Injustice

I have been reading Jeremiah this week and once again have been reminded that he had the courage to speak up and share the truth to people who were unwilling to listen, and even if they did, were not moved to do anything.

I believe we are in a similar time now in much of the Church. Just as in Jeremiah’s day, people view truth through the lens of what they already believe or want. This is, I believe, the main reason the Church is so polarized today. Beliefs and practices, and the Scriptures that speak of them, are viewed through an already established world view. Instead of the Word of God shaping our world view, more and more it is our world view that shapes our understanding of the Scriptures. Thus, Christians can vehemently disagree on issues such as homosexual/transgender practices, immigration, government policy, etc., because they approach the Scriptures looking for what affirms their already established beliefs and usually ignoring what doesn’t.

The truth is we are all guilty of this depending on the strength of our beliefs. This is part of our fallen nature. We want our beliefs to be convenient rather than transformative to our thinking and way of life. The easy path is always the one most taken. This was the case for the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day. It was much easier to go along with the crowd than stand out as the exception. Even when they said they wanted to hear from the Lord on what to do, when they heard him, they adamantly refused (Jeremiah 42:5-6; 43:1-7 ). It didn’t confirm what they already believed, and so they rejected it.

I don’t have the time to cover all the ways this is manifested (and you probably don’t want to read it), but I do want to focus on one “hot” topic that has been in the news—the suffering and killing of children, particularly in Gaza and Ukraine. It is hard to understand the hesitancy, regardless of one’s political leanings, about calling out the injustice of children dying. Is the thinking that it plays into the hands of Hamas or a corrupt Ukraine? Is it that we must support Israel no matter what? (This is what I heard from one church leader—one is never to criticize Israel.) Is it just merely FAKE NEWS which is being used to manipulate us? 

Sadly, these are the justifications used in the face of clear injustice. One of the Lord’s clearest judgments of Israel involved their injustices toward the poor and vulnerable (Jeremiah 22:13 ; Ezekiel 9:9 ).

As Jeremiah and the other prophets did, it is time for believers to step up on behalf of suffering and dying children. Can we at least agree that it is unjust what children are suffering in Gaza, Ukraine, and so many other places in the world? Surely we can. Then it is time to actively engage on their behalf through prayer, by contacting our representatives in Washington, through social media posts (you can forward this one to others), through our giving to meeting the needs of these suffering children via organizations doing good work, and by being advocates in our churches for children who are suffering.

You might be asking, why just focus on the injustice toward children? We definitely should call out injustice wherever we find it, but I think we can have no objection or excuse when it comes to the suffering of children. Can we at least have unity on that?

© Jim Musser 2025 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.