What happens when a people loses their fear of God, when the rightness of their actions are determined by an ethical standard that has no teeth in it, no ultimate consequences? Israel of the prophet Micah’s day provides a vivid example. Israel had abandoned singular devotion of Yahweh for a polytheistic religion that lowered the status of the one, true, and living God from the heights of creator, redeemer, and heavenly judge, to just one more deity in the panoply of pagan prospects. As a result, they began to violate the ethical expectations of God’s law and lived by the law of ardent and aggressive accumulation. Fueled by an insatiable covetousness, the wealthy and powerful schemed for more wealth and power because it was “in the power of their hand” (Micah 2:1). Since they could do it, and they wanted to do it, why not do it? Who was to stop them? |
