Dallas Justice Group
A Guided Study of Gary Haugen’s book
The Good News about Injustice
A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Micah 6:8
Our desire for this study:
Awareness…That you will realize injustice occurs every day to thousands of people around the world, and that these people are real people with lives just like us, created in God’s image, cared for individually by God.
Advocation…That you will see those suffering as real people with need of your help, and that you can stand as their advocate of justice, much like Christ does for those who believe: the strong helping the weak.
Adoration…That you will more deeply see and understand the character of God and long to be as he is, and thus have GREAT hope. That you will have the heart that he does for those suffering in the world.
Application…That you will be willing and ready to be the hands of feet of God in your community, your city, and your world. That you will begin to pray and consider ways to do this.
Scripture for Consideration and Meditation
Deuteronomy 10:18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.
Psalm 11:5-7 The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates. On the wicked he will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur; a scorching wind will be their lot. For the LORD is righteous, he loves justice; upright men will see his face.
Psalm 146:7-9 He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, and the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
Proverbs 14:31 He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
Isaiah 1:15-17 When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
Isaiah 59:15-16 Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him.
Ezekiel 16:49 Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
Ezekiel 22:25,27,29 There is a conspiracy of her princes within her like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her…her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain…the people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.
Micah 6:8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?
Zechariah 7:9-10 This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.”
Galatians 2:10 All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I (Paul) was eager to do.
1 Timothy 6:17-19 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
Hebrews 13:1-3 Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (finish by reading James 2:1-19)
2 Peter 2:9-10 …the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, these men are…
1 John 3:16-20 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Others to Consider
Exodus 23:1-11 (Mosaic Law)
Deuteronomy 14:28-15:15 (Mosaic Law)
Job 5:13-16, 24:1-21, 29:16-17, 31:16-23
Psalm 82:1-8
Isaiah 11:1-4, 58:3-10, 61:1-3
Amos 2:6-7, 5:6-15
Matthew 11:1-6 (Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching to the poor)
Matthew 25:34-45 (whatever you did not do for the least, you did not do for me)
Luke 10:29-35 (parable of the Good Samaritan)
LESSON
I
(NOTE: the numbers in parentheses refer to quotes from the book)
An Introduction
Chapter 1
Making “Them” Real: Our Hearts Growing Engaged
Getting Started
“So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”
1 Thessalonians 2:8
Q: What connects with you most from this verse?
Q: Why were they ready to share the gospel and even their own lives with these people?
Q: Is there a connection between desire and obedience? Between loving someone and serving them?
Quotes & Questions
“In no time at all it begins to feel as if the nightmare I came from in Rwanda or the Philippines or South Africa has taken place not in another country but on another planet. Back home, it simply does not feel real anymore…like most of the ugliness transmitted by TV across the world and into my living room, the terror in Rwanda just did not seem real. It seemed true, but not real—to me. I did not dispute the accuracy of the reports, but they might as well have been pictures from Sojourner on Mars or reports about people who lived in ancient Rome or statistics about how many bazillion other solar systems are in the Milky Way—all true enough, but not real. Not real like my kids when they are sick, not real like my job when I am behind in my work, not real like my neighbors when one of them has been in a car accident, not even real like my Midwestern compatriots when they have been flooded out of their homes.” (23-24)
Q: Why do you think it is so easy for us to feel that the people suffering elsewhere are not as “real?” How does this reflect our own “sin of forgetfulness?”
Q: Do you think this might be why someone would claim the Holocaust was not real? Do you think this might be why someone would claim that Jesus was not real? Why or why not?
Q: How do you feel after reading a story like the cathedral or stadium incident in Kibuye (26-27)? Angry? Sad? Numb? Confused?
“But at Kibuye, as at every massacre site in Rwanda, a painful glimpse of the truth always came through. This was not an undifferentiated mass of lifeless clods on the inevitable dust heap of a fallen world. In truth each body, now dull and limp in the mud, was actually a unique bearer of the very image of God, a unique creation of the divine Maker, individually knit within a mother’s womb by the Lord of the universe.” (29)
“For as difficult as it was to imagine, each crumpled mortal frame had indeed come from a mother, one single mother who somewhere in time had wept tears of joy and aspiration over her precious child—a child endowed with the mysterious spark of Adam and an immortal soul. We would never number all the mother’s children in these mass graves, but their Father in heaven had numbered even the very hairs of their heads.” (29)
“Just as with famine, despite appearances, people really do die one person at a time.” (30)
Q: Why do we rarely think of others with a “one person at a time” mindset? Do you find that we usually think of “others” as groups, but tend to think of those close to us as individuals? Why?
Q: What might be different if we started thinking of the oppressed not as a group of people, but as individuals?
