Righteous, Impartial, & Courageous

Then I commanded your judges at that time, saying, "Hear the cases between your brethren, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the stranger who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small as well as the great. You shall not be afraid in any man's presence, for the judgment is God's. The case that is too hard for you, bring to me, and I will hear it." And I commanded you at that time all the things which you should do. (Deuteronomy 1:16-18)

For a culture to survive, it must be led by people of righteous impartiality and courage—the very thing our age is rejecting.

A Trial and a Strange Response

This last week, Hollywood media mogul Harvey Weinstein was convicted of sexual assault. Though acquitted on charges that likely would have brought a life sentence, he faces five to twenty-nine years in prison. All told, more than 80 women accused him of sexual misconduct, and though for decades his power, position, and wealth allowed him to escape prosecution, he finally experienced a measure of justice.

Many see his conviction as righteous retribution and a major win against sexual harassment and assault. But I found something fascinating in an ABC News interview with one of his attorneys. His lawyer said that when the conviction came down, Weinstein expressed shock and turned to him and said, "But I didn't do anything wrong. How could this possibly happen in America?"

Process that for a moment. More than 80 women accused him, and he says, "I didn't do anything wrong." It is possible, though highly unlikely, that he genuinely believes that. But I cannot imagine anyone familiar with the facts of the case who hadn't hoped this would be the outcome—because when faced with behavior like that, there is within us a deep desire and hope for justice. We want a righteous judgment, a judgment that accords with some standard of morality or law.

A Deep, Innate Desire for Justice

We don't always see justice, though. I'm old enough to remember the white Ford Bronco. I was in tenth-grade geometry class when my teacher turned on the radio, and we listened as the jury foreman stood and announced, "We the jury find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty." A lot of people were shocked, because we sensed that justice wasn't done. We call that a miscarriage of justice.

When we do see a righteous judgment handed down, there is something like a collective feeling of vindication. We even think, "Maybe the world is a tiny bit better than I feared." That brings us to point one: I feel better when I feel that justice has been rightly applied.

But here's the problem, and it's important to think about. The world that Western culture—North America, Western Europe—is currently pursuing and creating is a world that will make just and righteous outcomes less likely. When you peel back the layers and examine the grounding philosophy of the world our culture is pursuing, you start to realize that just punishments like the one we witnessed become less likely.

All of us want, expect, hope for, and even need justice rightly applied. This is an issue of ontology—of nature, not merely socialization. Some in the social sciences claim we only desire vindication because we've been socialized to. I object. We've all observed in children a deep desire for fairness from a very young age. You never taught your little one to say, "That's not fair," but you've heard it. Where did it come from? It's innate. And from what Scripture reveals, it's an issue of creation—God created us with a deep conviction for justice.

No Justice Without a Standard

Though all of us instinctively desire justice rightly applied, point two stands: there is no impartial application of justice without an objective standard of morality. You cannot have unbiased, righteous judgment if there is no objective, clearly stated standard for right and wrong.

I encourage you to think about this deeply, because we don't live in a culture that likes to think deeply. We live in a culture given to amusement. That word is interesting: the prefix "a" negates, and "muse" means to think. So amusement literally means without thought. Our culture says, "Don't think; just live in the moment." Deep thinking can be hard. Some answers don't come easily; they require investigation.

We do not like injustice—which means we want justice. This is why crime dramas do so well: CSI, Law & Order, and all the rest. If the good guy doesn't win, we're deeply conflicted. We cannot stand biased, unfair judgment. We get angry when it appears certain levels of society receive different justice—when ethnicity, socioeconomic position, or political clout seems to shield someone. We are very sensitive to inequity. Yet that desire for fair, unbiased justice is completely impossible without a standard of right and wrong that is consistently applied and agreed upon.

What This Ancient Book Is

You might be wondering what this has to do with Deuteronomy 1. We're six weeks into this study and not a third of the way through the first chapter. What does a 3,400-year-old piece of literature have to do with Southern California in 2020? Some view it as draconian and repressive. How could something from a Bronze Age theocracy speak to people with iPhones, Alexa, and Wikipedia?

The book of Deuteronomy—the name means "the second law"—is the message of Moses, the great redeemer of Israel. Israel had been enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years. Through the ten plagues, God released them, and Moses brought them to Mount Sinai (also called Horeb), where he received a divine law and established a covenant between God and the people. That was forty years before this book. For the next forty years, that generation disobeyed and died in the wilderness. Now their children prepare to enter the Promised Land, and Moses, knowing he will die, reads the law again to renew the covenant so they will know how to lead themselves.

