Week 15 Psalm 98
Down near the end of the psalm there’s a bunch of joy & excitement in the world. The whole world. Not just countries full of people. The psalm says shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth – and includes oceans rivers & mountains.
A question that comes to mind is: What’s All the Excitement About?
The answer is that the Lord is coming: to judge the earth. (And) He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.
That’s a pretty intriguing thing to hear in the modern world since there’s already no shortage of laws & rules & regulations & statutes & bylaws & courts & lawyers & judges in Canada. There’s plenty of judgment-justice going on. But the writer’s point is that when the Lord comes he’s going to judge everyone-and-everything with a specific kind of justice. Righteous & Equitable Justice. So the issue is: Quality of Justice.
I wonder about how much Righteousness & Equity there is in our justice system. I’ve gotta figure that if everyone-and-everything in the world is going to be cranked-up because justice will be Righteous & Equitable Justice then it sounds like currently departments-of-justice aren’t exactly highlighting Righteousness or Equity.
If a justice-system is a regulatory scheme that fundamentally operates on – let’s just say – Unrighteousness & Inequity (meaning some people get unjustly advantaged and others get unjustly disadvantaged) then how big a surprise is it if (almost) everyone is happy when Unrighteousness & Inequitable Justice gets replaced?
Note: quotes from Psalm 98:4 9 (NIV)