Woe to you lawyers! You load men up with burdens grievous to bear, while you yourselves do not lift a finger to help carry these burdens. Woe to you! You build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. You yourselves are witnesses that you approve the deeds of your fathers: they killed them, and you build their tombs! Therefore also the wisdom of God has said, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will slay and persecute, so that the blood of the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah who perished between the altar and the temple. Truly I say to you, it will be required of this generations. Woe to you, lawyers! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You have not entered in yourselves, and those who were entering in you have hindered.

I intend to be a lawyer because of, not despite, Jesus’ harsh words to lawyers. He implicates them in the destruction of Jerusalem and in the blood of every righteous man slain from the foundations of the earth. It would be an understatement to say that a negative view of lawyers has some scriptural basis. Nevertheless, it is because of the things the wisdom of God says about law that I am choosing lawyering as an occupation rather than trying to make my career in biblical studies, either in academia or behind the pulpit.

To read Psalm 119 is to feel the joy of a man experiencing law as all it was meant to be — a way that God interacts with and enlightens the life of man. The Psalm is dominated by ten synonyms for law: torah ‘law’, ‘edah ‘testimony’, derek ‘way’, pikkud ‘precept‘, hok ‘statute’, mitzvah ‘commandment’, tsedeq ‘righteous(ness)’, mishpat ‘judgment’, dabar ‘word’, imrah ‘saying’. For those who take Psalm 119 seriously as scripture, one thing is inescapable: law is something worth delighting in.

And yet it is also true that law is the means by which the strong oppress the weak. Jesus puts it this way in Matthew:

But woe to you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: you neither go in yourselves nor allow those who are going in. Woe to you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You devour widows’ houses, and make pretentious long prayers. Therefore you will receive the greater damnation. Woe to you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You circle land and sea to make one convert, and when he is made, you make him twice the son of hell you are!

The law, as God intends it, is to be a means by which weak and strong, rich and poor, may be given impartial justice. The reality on the ground, on the other hand, is that it is often a means by which the weak prey on the strong. One formulation of this predatory principle, one which can be wince-inducing for those who too enthusiastically turn capitalism into a value system, is James’ rhetorical question to the twelve tribes scattered abroad, “Is it not the rich who oppress you?”

One response to the inequities of the world-system around us, a response not to be discounted, is to disengage from the structures of oppression. This will doubtless sound strange to modern democratic man, who sees the State either explicitly in the case of North Korea or implicitly in the case of the United States as the central institution of salvation.

The Amish and Hutterites, and to a lesser extent any other Christians who choose to handle their disputes out of court, are examples of this way of responding to systemic injustice. And while they are not perfect, they have made some very real progress in seeking justice. All the notoriety about shunning aside, it is true that the Amish have managed to build a peaceful society with alternative structures of conflict resolution that has worked more or less successfully for two hundred years. And their number has increased during this period, growing from perhaps 5,000 Amish about ninety years ago to about 500,000 today. To do this with acceptable levels of material prosperity and superior levels of physical and mental health to the wider culture is no mean task. We must not, as some Christians do, dismiss out of hand their model of approaching society.

It is in some ways similar to what the early church did. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul puts it this way:

Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? . . . I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? No, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goes to law with brother, and that before infidels! Now therefore there is utterly fault among you, because you go to law with one another. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather be defrauded?

To the extent that early Christians heeded Paul’s words, to that extent they set up their own ways of dealing with disputes (including simply absorbing a loss rather than going to the corrupt unbelieving world-system for justice). To that extent they also took care of social welfare, doctrinal discipline, and other such issues “in house.”

But such a situation could not last indefinitely, and this is due to an inconvenient biblical principle that the shallower sorts of evangelical thinking ignore: diligent, careful, consistent following of biblical principles leads to numerical, economic, and material dominance in society. Try as you might to avoid it, the meek can and will inherit the earth. The unrighteous most assuredly are storing up their wealth for the righteous.

