A current-events message for (mostly) my Christian friends:
Recently two Christians in Greece were publicly beaten and jailed after several days of preaching. They were falsely accused of stirring up trouble and promoting illegal activities.
The next day the authorities, realizing they had no legal grounds for detaining the two men, tried to release them secretly. The Christians refused to leave, saying, "We were publicly beaten despite being uncondemned, so we should be publicly exonerated as well." Thankfully, that's exactly what happened.
Wait-- sorry, that didn't happen recently. It happened in the 1st century to Paul and Silas in Acts 16.
The question for Christians is: Is it right for us to care about justice? And the short answer is yes.
There is a longer answer, too. It's a caution about focusing exclusively on social justice and forgetting the Bible teaching that the world is going to become worse and worse until Christ, the true King of righteousness, finally sets things right. It's a reminder that, at Christ's first coming, when He was thoroughly cheated out of justice, He endured it without resistance, and we should personally imitate Him.
It's also a warning that the Church is not called to create a Christian nation or a Christian world. Rather, we are called to speak and live the beautiful message of Jesus, the Rescuer who brings light and hope into the darkness of our sin and despair.
Still, the short answer about justice is yes, we should care. God is just, and governments should be just. Paul and Silas knew what was right. The Bible writer James condemned in strongest terms the acts of fraud and violence committed against poor immigrant Christian workers (James 5:1-6; 2:6), adding that God Himself heard their cries.
And if, in America, justice is applied unequally to people who are black and people who are white, we can speak about that without sacrificing our heavenly calling. I realize that George Floyd, a black man who recently died in police custody, was accused of a crime. I don't know if he did it. But I have Christian (and non-Christian) friends who are black, and perhaps they wonder what I would do if a police officer's knee was against their necks for five-plus minutes after they were already handcuffed.
I hope I would say something. I mistrust my own self, but I hope so. And even here I might have said things the wrong way-- and if so, please forgive me. But it didn't seem right to say nothing.
