Micah's Recipe for a Courageous Life

Yesterday I wrote about how Jesus shows us the way to look at the world from God’s perspective. When we look from God’s perspective, we are aware of how the human world is not set up according to god’s priorities. God is a God of justice, but the world is divided and apportioned unjustly. God’s perspective is to do justice. But also to love kindness. And significantly, to practice a humility that can only come from continual communion with God.

The prophet Micah put it this way: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

What Micah describes is a courageously Integrated life – socially, interpersonally, and personally. Courage extends outwardly and inwardly, horizontally as well as vertically. Choose whatever metaphor or description conveys this sense of integration. Let’s examine this courageously integrated life more closely.

“Do justice” (‘im-‘asot mishpat)

• Social relationships - The basic principle Jesus operated from was the well-being and wholeness of every person. The spiritual practice that arises from this has to do with engaging in whatever set of actions that maximizes the well-being of persons in their wholeness as persons. This may involve addressing social inequities, laws that discriminate or favor only a select few. It may involve advocating on behalf of marginalized or disempowered persons. It may involve being a supportive companion for a person whose self-esteem has been dashed, and helping them piece it together again. There is no shortage of places in the world in which acts of justice, mercy, love and compassion are needed.
• Political and economic dimension – At some point in our support of persons who struggle and suffer from the inequities of life, the question arises: “Why do these unfair and oppressive conditions exist in the first place?” The continuous message of the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures is that the leaders and rulers of Israel and Judah have departed from the Mosaic covenant and law and are accumulating wealth and power for themselves at the expense of the poor of the land (which is just about everybody else). So it is that the work of justice eventually requires work at the level of how society is organized and how it functions. Frequently this requires political action of some sort. The great social reforms across history have their roots in a Biblical sense of justice.
• Restorative – Justice also must address the need for restoration of goods and of relationship. There are entire groups of people who have benefitted from the enslavement or the deprivation of other people, and not only must that oppressive practice end, something must be returned or remediated in some way. This is basic to justice. The practice of fining a person for an illegal action is based in this, as is the idea of compensating a person for damages done or losses suffered due to the actions of another person.

Love Tenderly (‘ahabat chesed)

• Therefore, to love one another with a holy, Godlike affection, with the tenderness that God feels toward us, is to love others as God loves them. The practice of ethics emerges out of this. Ethics concerns how we treat others – such as that described by Jesus: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But the command to “love tenderly” goes even further, stating, in essence, “do unto others as God would do unto them.” We are not taking the place of God as judge – because judgment belongs to God alone – but rather as one who loves tenderly, like a parent tenderly loving their child. “I love you so much.”
• This is given as a requirement – not merely a good idea if it fits into your management plan or self-improvement regimen.
• Doing justice is coupled with loving tenderly. Thus justice is not simply a legalistic requirement or set of legal rules or descriptions of how to relate to one another. It is beyond “political correctness.” [A plea: let’s expunge that phrase from our vocabulary. As Christians we should understand that it is not about being politically correct. It is about loving others the way God loves, protects and provides for them, and siding with those God protects and watches over, and whose side God has taken. The life of beatitude, the makariotic life that Jesus taught, lived and enables in each of us is one that reaches out (self-transcendently) and engages other persons lovingly, in order to help contribute to their well-being and divine fulfillment. “Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus says. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In other words, live differently from the way a vengeful, self-serving society lives. Have different priorities and a different way of relating to people.”]
• How does one do this? How does Jesus enable us to transcend ourselves in order to live in loving, justice-making relationships? That is the work of walking humbly – or of being formed spiritually by God.

Walk humbly with your God (hatsna’ leket im-elheyda) “and humbly to walk with your God.”

• Walking humbly means knowing yourself, and knowing God. Be in close fellowship with God, not exalting yourself but having an intimate knowledge of who you are, a clear understanding of where you fall short of the glory of God, as Paul quotes the Psalmist.
• There is a great quote that reminds us of how far we fall short in our loving treatment of one another: “The more I come to know men, the more I love my dog.” A long, clear, honest appraisal of our lives should produce humility within us.
• A steady reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit to work within you, restoring you to God’s paths, leading you in paths of righteousness, enabling you to practice justice and to love tenderly.
• Walking humbly is the spiritual formation component. It is to be formed by the Holy Spirit to be a person after the Father’s Heart. It is to worship God not in form only, but in Spirit and Truth. Walking humbly with God is the inner discipline, the communing with the God who dwells within us, who is known by careful listening, by daily converse, by reading prayerfully the scriptures as if engaging in a conversation.

This is a program for a courageous life. It was also Jesus’ program. He had it, he lived it, he taught it, he died for it and because of it. It is a program that will change your life, and change the world around you. It is the Realm of Heaven in the habitations of humanity.