God's plan to reverse it. In our sin, we trend in the manner of taking advantage of each other. We fail to trust the God who saved us is the same God who can sustain us. So we cut corners and hurt one another. But this only leads to a furtherance of our own destruction. We say things like "what comes around goes around" and it does. But it doesn't come around simply by some mystical empowerment. It does so because we ARE connected to one another. Our actions matter. Ripples are dropped in the pond of humanity for good and bad a billion times a day.

So God's people are to be merciful and compassionate in the blessing God will provide for them. They will not need to cut corners or take extreme measures that guarantee their own prosperity. They are to be good to the poor and generous. They are to be models to the nations that goodness will cause them to flourish whereas selfishness would destroy them. They have experienced the high cost of generational disobedience to these laws and will show high regard for the least among them.

I pray the human race learns and relearns these lessons once again. We always seem on the verge of destroying ourselves.