Today, we dive into Amos 5, a passage that really challenges us to reflect on our own lives amidst the current climate of Christian nationalism in the U.S. It’s all too easy to point fingers at others while ignoring the issues lurking in our own hearts. As we dig into this scripture, we’ll explore the repeated biblical themes of justice and righteousness - concepts that are way more than just spiritual jargon; they're deeply rooted calls to action that demand our own personal accountability. I share my own journey from a former extreme conservative perspective to a more progressive understanding, emphasizing the need for self-examination and genuine compassion towards those in need. Let’s get uncomfortable together as we consider how we can align our priorities with God’s, ensuring that we’re not just critiquing the church and society but also looking inward and addressing our own sanctification.

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Takeaways:

• It's essential to engage with scripture daily, even if it's just a verse or two to start.
• Amos 5 highlights critical themes of justice and righteousness that are relevant today.
• We must resist the temptation to point fingers at others without examining our own hearts.
• Christian nationalism is a significant issue in the US, affecting how we view our faith.
• Personal transformation often requires uncomfortable self-examination and accountability to God.
• Traveling can broaden our perspectives and challenge our prejudices towards those who are less fortunate.

If you only have a couple minutes for scripture today, I got you.

Welcome to today's bite, says biblecast.

Today we are reading a chunk of scripture.

We're reading Amos 5 and one of the verses was the verse of the day on YouVersion a couple days ago.

And my typical process, if I have absolutely no mental capacity for sitting down doing a devotional opening, my Bible is my bare minimum activity is I will open the YouVersion app and read the verse of the day.

The verse of the day was from Amos 5 and that ended up leading me down a rabbit trail where I was reading the entire chapter and it was really sobering and I want to talk about it.

There's a couple really important points in here that are both personally applicable and can kind of inform our view of the world around us, especially if you are in the US right now.

Because we are going through something in the US where Christianity is being used as a political tool.

We are seeing a lot of Christian nationalism and the rise of Christian nationalism, the defending of Christian nationalism.

And while I absolutely see that and think that that is a huge problem, it's also really easy to point the finger at an external problem and avoid looking internally at all.

Human beings are always going to want to go, ah, here's what they are doing wrong.

Which if we're focusing on them and what they are doing wrong, then what I'm struggling with can kind of skate under the radar.

That is absolutely an issue I see on the right.

I am a former extreme conservative.

I was absolutely MAGA for a very long time.

Extreme extreme conservative.

And it's something that I see and saw when I was part of the far right.

But I also see it as a more progressive Christian now, where it's easy to look at what conservative Christianity is doing and point the finger at them and then avoid looking at our own hearts.

So we'll kind of dig into both sides today, which is incredibly, incredibly important.

Okay, now let's dig in.

I am in the nrsvue.

That is my personal kind of default translation.

I recommend using several translations, looking at the original text, but this is what I use as my home based Bible right now.

So Amos 5, hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation.

O house of Israel, fallen no more to rise is made in Israel forsaken on her land, with no one to raise her up.

For thus says the Lord God, the city that marched out a thousand shall have a hundred left.

And that which marched out a hundred shall have ten left.

For thus says the Lord to The house of Israel.

Seek me and live, but do not seek Bethel.

Do not enter into Gilgal or cross over into Beersheba, for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing.

Seek the Lord and live, or he will break out against the house of Joseph like fire, and it will devour Bethel with no one to quench it.

Ah, you who turn justice to wormwood and bring righteousness to the ground.

We see these two words, justice and righteousness, together, in.

In the scripture quite a lot.

And those original words are mishpat and tzedakah, justice and righteousness, mishpat and tzedakah.

And they're fascinating.

We'll talk more about that.

You who turn justice to wormwood and bring righteousness to the ground.

The one who made the Pleiades and Orion and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into who calls for the water of the sea and pours it out on the surface of the earth.

The Lord is His name, who makes destruction flash out against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress.

They hate the one who reproves and the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them.

You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.

For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins.

You who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe and push aside the needy in the gate.

Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time.

Seek good and not evil that you may live.

And so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you.

Just as you have said, hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate, it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of hosts.

Lord, in all the squares there shall be wailing, and in all the streets they shall say, alas, alas.

