Theology Thursday
with Dave Holzhauer
One of my favorite novels is The Count of Monte Cristo, a story of a man who has everything taken from him and then acquires unlimited means to seek revenge. The story explores what happens when any one idea becomes what you follow at all costs. It shows what it costs a man bent on revenge unless he is saved from himself.
The Count of Monte Cristo is hardly the only human question about justice delayed. The Roman poet Horace expressed it as pede poena claudo (Punishment comes limping). The prophets and Psalms both ask God why he has not yet given them justice. In the book of Habakkuk, the prophet Habakkuk asks God why, as a just god, he allows wickedness and wicked people to prosper (Habakkuk 1:2-4). God responds that he already has a plan in motion that Habakkuk “would not believe if told.” Hababkkuk’s follow up question is pretty logical: when? The prophet goes so far as to compare all the people of the world to fish, who have no one to protect them and are helpless against the one catching them (the wicked). Habakkuk’s response epitomizes the feelings of everyone who has ever waited for justice; the wait seems interminable and the situation seems worse and worse.
God replies:
“Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so he may run who reads it.
For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.
Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,
but the righteous shall live by his faith.” (Habakkuk 2:2-4)
God’s response does not give us the answer we long for. It doesn’t give a specific time; it simply says to trust God, that justice may seem slow, but it is coming. That does feel particularly satisfying. As the rest of Habakkuk 2 and the Bible in general show, God gets deeply angry over injustice and wrong. However, we’re reminded in Ezekiel 33:11 that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; he desires that everyone would turn from their wicked ways and live. He extends the same grace to others that we want for ourselves when we make mistakes or wrong others. However, that grace is in perfect tension with God being unable to tolerate injustice. We’re called to trust in God’s timing, no matter how delayed that timing seems, because while we can only see a small part of the picture, God not only sees the whole thing but is working out his plans. And what seemed like an injustice unpunished might just be a facet in someone else’s redemption.
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