Government

Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-080 Sunday 22 Apr 2001

Reading: PSALM 58 – CORRUPTION MASQUERADING AS GOVERNMENT

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

‘Righteous God, let me be an instrument of your justice today.’ Amen.

Here is a prayer song that grates and gnashes. Today it could well fall into the category of ‘alternative music’, the sort of music which deals with social and political issues and which serves as a conscience to the powers that be.

No wonder this psalm is jarring; it unsettles us. It begins by hurling an angry judgement on rulers who use their position and power to commit injustice and do violence to their people. The singer says they were evil from the time of their birth and, like cobras which are already deaf to the music of the snake charmer, they inject their hapless victims with venom (vs 1-5).

Such rulers today come in many guises including democratic ones. Political power holders in many nations hold their citizens to ransom and corruption in high places abounds to such an extent that, in some parts of Asia for example, an economic collapse was brought about recently due to the actions of grasping and greedy government officials. And the poor, who are already in the majority, continue to suffer.

But more powerful still than our presidents and ministers are the international economic ‘czars’ and organisations that determine the fate of our world today. Globalisation, once heralded by ‘experts’ as the harbinger of free trade and liberalisation, has in fact only managed to increase the poverty and violence suffered by the peoples of the Two-Thirds World.

Finally the song writer turns to God, asking him to judge these wicked leaders. The suffering of the many, which provides for the ease and pleasure of the few, arouses in David a fierce righteous indignation (vs 6-8). He prays to God for their destruction not for any personal reasons, he says, but because God has to be true to himself as the just God of his righteous but oppressed people (v 11).

‘0 God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry; … Take not thy thunder from us, But take away our pride’ (GK Chesterton, 1874-1936).

– Evelyn Miranda-Feliciano

Copyright Scripture Union, 2001