They shall call the farmers to mourning and those skilled in lamentation to wailing.

In all the vineyards there shall be wailing, For I will pass through the midst of you, says the Lord.

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord.

Why do you want the day of the Lord?

It is darkness, not light.

As if someone fled from a lion and was met by a bear, or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by A snake is not the day of the Lord.

Darkness, not light, and a gloom with no brightness in it.

I hate.

I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.

And the offerings of well being of your fatted animals, I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs, I will not listen to the melody of your harps, but let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings the 40 years in the wilderness, O house of Israel, you shall take up sack your king and Kaiwan your star God, your images which you made for yourselves.

Therefore, and I will take you into exile beyond Damascus, says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

That was a chunk of text.

Now, depending where you fall on the political spectrum, some of these verses may have stuck out to you more than others.

Particularly with what we're seeing here in the US with the rise of Christian nationalism.

We just had an event where the Bible was was read by government officials and it was this huge event and a lot of people were saying, wow, how incredible is this that the word of God is being read aloud to the people of America, the US and while there was a lot of celebration of it, there was also a lot of disturbance over it.

There was a lot of people looking at it and going, this is so clearly a blatant display of empty performative religion and not actually the things of God.

And while I do agree with that, while it was incredibly upsetting to me to see these people who are are openly supporting corruption, who are openly going against so many things we see in Scripture.

Justice, fun fact.

So mishpat the word for justice most the closest term we have to capture the meaning of it in the original text is social justice and righteousness, which we kind of tend to view in the church, particularly in conservative US Christianity, we tend to view righteousness as your actions being upright to the nth degree, not committing sin.

Everything you do is in accordance with God's law.

When in actuality the closest that we can get to what the original meaning of the text is what the word righteousness here is in right relationship with each other and with God.

And that takes on a completely different meaning.

So we are seeing a lot of very what people would argue is genuine, but what I would say what a lot of people view as performative performance of religion for the purposes of political power right now.

Now with that in mind, I do Think it's incredibly important to hold institutions accountable and to be looking out for what is our church doing?

What is the church as a whole doing?

What are we allowing the name of Jesus to be placed on, to be kind of used as something to bolster the power and the influence of something.

But it's also really easy to get distracted by that.

It's really easy to read a passage like this and go, oh, absolutely.

We're seeing the church turn away the needy and support corruption and people who are in power and support greed and worship money and power and all of these things.

I mean, our president just erected a gold statue of himself on a golf course, which is all kinds of Daniel right now.

But it's really easy to get swept up in that and then allow our hearts to harden towards other people who claim the name of Jesus without actually holding ourselves accountable to hold the values and take the actions that we are demanding of what we might consider to be the opposing side.

So, for example, it is much easier to point out how the church TM as a conglomerate is failing the poor and maybe not address the attitudes that we have in our heart towards the poor.

I was traveling recently and I will stand by the fact that travel is one of the absolute best ways to realize where the hardness is in your heart and kind of shake up, up your view of what normal is so that you're able to have a wider range of understanding, accepting, having affection for people who look and act differently from you.

Of course, that is, you know, a bit of a privileged take.

Not everyone has the resources to go traveling.

And I am very fortunate that I have had periods in my life and had experiences my.

In my life where I am able to kind of be forced into different cultures and experiencing different things.

But it's been opening my eyes lately.

I've.

I've been praying a lot that God would open my eyes in the ways he wants them open and that he would soften my heart towards the things that he has a soft heart towards.

And a lot of that is specifically in relation to people who are less fortunate, people who are experiencing homelessness.

Because I, for a very, very long time, again, I have held some incredibly prejudiced beliefs.

I have held some incredibly privileged and unfair beliefs.

And I am still doing work to untangle those and understand, okay, what actually does God ask from me?

What of the views I have towards other people are a result of the culture I was brought up in and kind of informed that this is how God wants us to operate.

Stripping kind of that away and Looking at what does God actually say?

What does God actually require of me as an individual?

I tend to be very uncomfortable when I am around people who are clearly in need.

I don't know exactly what that's rooted in, but I tend to have a very avoidant reaction towards seeing people who are in a very clearly visibly desperate situation.

And it just, for a very long time has been just easier to avoid it and go, okay, someone else is going to take care of that.

