Psalm 116:15, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death
of His saints.”
Matthew 25:34-36, ‘Then the King will say to those on His
right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was
thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in, I was naked
and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came
to Me.”
Injustice does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot remain invisible, nor can it be hidden even though those doling it out would prefer it were so. Those for whom injustice is their bread and butter couldn’t care less when it comes to who they hurt, or how many, as long as they get their way. They will lie, cheat, and steal without ever considering the collateral damage as long as they can retain the trinkets and baubles to which they’ve grown accustomed, and upon which they’ve become dependent. Whether it’s CEOs running off with their employees’ pension fund or church elders convincing their flock to invest in a pyramid scheme, the callousness of such individuals is off-putting and heinous.
While some care about the optics of it and try to veil their
unjust machinations, others consider themselves so above the adverse reactions
of those they preside over that they simply don’t care. The unjust judge fell
into the latter camp. He neither feared God nor cared what people thought. He
was a law unto himself, doing as he pleased, without forethought of how he
would be perceived by anyone, whether earthly or divine.
In modern parlance, one could rightly conclude that the
unjust judge had a god complex that dictated his actions to the point of doing
as he willed, when he willed. In his mind, he was the final authority and would
not consider the existence of one higher than himself. As such, everyone else
was beneath him, and dispensing true justice was something he failed to
consider.
Even so, it did not stop the widow from pursuing justice and
doing so with tenacity. Whenever I read this parable, the widow reminds me of
all the women in my life. From my grandmother, to my mother, to my wife, and
even my daughters, that boldness and unwillingness to be cowed when they know
they have the right of it, is something endearing and admirable. In a world
where boldness is in short supply, and everyone would rather go along to get
along instead of standing on truth, it is always refreshing to see it
firsthand.
There was no timidity in the widowed woman. She didn’t come
before the unjust judge once, then give up the moment he denied her request.
She did not shrink away, break down, give up, or abandon her course. What made
her so bold? What compelled her to press on, persevere, and continually come
before the judge pleading for justice?
The first thing that served to embolden the widow to continue
seeking justice was knowing that she was in the right. You cannot plead for a
lie, you cannot champion the cause of unrighteousness and expect God’s help,
deliverance, or intervention. She stood on the truth, and the knowledge of this
gave her a boldness that was, perhaps, even uncharacteristic of her nature.
Never be afraid to stand for the truth. Never be afraid to
defend it, champion it, and plead for it, because the silence of the godly
emboldens the ungodly. Turning a blind eye to injustice helps perpetuate it and
strengthen its foothold. If you know you are standing for truth, then there is
nothing to fear. God is with you.
The worst the world can do is kill the flesh. The question
that must be asked and answered by each of us individually is whether standing
for the truth and pleading for justice in the face of injustice is worth the price.
If called upon to do so, is your proclamation and declaration of Jesus Christ
as Lord, King, and Savior, worth the price of this present life? As for me, the
answer is a resounding yes, as has been the case for countless others who have
come before me who understood the purpose of their existence, and the truth
that Jesus spoke wherein He warned all who would hear that if we deny Him
before man, He will deny us before the Father who is in heaven.
When you stand on the truth of Scripture, fear, timidity,
reticence, and apprehension fall away. They no longer hold sway, they no longer
influence, and they are no longer a determining factor in the things you say. Truth,
knowing the truth, and living the truth will give you the boldness to speak it,
no matter the situation, or how many might gnash their teeth at hearing it.
There may be moments in your life when you lack boldness.
Whether due to implicit or explicit threats, or the realization that speaking
the truth might make you persona non grata, we’ve all had those moments when we
held in a breath, closed our eyes, and saw the outcome of what speaking the truth
would mean, before the first word was ever spoken. Whether it's foresight,
intuition, or having been in the same predicament so many times that you know
how it will end, there is that moment of discomfort of seeing how the situation
will play out in your mind beforehand.
In such instances, all we can do is close our eyes, pray for boldness,
and speak the words we know we ought to say, letting the chips fall where they
may. Whether you are speaking the truth of Scripture is the only thing that
matters. Not if what you’ll say will make you more popular, or whether it will
be received in the spirit in which it was intended, not if what you’ll say will
hurt someone’s feelings or make them angry, but whether or not it is the truth.