The Christians multiplied and began to replace unbelievers as the dominant group in the Roman Empire. All this was done without weapons, and through several different avenues. First, the Christian community took full advantage of human biology. While Romans often used abortion or exposure to destroy their own offspring, Christians refused to participate in either. The Didache, a document of the very early church written sometime between 50 and 120 AD, commands “thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born” (Didache 2:2, Lightfoot Translation). This in itself was an advantage. Secondly, Christians made the concept of becoming a Christian by adoption more than just a metaphor: they literally took babies that the pagans exposed to die, incorporating them into the community of faith. This practice added to Christian numbers significantly and was so threatening that the Roman Empire outlawed the practice on pain of death. Christians, emboldened by their faith, ignored the order and continued taking the pagan babies. Third, pagans who saw the manifest superiority of the Christian way of belief and action converted in droves. This started among the lower classes but it was not too long before the elites began to take notice as well. Because those in power have the most to lose from a social revolution, they resisted strongly, but they were eventually won over.

In short, Christians carried out a cultural conquest through faith rather than force, through moral rather than military means. Those segments of modern evangelicalism which seem to take joy in losing decry the reign of Constantine as the moment when the church lost its way, laying down its prophetic mantel as a select group outside of the world and calling it to repentance, and instead becoming worldly. While it is true that the seductive lure of power has worked no small corruption in the history of the church, cultural victory was not a betrayal but a logical outgrowth of the separate holiness of the church.

When I quoted Paul above, I left out the following and replaced it by ellipses:

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more so things that pertain to this life?

And so the verdict is this: the concept of the saints judging the world is embedded in the very passage which urges separation from its legal system. This paradox needs to be pondered carefully. We know from Genesis that the calling out of Abraham from the idolatrous nations was, paradoxically, the beginning of a process by which all of the families of the earth were to be blessed.

Similarly, it is true that the law was given to Israel to make it distinct, to separate it from the nations. But was the ultimate goal of the law the exclusion of the gentiles from God’s blessing? Heaven forbid. They were excluded that they might one day be included. The blessing of all nations through Israel was the end goal of the law, as Isaiah puts it this way:

And it shall come to pass in that day that the mountain of Yhwh’s house will be established on the top of the mountains, and will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will flow into it. And many peoples will go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountains of Yhwh, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion the law will go forth, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge among the nations, and will rebuke many peoples, and they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war any more.

Just as the separation, that is, the holiness of Israel was to bubble over into blessing for the wider world, so also the separation of the church was to do the same. In retrospect, it is no wonder that the Roman Empire was Christianized. Are we to be upset that a sustained three-hundred year evangelistic program converted the majority of people living in the Empire? Are we to be upset about the fact that the Emperor became Christian? Heaven forbid!

Now, if it is the will of God that none should perish, but that every knee should bow and declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ, this surely includes rulers. And, if the conversion of these rulers is meaningful, it will have repercussions for how they rule. Thus, the Christian Emperors, for all their faults, did many good things. They outlawed the killing of infants by exposure. They caused the gladiatorial games to cease, so that human beings no longer killed other human beings for sport. And as Christianity spread beyond the borders of the dying empire to new lands, further victories occurred. In the Middle Ages, for all its faults, the spread of Christendom lead to the elimination of slavery within its borders.

Those who look at Constantine as a disaster for Christianity must think seriously about what they say when they urge Christians not to become involved in “worldly affairs.” When those in power came to Christianity, should they have abdicated? I can imagine a Christian Emperor saying, “Christians ought not to legislate their morality. I will step down as soon as I can find a suitably pagan replacement who can ensure the continuation of infanticide, the murder of Christians, the sport-killing of men in arenas, and the enslavement and maltreatment of millions of people.” That this course should have been implied is the implication that modern pietistic Christians must face up to when they speak with unqualified disdain for the Christian-domination Roman Empire and the Christian-dominated Middle Ages.

The Amish today, if they continue to be prolific, will at some point face, and are beginning already to face, the same question as the early church: how long can a Christian counter-culture experience long-term sustained growth and still remain a counter-culture?

In 1920, 5,000 Amish made up one two-hundredth of a percent of the United States. As of today, they make up one-sixth of a percent of the United States. They are still decidedly a counter-culture. But if they continue to double in population every twenty years, they will make up about 1% of the US by 2060, and 4% by 2100. If present growth rates continue (and growth rates do change, I know) the Amish will make up one-third of the United States by 2160.