Deuteronomy follows a specific format—a treaty format from the mid-second millennium BC. Because Moses was raised within the political structures of Egypt for the first forty years of his life, he knew this format well. This is literally a treaty document between God and a people. Part of that format is recounting the previous history, which is what Moses does from chapter 1:6 through chapter 4. As the saying goes, those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.

A Divinely-Given Constitution

Here Moses takes them back to Exodus 18, reminding them of the structure ordained for them to live and thrive. This is a 3,400-year-old constitution, declared to be the divine revelation of God, called Yahweh—every time you see "Lord" in capital letters, that's the name Yahweh. It establishes a hierarchy of leadership: leaders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. And these leaders were to be selected by the people—a democratically selected, representative government under a constitution they believed was divinely given. Sound familiar? There are real similarities between what they had and what we have.

These leaders were to be wise, understanding, and knowledgeable. They were to know the law, interpret it, and apply it wisely. That brings us to point three: the community will collapse if it is not governed by righteous, impartial, and courageous leaders according to a superordinate rule.

There is a lot there. We all desire justice applied fairly. Fair, impartial justice cannot happen without an agreed-upon, objective standard of morality. And you can have the best laws imaginable, but if you do not have leaders who apply them righteously, impartially, and courageously, the laws are of little value. Study the Roman Republic: they started well, then moved away from righteous, impartial, courageous application of law, and everything destabilized and fell apart—often very quickly.

God gave Israel his law as an expression of his perfect nature. Israel agreed to relate to God by that law, entering a covenant. They were to select leaders who would lead them, and if they walked out the law with righteous, impartial, and courageous leadership, they would experience blessing—what Jesus would call the abundant life.

A 200-Year Experiment

Now fast-forward 3,400 years. All of us are involved in a cultural experiment that has been going on in the West for the better part of two hundred years—a culture that has effectively rejected everything Moses and Israel stood for. So we have a huge problem: we desire justice rightly applied, but our culture pushes back against the very thing that produces it. This philosophy is often called postmodernism.

You may not know the word, but you know its ruling ideas. Postmodernism questions the existence of a superordinate rule—a rule that governs us all—claiming every culture has different rules, so none can be binding over all. It questions the existence of a moral lawgiver—there's no God. And because there's no moral law and no lawgiver, it questions the existence of a single unifying story, a meta-narrative, that holds culture together. For nearly three thousand years, culture grew according to a cohesive story. Postmodernism says there is no superordinate rule, no moral lawgiver, and no common story.

Postmodernism rejects any standard of right and wrong. It says, "You do you," and "I have my truth and you have your truth." But that begs the question: is there a truth? This isn't new. Just before Jesus was condemned to die, Pontius Pilate asked him, "What is truth?" That's our culture today. Postmodernism makes the self-defeating truth claim that there is no absolute truth—and labels anyone asserting absolute truth as exercising a "will to power."

What does this mean? Our cultural philosophy is in conflict with our conscience, and that is destabilizing. It creates cognitive dissonance. We want what can only be had by an objective moral law rightly applied, yet we don't believe such a law exists. And that leads a man convicted by the testimony of more than 80 women to say, "But I didn't do anything wrong"—and who are you to say he did?

Nietzsche and the Bloodiest Century

Study history and you'll discover that everything we enjoy as a culture is the result of a ruling philosophy, a meta-narrative going back 3,400 years to Mount Sinai. That's why this book matters. But we're about 200 years into a cultural experiment of deconstruction whose consequences are not yet fully realized.

About 150 years ago, a young man was on his way to seminary to become a minister. Unable to find adequate lodging, he ended up staying in what turned out to be a brothel, and it changed his life. His name was Friedrich Nietzsche. He never became a minister; he became one of the most fascinating philosophers, dying in 1900. But before that, he wrote a piece called "The Madman," in which he declared, "God is dead, and we have killed him. What will become of us, the murderers of God?" He theorized that if you remove a moral lawgiver and a moral law, nothing governs society except the meaning each person ascribes for himself—and that this would lead to chaos, bloodshed, and anarchy. He died in 1900. What happened in the twentieth century? We are the recipients of that death.

This pattern isn't new. Follow Israel through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and the prophets, and you'll see a repeated cycle: they walk according to God's superordinate rule, then reject it, then society crumbles. They lose justice, oppression increases, markets collapse, and enemies overtake them. Then they cry out, and in mercy God sends a prophet. The prophets—sometimes called seers because they could see clearly when everyone else was in a fog—would take the book of Deuteronomy and call the people to repent, to turn back to God's principles so they could experience blessing again. And what did the people do to the prophets? They arrested, beat, killed, and persecuted them, then slid further into judgment.

