Isaiah 1:10-20 is a sobering prophetic passage in which God reams out the Israelites for thinking that they can honor Him while mistreating the most vulnerable of His people. We play the same game the ancient Israelites did. So many Christians today abstract their vertical relationship with God from their horizontal relationships with their neighbors and even pit the vertical against the horizontal. This is why I’m very suspicious of people who make a big fuss over glorifying God in the abstract as an act of zealous piety without exhibiting the generosity and mercy towards others that shows their genuine deliverance from the self-justification that Adam brought into the world. The abstraction of God from the creation He loves is the root of a particular immorality that afflicts God’s most zealous cheerleaders.
Tag Archives: taxes
What will we do when the poor get cut off?
Three years ago, I paid one of the first pastoral visits of my first field education internship. A girl named Dunia was in the hospital with severe appendicitis. Her mother Maribel was very distraught because she had already lost a daughter when she lived in rural Mexico where the health care system is much less adequate. Continue reading
