He has told you, human one, what is good and / what the Lord requires from you: / to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God. (Mic. 6:8)
The above was one of my favorite scripture verses about a decade ago. I saw it as perfectly complementing Jesus’ dual-love commandment (love God and neighbor). Filled with the power of youthful hubris, I had no qualms telling people this was what God wanted from them. This is what God expects them to do. This was what God demanded of them. Justice, Mercy, Humility (from the NRSV translation).
It was simple. Just do it.
I used the scripture as a laundry list of things Christians were supposed to do, exhorting my church members to step up to the plate and do more. Give more money to the homeless shelter. Spend more time serving meals for those who are hungry. Go through your closet and donate all the clothes you haven’t worn in the last year. Refuse to buy any more products that use slave-produced palm oil. Speak out and protest more against racism, sexism, or whatever egregious thing is in the news right now.
God is clear in Micah. Justice, Mercy, Humility. These are the things God wants. Just do it!
Never mind that I wasn’t being very humble in my summation or how I thought MY particular vein of Christianity was better than everyone else’s.
Never mind that I kept grudges ad nauseam for the most inconsequential of slights and was all too willing to let hate seep into my thoughts when it came to those who disagreed with my preferred political and social leanings.
Never mind I wasn’t actively working to dismantle the Enemy’s (the way I usually refer to Satan/The Devil) systems and powers of oppression thereby restoring right relationships between people.
If I were totally being honest, my preference for this scripture (and others like it) was because I saw it as chastening those Christians I felt who were light on social justice and heavy on useless piety. An example would be people who only offer up “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting instead of trying to stop the root cause of such acts of violence.
It felt good to see myself as a better and more faithful Christian. It felt good to derisively laugh and scoff at those people who were on the wrong side of the culture wars. It felt good to revel in the thought those people were going to receive their just desserts in the end.
I fell into the same trap as Austin Power’s dad, “There are only two things I can’t stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.” I was so overly confident in my way of thinking, believing, and acting it led to a hypocritical hatred for those I’m told to love, thereby not working for justice on their behalf and lacking humility in any form!
If I were to put myself to the test of whether or not I was faithful and did what the Lord “required” I probably would have failed. Sure, I might have gotten some points here and there, but the final tally would have left me overwhelmingly in the red and not black.
This is what the Law is ultimately supposed to do — bring us to the end of ourselves. It did for me when I realized I wasn’t doing what it wanted, expected, and demanded of me. I had been calling on people to live a certain amount of righteousness that neither they nor I were able to do. I was setting them and myself up for failure, frustration, and burnout.
“Just do it” might work for Nike, but it doesn’t for those trying to live up to God’s requirements whether in Micah or other places (see Psalm 15 for the high demands of those who can stand in God’s presence.)
Instead, God-in-Christ fulfilled the demands of the Law so that we would be free. This is what Paul means when he writes:
God has done what was impossible for the Law, since it was weak because of selfishness. God condemned sin in the body by sending his own Son to deal with sin in the same body as humans, who are controlled by sin. He did this so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us. (Rom 8:3-4)
In Jesus’ Cross, his death and resurrection, the “requirements” of God are met. The seemingly endless list of wants, expectations, and demands was eradicated; there’s no more red or black. We are given Jesus’ own righteousness. When God sees me, it’s no longer my shortcomings: failed attempts at social justice, grudges I refused to give up, and 100% certainty I was right about everything, not least among them. God instead sees Jesus’ goodness, his faithfulness, his righteousness.
Micah 6:8 is still one of my favorite scriptures, but not because of the same reasons. It’s now one of my favorites because it reminds me of the greatness of the gift Jesus gave me on the Cross.
It is still simple. You and I are forgiven and free.
COMMENTS
One response to “Just Do It Christianity”
Leave a Reply
I see Micah 6:8 bandied about often in liberal/progressive Christian circles, for understandable reasons, but it is almost always shorn of its context in Micah 6, where God indicts the people of Israel for their repeated failures to heed the prophets and leaders whom God had sent. It gives it a whole different tenor, implying that these things which God “requires” are not a standard which anyone can hope to keep. Not that we shouldn’t aspire toward those good things, as you say, but that perhaps we need constantly to be reminded that the cross stands in for our presumption that we can “do it”. Thanks for the reflection.