The Church as Prophetic Voice

So what does this old piece of literature have to do with Southern California in 2020? Point four: collapsing societies desperately need prophetic voices courageously calling for a return to God.

Look at our culture—not just in the United States but throughout the West—and you'll see fractures leading to destabilization and potentially future collapse. We can be blinded to these fractures by being told to live in the now, not think deeply, and just amuse ourselves. And we amuse ourselves to death. It is frightening how fragile things are and how fast they can ignite.

Some object. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker's bestselling book Enlightenment Now argues that everything is getting better through human reason and science. And in some respects, good things are happening—infant mortality in Africa now matches Europe's in the 1950s, poverty is decreasing, the Gates Foundation nearly eradicated polio. You could be lulled into thinking everything will be fine. That's exactly what you'd have thought in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, the most scientifically advanced society in the world—just before two world wars killed millions upon millions. And consider that two major powers of the twentieth century rejected the idea of a superordinate principle and a God: Mao's China killed around 70 million, and the USSR around 20 million—nearly a hundred million people in the bloodiest century on record. Things can destabilize very fast.

Societies need continual renewal, reformation, a course correction. They desperately need righteous, impartial, and courageous leaders ruling according to a superordinate moral law—and we're being told that law doesn't exist. If it doesn't, what hope do we have?

Not Better Politics—God

Our culture needs prophetic voices courageously calling for a return to God—not a return to better politicians or better policy, but a return to God. I've heard people say, "If we just get better politicians in." That's what Germany thought, and they got Nietzsche's Übermensch.

The individuals our culture needs are those who know the superordinate principle and the God who ordained it, who can interpret it and are wise enough to apply it. That is the church. And here is the frightening reality: the church has been quiet for far too long. One major problem in the last thirty years has been a theology that says everything will get terrible, but don't worry—we'll be raptured out of here. I'm not saying Jesus won't return; he will. But don't turn your brain off and conclude it's fine to do nothing because he'll rescue us. What if you, your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are still here?

That was the mindset of Israel before Assyria and Babylon destroyed them: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," and "Tomorrow will be like today, only more abundant." When the prophet Isaiah told Hezekiah that in a hundred years Babylon would carry his sons and daughters into captivity, Hezekiah's response was, "At least there will be peace in my day" (Isaiah 39). It doesn't affect me; somebody else can deal with that.

You Shall Not Be Afraid

Society needs the church to be vocal—not about politics, but about the principles of Scripture. Someone says, "I don't believe in God." Fine—but can you disprove that societies ordered on the principles of this book have been better for people? Wisdom is justified by her children; the outcomes matter. We need individuals with knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, governed by morals, values, and ethics—and that's all of us, not just me, speaking clearly the principles of Scripture.

That may cause apprehension. About six months ago, a woman in our church who teaches elementary school came to me, deeply concerned. Her district had brought in trans activists during a training session, telling teachers to teach certain ideas to first, second, and third graders. She and her Christian colleagues asked, "What should we do?" I said the teachers need to speak up and say, "We will not do that"—like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel, who would not bow to the image of the king.

When you have no valid objective moral values, anything goes. Nietzsche saw this. Add the explosion of knowledge and information, and it happens faster than you can imagine—but knowledge and information are not the same as understanding and wisdom. I read this past week from Vice News that, following successful womb transplants from deceased women that allowed otherwise barren women to bear children, a doctor in the UK—a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and founder of the London Transgender Clinic—argued it should be illegal to deny transgender women a uterus transplant so they could have a baby. If you think all that's fine, you can disregard everything I'm saying. But maybe it's not.

Moses says, "You shall not be afraid in any man's presence." Yet the church is fearful to say anything because people might say, "Where do you get off?" We don't have much of an option. We can be quiet and let things go as they will, or we can speak up and say, "I object," when a coworker, friend, or family member says, "Who's to say what's right or wrong? You just do you." How well will that work, and for how long?

Paul wrote that all these Old Testament things were written for our admonition, for us living in these times, and then said words worth memorizing: "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Corinthians 10:12). Something to think about.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we stand here today two days away from a primary vote in California. You gave us a voter guide—it's called the Bible. God, I pray you would stir us to speak with clarity about what the principles of Scripture teach and exhort, even if those we share it with persecute, scream, yell, and get angry. Help us to be kind and gracious, but help us to be clear and to stand upon the truth of your Word. It's your desire that those whom you created—all of us, this whole world—would experience the joy of your kingdom and abundant life, and the principles guiding our culture today are not leading to that. So would you give us boldness, just as your church prayed two thousand years ago in the face of opposition: grant that your servants would speak your word with all boldness. We pray this in Jesus' name, and all those who agreed said, "Amen."