Theme: CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Text: “The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it.” – Proverbs 29:7.

Disaffection, complaints, grudges, sometimes emanate from imbalances and inequalities in society. Social justice is to seek to be fair and reasonable to the less fortunate in society, to consider what they need and to promote their general welfare and wellbeing. To claim ignorance of their conditions as an excuse not to help is sheer hypocrisy. Job, the man of God, was a man who succoured the poor and went the extra mile to search out how to assist them. He stated: “I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out. And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.” (Job 29:16, 17) Again, he said, “…I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him…I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy…I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame.” – Job 29:12-15

To do otherwise as Christians is to dishonour God. King Solomon stated, “He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poor.” (Proverbs 14:31) For our services to be meaningful before God then we must deal fairly and equitably amongst ourselves. Apostle James declared: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” – James 1:27.