To understand the level of callousness the judge exhibited, we must consider that in Israel during those times, a widow was expected to be supported by both society and the governing authorities. The widow was not marginalized, shunned, ignored, or otherwise discarded, but fed, tended to, cared for, and had her needs met. It’s something that had been part of the culture for centuries, and it continued into the practice of the early church, wherein they had an active and ongoing ministry to the widows of the time.
That a widow would stand before him seeking justice, and that
he chose to deny her for no other reason than not feeling like it goes a long
way into understanding both the heart and mind of this man. What injustice the
widow suffered is unknown to us. It could have been anything from having her
land taken from her by someone with means, being cheated out of something that
was rightly hers, or being sold something that fell short of what had been
promised. Those who prey on the naïve and unsuspecting have always been among
us, and they seem to be multiplying of late.
That we have individuals who proudly state that their
occupation is that of an influencer nowadays, trying to convince people to buy
things they don’t need for price points they can’t afford, should tell you all
you need to know about where society is headed and how far we’ve fallen. That
it’s actively taking place within the household of faith, wherein believers are
being targeted and victimized by those in authority, isn’t merely troubling,
but abominable and repulsive because more often than not, the name of Jesus is
being used to seal the deal and convince people to part with their hard-earned
coin when they otherwise would not have.
By reading the parable, going back and forth between English
and Romanian, I tend to believe that it wasn’t the widow who employed lawfare
against her adversary, but the adversary who brought the case before the judge,
hoping to get a favorable ruling. Unscrupulous individuals using the system to
get what they want is likewise nothing new. Even if they know they’re in the
wrong, even if they are in contravention of the laws of the land, countless
frivolous lawsuits are being litigated every day throughout the nation. Whether
it’s someone suing a fast food joint for making them fat, or for hot coffee
being hot, the reason it keeps happening is because, enough of the time,
justice is not dispensed, and those in power do not execute true justice but
pervert it in favor of their ideology. When this occurs, resentment against the
entire legal system and bitterness toward those in authority are a foregone
conclusion, and the more it happens, the more these sentiments increase. When a
majority no longer believes in the equal application of the law or that justice
is blind, societal collapse is inevitable and only a matter of time.
Looking back, there always seems to be an instigating
incident, but that’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The resentment
and bitterness built up over months, if not years, and with each new act of
injustice being presented as the height of justice itself, a little more is
added to the cup. Then, that one thing that on its own seems innocuous and no
more egregious than the previous hundred similar events sets off a chain
reaction that is so uncharacteristic of the people of that time as to be
remembered in the history books for the anomaly it was.
Whether it is revolutions, peasant uprisings, coups, or civil
unrest, these things build up over time, and though the average citizen may say
nothing as they witness injustice being meted out, it does not mean they do not
see it for what it is.
Those who are students of history and understand the danger
the masses pose are quick to gaslight and attempt to rewrite it in order to
either minimize or mitigate their culpability in the pain and sense of unease
their actions caused. They are unwilling to take accountability for their
actions because they understand the deep level of despair and heartache they were
responsible for, and claiming accountability would be akin to presenting the embittered
masses with a target upon which they can pour out their displeasure.
Rather than admit they were wrong about their conclusions and
that they mismanaged the situation to the point of criminality, they revert to
the let bygones be bygones trope, insisting we were all a bit guilty for what
happened. How so? I wasn’t calling for anyone’s forced internment or insisting
that if a particular chemical compound was not proven to have been injected
into someone’s arm, they should be refused medical service, no matter what their
malady might be.
I wasn’t the one who legislated that hard-working people with
stellar careers should be thrown out like so much rubbish because they didn’t
want to bow their head, bend their knee, and do what they were told by a rickety
man in adult diapers who everyone who was anyone insisted was as clear-thinking
and learnt as Einstein himself even though all evidence pointed to the contrary.
Can we just forget about it already? Sure, you never got to
say goodbye to your elderly parents as they died alone. Sure, you were fired
from your job and made out to be a pariah who reveled in seeing others suffer.
Sure, we called for your removal from polite society. Sure, we called for your
death and fantasized about the pain you would endure before the end came, but
hey, that was all yesterday. Today’s a new day, and we can be friends again
until the next thing, where we will repeat our talking points all over again,
and insist that you are a danger, a blight, an invasive species that seeks to disrupt
the order of things and therefore must be dealt with quickly and with
irreversible finality.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
