Faith That Prays Series

Why does God allow injustice to exist?

We turn on the news and watch oppressors rise without restraint. They redraw moral boundaries, rewrite history, and wield power with seeming impunity. The innocent suffer. The vulnerable are crushed. Entire peoples are marginalized, displaced, or threatened with erasure—socially, politically, and sometimes violently. And through it all, heaven seems silent. This silence creates deep friction in the human heart. Many struggle to reconcile the world they see with the God they are told exists. If God is truly sovereign, loving, and just, why does injustice continue unchecked? Why do the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer? Why do broken systems persist for generations without accountability?

How can the same God who once caused the waters to rise in judgment, who unleashed the plagues upon Egypt, who brought down Sodom and Gomorrah, now appear to allow the injustices of our so-called modern society to go unanswered? This tension is born from a collision between expectation and experience. We expect power to bring immediate intervention, justice to arrive swiftly, and love to shield us from pain. Yet lived reality tells a different story. Violence persists. Corruption flourishes. And prayers for deliverance can feel as though they echo into an empty sky. That gap breeds confusion, disappointment, and—if left unspoken—quiet resentment toward God. At its core, this struggle is not merely intellectual; it is deeply relational. It is the ache of believing God can act, yet wondering why He does not. It can feel like abandonment. It can feel like indifference. And Scripture does not ignore that feeling—it gives voice to it.

Today, we turn to the minor prophet Habakkuk, a man who loved God deeply and yet dared to pray honestly. Habakkuk wrestled with injustice in the face of divine silence. His lament flowed from grief for his own people—Judah. Though sweeping reforms had taken place under Josiah, reforms that removed idols, destroyed pagan shrines, and restored proper worship of the LORD, they proved heartbreakingly short-lived. Before long, injustice, violence, and corruption once again dominated daily life.

The book of Habakkuk is not a theological treatise—it is a conversation. It is the cry of a faithful servant pleading with his Creator to act. It is a prophet’s prayer when obedience has not produced righteousness, and reform has not produced repentance. Habakkuk teaches us that true faith does not suppress hard questions—it brings them to God.

And that is where faith that prays begins.

Faith Cries out Honestly to God

Rather than suppressing his questions or disguising them in polite religious language, Habakkuk brings his confusion directly to God. In Habakkuk 1:2–4, we hear what faith sounds like when it cries out honestly—not with polished answers, but with raw lament. This is not casual prayer; it is the anguished cry of a servant who loves God deeply and cannot reconcile God’s holiness with the injustice he sees all around him. Listen to the emotion, the urgency, and the reverence woven through his prayer to his Creator:

“How long, LORD, must I call for help,

but you do not listen?

Or cry out to you, “Violence!”

but you do not save?

Why do you make me look at injustice?

Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?

Destruction and violence are before me;

there is strife, and conflict abounds.

Therefore, the law is paralyzed,

and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous,

so that justice is perverted.”

- Habakkuk 1:2-4

Habakkuk could have sought counsel from other godly voices or retreated into private theological reflection, but instead he brings his burden straight to the LORD. He does not come with accusations or uncontrolled anger, but with humble appeal—not demanding that God act according to his timetable but pleading to understand why the God he trusts appears silent. This is faith that prays honestly—faith that refuses to walk away, even when answers have not yet come.

To understand why Habakkuk prayed this way, we must first understand what he was seeing all around him. It seemed like only yesterday that Josiah, having heard the words of the Book of the Law, tore his robes in repentance, cleansed the temple of foreign gods, smashed the sacred stones and Asherah poles, and led Judah in renewing its covenant with the LORD (2 Kings 22–23). For a moment, the nation stood under the authority of God’s Word once again.

But that moment was painfully short-lived. Within a few years, the next two kings—Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim—once again “did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD” (2 Kings 23:32, 37). The people no longer governed their lives by the teachings of the Torah, but by the values of the surrounding nations. Instead, they returned to the worship of multiple gods, while power shifted into the hands of the strong, the clever, and the corrupt. Justice was no longer shaped by God’s law but by human advantage, often resulting in fraud, exploitation, and violence against the weak and vulnerable within the community.