And recently, in the last year or two, I would say this has kind of been brought to my attention.

God has kind of been bringing it up to me as something that I very much need to work on.

Because like I just said a couple minutes ago, it's very easy to go, ah, the church is failing people who are in need.

Ah, Christian nationalism is making it very, very difficult for people who are in need.

And we're not doing what we need to do, and they're not doing what they need to do while completely ignoring how I am contributing to the problem.

And so I have been asking God for quite a while now to mold my heart, to shape my heart, specifically as it relates to people who are in need, who are typically neglected, people who are typically overlooked.

Now, there's kind of a tricky balance here of wanting to put my money where my mouth is while also not falling into the trap of talking about the things that I'm doing online for recognition.

So without naming, you know, specific things that I'm doing, there have been big sacrifices that my husband and I have made recently in order to make an effort to take care of people who are less fortunate than we are.

And as those actions have been ongoing, like I mentioned a second ago, we were traveling recently and I did notice a difference in my heart posture when I am witnessing things, situations where people are less fortunate, where people are being overlooked and oppressed.

And that might sound like a very, very small change, like, okay, why are we talking about this?

Why does it make a difference?

Congratulations.

There was a teeny tiny change in your heart posture as a result of changing your actions.

And I think that's something that we need to be talking about more because we cannot be asking to hold the church accountable.

We cannot be asking to hold other people accountable for things that we ourselves are pretending are not an issue in our own heart.

So it's really easy to look at verses like, woe to you who desire the day of the Lord.

Why do you want the day of the Lord?

It is darkness, not light.

And all these verses that could really easily be applied to people who are talking about the end times and like, all right, Jesus, come now, we want the end.

We want the end times.

End times is even more of a push right now.

It's really easy to look at things like this and go, ah, I can apply this template externally.

I can apply this template and bring down judgment, even honestly what feels like.

And maybe is righteous judgment, righteous holding of accountability.

But it's also incredibly easy to let our own hearts slip out of the line of examination in the process, if that makes sense.

You know, we just recently went through tsa.

My husband went on a business trip and I went with him.

And just the process of intense scrutiny and examination that you go through, it's really easy to go, ah, okay, you know what?

Actually, I get a pass out of this line when we're talking about holding each other accountable to the things of God, to the things that God genuinely cares about.

Because what does God say in Micah 6, 8?

What does God require of us?

To love justice, to seek justice, to enact justice.

Another phrase that, that really captures the meaning of the original text is to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.

It's incredibly easy to apply that template externally.

And that's a trap that a lot of people who are celebrating the rise of Christian nationalism right now are falling into.

It's easy for us too, on the other side of that to fall into it as well.

And the things that we are holding the church accountable for, I think are very valid and are very, very important.

The name of Jesus is being used right now to justify a lot of really terrible things that have nothing to do with, and in fact fly in the face of what Jesus stands for, what God stands for, what he calls us, to the priorities that he has given us.

But we also need to be so incredibly careful that in calling out corruption, and rightly so, in holding people accountable, and rightly so, for using the name of Jesus, that we aren't then doing the exact same thing they are doing.

So let's talk practical action steps, because that is what I am all about here on this page.

What is something that you can do today?

I'm gonna give you a journaling prompt and I wanna encourage you to sit down with your journal.

You can physically journal, you can do a voice note on your phone, but I would encourage you to sit and at least think through this question with God, invite him into your heart, invite him to speak to you, and then sit down and do some journaling and ask God, Lord, where are my priorities different from yours?

Where might I be trying to hold external people, external organizations, Christianity as a whole accountable in ways I'm not holding myself accountable and then kind of sit in the discomfort.

It is okay to be uncomfortable.

We are not promised comfort.

In fact, we are promised as followers of Christ to discomfort and struggles and troubles.

And so getting uncomfortable and allowing the Holy Spirit to do the hard work of changing our hearts and convicting us is incredibly important.

Sanctification is an ongoing process and it's not supposed to be comfortable because we are supposed to be getting closer and closer to what Christ is like, which is going to involve constantly and repetitively dying to self, laying down what we want and getting uncomfortable.

Okay, that is all I have for you.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

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All right, I have you a great day and I'll see you in the next one.

Bye.