“There were tough moments for me, but there was no longer any question about what this horrible injustice in Rwanda had to do with me, a suburban American lawyer who rode a bus to work during the week and taught sixth-grade Sunday school on the weekend. It had everything to do with me because of what my God loves and what my God hates…this has everything to do with me because God hates injustice.” (32)
Q: What are the implications of this last statement for us (in bold)? Does this mean it has everything to do with us as well? Why?
LESSON
II
The Introduction Continued
Chapters 2 & 3
Making “Them” Real: Our Hearts Growing Engaged
Compassion Permanence: Cultivating Awareness
Read the first two paragraphs of Chapter 2, p.37-38
“I must confess that this is very much the way my mind often works when it comes to maintaining an interest in the reality of injustice in the world…I read about innocent people being slaughtered in Rwanda…but my mind moves on to other things with amazing speed and thoroughness…I can move from torture on the evening news to touchdowns on Monday Night Football with almost the same mental and emotional ease as my channel changer.” (37-38)
Q: What is a good definition of faith (for help: see p.39)? How does our faith relate to this idea of “out of sight, out of mind?”
Q: What are some obvious dangers (to us personally and to others) of taking an “out of sight, out of mind” perspective?
“…we who are only rarely exposed first or secondhand to the truth about those who suffer injustice in our world are taught to “remember” what we know, even after it leaves our site or experience. “Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (Hebrews 13:3). We are to recall the plight of the poor and the imprisoned (Galatians 2:10; Colossians 4:18). Precisely because it is not our first and natural inclination, we are called to a conscious effort of reserving a space in our thought life for those who suffer abuse and oppression in our world…the Scriptures are confident that if we imagine we are the child prostitute, the torture victim, the child laborer, we would not want to be forgotten.” (39)
Q: On pages 40 and 41, what might help us as Christians living in a relatively affluent and orderly society to remember the injustice and abuse in the world?
Q: Why do we so quickly forget? How can we stay informed? What are some simple ways to help us stay “compassion permanent?”
Scripture: Moving from Awareness to Action
“Preparing our mind for action means coming to grips with the true nature of the world into which Christ has cast us, his disciples. It means coming to grips with how the Fall is playing itself out around the world in the present day…biblical Christians understand that Christ has called us to be his witnesses to the uttermost part of a very dark world—a dark world of injustice…all those old Scriptures that talk about “the world,” which always seemed rather melodramatic when I heard them in my suburban church as a kid, turned out to be much more worthy of my attention than I ever knew.” (47-48)
“Much of my shock in the face of an unjust world comes from my failure to truly hide God’s Word in my heart (Psalm 119:11)…through God’s Word people are given every advantage for living in the world, because despite deceitful appearances, the Bible tells the truth about the nature of the world and the nature of the God we serve…the last people who should get caught off guard by injustice in the world should be Bible-believing Christians.” (48-49)
The World, A Dark Place
Psalm 37:14
“The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy.”
Job 24:2-4, 9-10
“Men move boundary stones; they pasture flocks they have stolen. They drive away the orphan’s donkey and take the widow’s ox in pledge. They thrust the needy from the path and force all the poor of the land into hiding…the fatherless child is snatched from the breast; the infant of the poor is seized for a debt. Lacking clothes, they go about naked; they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.”
Isaiah 3:14
“It is you [the elders and the princes] who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses.”
Lamentations 5:11-13
“Women have been ravished in Zion, and virgins in the towns of Judah. Princes have been hung up by their hands; elders are shown no respect. Young men toil at the millstones; boys stagger under loads of wood.
Ezekiel 22:29
The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.”
Joel 3:3
“They cast lots for my people and traded boys for prostitutes; they sold girls for wine that they might drink.”
Ecclesiastes 5:8
“If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things.”
“We need not feel overwhelmed or out of place in such a dark world of injustice. This is precisely the world into which Jesus intended his followers to go…He assures us that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto me…and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (50)
A Small Glimpse: Our God
Psalm 11:5,7
“The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence His soul hates…for the LORD is righteous, He loves justice.”
Psalm 10:17-18
“You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.”
Psalm 72:12-14
“He will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.”
Should I Take Action?
Ephesians 6:14-15
“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist…and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace…”
Matthew 5:14-16
“You are the light of the world…let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”
Matthew 14:27
“Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid!”
“The great miracle and mystery of God is that he calls me and you to be a part of what he is doing in history. He could, of course, with no help from us proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ with lifeless stones, feed the entire world with five loaves and two fish, heal the sick with the hem of his garment and release all the oppressed with his angels. Instead God has chosen us—missionaries, agricultural engineers, doctors, lawyers, lawmakers, diplomats and all those who support, encourage and pray for them—to be his hands in doing those things in the world that are important to him.” (34)
“When Christ ascended into heaven, he left behind only two things for the fulfillment of all his aspirations in the world: his Spirit and his followers. With the Holy Spirit we have been commissioned to demonstrate Christ’s love for all the world: to disciple the nations, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to heal the broken and even to rescue the oppressed.” (34)