How much of the US has to be Amish before the Amish are forced to become involved in politics. If the Amish made up fifty percent of the US, would they be able to stand back and refuse to vote while our politicians launch yet another senseless war that kills countless innocent people overseas? If they Amish made up seventy-five percent of the US, do you think they would stand by as the remaining quarter allowed millions of abortions to occur? Of course not. The truth is that, no matter what the Amish may say, the current political non-engagement of the Amish is only a temporary holding pattern. Unless the Amish way of life collapses, they will at some point become activists.

In fact, that day may soon be upon us. My sources close to the ground in Holmes county tell me that Amish there are already discussing voting in the next election. It appears that their aversion to abortion and gay marriage are causing inner soul-searching over the morality of simply leaving politics to the current godless leadership. This soul-searching will only continue to increase as Amish faithfulness causes these meek people to inherit more and more of the earth.

What I am getting at is this. I understand that there is a time and place for Christian non-involvement in the unjust structures of the world. I understand that there are deep systemic injustices in modern law, that there are structures of oppression embedded in the law. (Anyone who doubts this has not looked seriously at the vast difference between the amount of legal aid that rich and poor can buy, the absolute mazes of loopholes that the guilty can hide in, or the destruction that the war on drugs is wreaking on the urban and often black poor.)

But there comes a point, both corporately and individually, when silence in the face of injustice becomes a betrayal of the gospel. For me, I am persuaded that this point is now. And so off to law school I go.

Here’s Amos 1 13-15:

Thus says Jehovah, For three transgressions of B’nei Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away their punishment;  because they have ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead to enlarge their own territory.  And I will set fire to the wall of Rabbah [their capital city], and it will devour its palaces, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind;  and their king will go into captivity, he and his princes together, says Jehovah.

Here’s Amos 2 6-8

Thus says Jehovah, For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away their punishment;  because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes;  who trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the earth, and they turn aside the way of the lowly.  And a man and his father go in to the same girl, to dishoner my holy name.  And they lay themselves down on clothes taken in pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of those they condemned in the temple of their God.

And Amos 3 8-11

The lion has roared;  who will not fear?  The Lord Jehovah has spoken, who can keep from prophesying?  Announce this in the palaces at Ashdod, and in the palaces in the land of Mizraim, and say, Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Shomron, and behold the great tumults in the midst of it, and the oppressed in the midst of it.  For they do not know to do right, says Jehovah, they who store up violence and destruction in their palaces.  So thus says the Lord Jehovah, An adversary will encircle the land, and he will take away your palaces will be looted.

Amos 4 1-2

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are in the mountain of Shomron, who oppress the poor, and who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, Bring us more to drink!  The Lord Jehovah has sworn by his holiness that behold, the days will come upon you that he will take you away with hooks, and your offspring with fishhooks.

Amos 4 11 (one Mitchell point if you can tell me what this might have to do with social justice)

I have overthrown some of you as God overthrew Sedom and Amorah, and you were like firebrand plucked out of the flames, yet you have not returned to me, says Jehovah.

Amos 5 8-9

Jehovah is his name, who strengthens strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled will come against the fortress.  They hate him who rebukes in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks uprightly.  So because you enact taxes upon the poor, taking from him taxes of wheat;  you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them;  you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink wine of them.  For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins.  They afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from what is rightfully theirs.  So the prudent will keep silence in that time, for it is an evil time.  Seek good, and not evil, that you may live;  and so Jehovah, the God of Hosts, will be with you as you have spoken.  Have was is evil, and love what is good, and establish justice in the gate.  Perhaps Jehovah God of Hosts will be gracious to those who remain of Joseph.

Amos 6 1-8:

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and put their trust in the mountain of Shomron, who are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel came!  Pass to Calneh, and see;  and from there go to Hamath the great;  then go down to Gath of the Philistines–are they better than these kingdoms?  Or is their border greater than your border?  You who put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near;  who lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves in the stall;  who chant to the sound of the viol, and invent for themselves instruments of music, like David;  who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest ointments;  but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.  Therefore they will now be carried off into captivity with the first who are carried away, and the banquent of those who stretched themselves out will be removed.  The Lord Jehovah has sworn by himself, says Jehovah the God of Hosts, I abhor the excellency of Jacob, and hate his palaces;  therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is in it.