A NEW YEAR
OF AWAKENING
By Jim
Jordal
Her princes in the midst of it
are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, [and] to destroy souls, that
they may get dishonest gain. Her prophets have daubed for them with
whitewash, seeing false visions, and divining lies to them, saying, Thus says
the Lord, when the Lord has not spoken. The people of the land have used
oppression, and exercised robbery; yes, they have vexed the poor and needy, and
have oppressed the foreigner wrongfully. I sought for a man among them,
who should build up the wall, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that
I should not destroy it; but I found none. Ezekiel
22:27-30 WEB
In this
Scripture the prophet Ezekiel relates God’s anger with the wayward people of
Israel. Beginning with her princes, or political leaders who have shed blood
and destroyed souls for dishonest gain, he moves through the prophets, or
religious figures that have whitewashed the sins of their leaders by telling
them “truths” that did not come from God. Ezekiel concludes his tirade by
charging the people of the land with using oppression and robbery to vex the
poor and needy as well as foreigners and immigrants.
Brick and
stone walls are symbolic in Scripture as the cultural structures and practices
that provide protection and safety for the city. Again, Ezekiel speaks for God
in the last sentence which sadly relates that when God sought among the people
for a leader capable of building up the wall, or in effect causing the people
and leaders to repent of their sin in order to save the city from Divine
destruction, he found no one. What a tragic statement concerning the inability
of God’s chosen leaders to stem the tide of destruction by turning the erring
people toward righteousness.
As we enter
this New Year we find the walls of the city, or strengths of our great nation,
in various states of disrepair or collapse. Political contribution laws are skewed
by the rich and powerful so as to force legislators to spend more time raising
money than passing legislation. Congress proves its dysfunctionality every day
with seemingly no one having control or providing direction. So a great nation
staggers from crisis to crisis with no one to take it by the hand and lead it back
to justice, truth, mercy, and righteousness.
Some
observers tell us that widespread distribution of wealth leads to national
strength because everyone has a “chip in the game” and will thus support the
government and its policies. Normally, some disparities in wealth are
acceptable as just rewards for productive efficiency and good management. But
today we are so far from balance in distributed wealth as to be laughable if it
were not so damaging. A recent Credit Suisse global wealth report reveals that
the top one percent of world population holds 48 percent of world wealth. This
imbalance acts as a drag on growth as the richest of the rich fail to invest
their billions in job creation, preferring instead the obscene riches of the
rightfully- maligned unproductive investment vehicles called derivatives.
Another
critical area ripe for a popular awakening is that of how to preserve the
so-called “safety-net” provisions first enacted during the critical “First
Hundred Days” of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Roosevelt felt deeply
the suffering of millions who had lost their jobs, homes, savings, and hope to
the forces of depression ravaging the land. Immediate, forceful action was
required, and that’s what we got: The WPA and CCC provided jobs; the FDIC
insured bank deposits; the Social Security Administration provided retirement
for workers. A host of other efforts followed, all aimed at recovery and
confidence-building.
Today we
need awakening to the reality that certain free-market economists, business
persons, and politicians want to privatize Social Security, Medicare, and
public education---all in the interests of saving money. In general, they’d
like to turn back the clock to the 1920s with unregulated banking and business
under predatory “hands off” capitalism. That theory failed then, and it will
fail even more disastrously if tried today.
It’s time to
awaken, folks, not only to what the powers of wealth have in mind, but also to
what Almighty God plans. We’ll look a bit at that in the near future.
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