And Injustice For All

Have you ever felt that God just wasn’t listening? Silent, uncaring, even absent? Perhaps you have a problem, a need, a pain, a burning question; you bring it before God, and - nothing happens. You remember what Jesus said about persisting in prayer, so you go on battering at the heavenly gates - for an answer that doesn’t come.

Some people put the question like this: Since there is evil in the world, the idea that God is both loving and all-powerful does not compute. They deal with the paradox by giving up on one of the two propositions. They conclude that either God doesn’t care what happens to us, or he can’t do anything about it. That’s pretty depressing.

To me this first chapter reads just like the morning news. “What can God be thinking of, to let all this stuff happen?” And the answers are especially helpful to me during this politically tumultuous time. election season.

The problems Habakkuk wrestled with are exactly the problems you and I face. For although the prophet lived in a time very different from ours, there are also a lot of similarities. Judean society was ruled by corrupt officials, filled with violence and class division, economic oppression, envy and despair. Habakkuk doesn’t pull any punches in his outcry to God:

"O YHWH, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you 'Violence!' and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous-- therefore judgment comes forth perverted." [Hab 1:1-4]

Here is the problem of unanswered prayer from a righteous man, a man of God who is asking on behalf of his people, not for himself. The people are drowning in wickedness. Those who are responsible for setting an example - for teaching righteousness, for maintaining order, for defending truth - do nothing about it. Indeed, they make it worse. And when matters come before the courts, the courts themselves are found to be corrupt.

Habakkuk knows that the thing to do with a problem is to take it to God - and he has been doing just that. He has been praying about his problem. But he doesn’t get any answer. His heart cries out in perplexed bewilderment, “Lord, how long do I have to keep crying out to you like this? You aren’t doing anything! I’ve been watching for a change, watching for revival, watching for something to happen, yet nothing does. How long do I have to wait?”

Have you ever felt that way? Pick whatever most distressed you in the last month of news and no matter what it is, in Habakkuk’s day similar things were happening.

Habakkuk cries out to God in the words we just heard earlier in the service. But this time God answers.

What makes this book unique among the prophets is that Habakkuk never talks to the people of Judah at all. It is, instead, a dialogue between one man and his God. That is what makes it so immediate, so relevant. We are all Habakkuk; each of us at some time in our lives wrestles with God’s incomprehensible silence. So as God answers Habakkuk, he answers us as well.

"Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told." [Hab 1:5]

In other words, God says, “I have been answering your prayer, Habakkuk. You accuse me of silence, but you just don’t know how to recognize my answer. It is so different from what you expect that you won’t even believe it when I tell you. But I’ll tell you anyway.” Then God goes on:

"I am rousing the Chaldeans. . . who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. They all come for violence . . . they gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport. They laugh at every fortress . . . they transgress and become guilty; their own might is their god!" [Hab 6-11]

Does that sound like anyone you know? Doesn’t it look just like the Middle East today? Even if we do manage to subdue the current batch of villains, history teaches us that peace never lasts. Thirty years ago you could have substituted communists for jihadists; in the previous generation you could have pointed to the Nazis. Who’s going to be next? Iran? China? Someone we’ve never heard of?

God’s answer, warning of the rising threat of the Chaldeans, wasn’t what Habakkuk wanted to hear. And it would have been easy for him to brush it aside, because the Chaldeans weren’t particularly important or powerful. The nation that frightened all the other countries in the Middle East into quivering submission was Assyria, with their capital at Nineveh where Jonah preached.