Nehemiah Would Have Listened to NPR

I heard on NPR the other day that certain people have been ignored for decades. In the wake of the 2016 election, I heard that’s how conservatives feel—ignored for decades. The people being ignored, according to the NPR story are pockets of African Americans, whose communities have received less funding and even less Christian mercy from their white brothers and sisters in the suburbs.

I feel that way, too: ignored. I feel small and helpless against the processes that guide and control our country, our communities, and even our churches.

But we have to wonder: what’s the difference between “feeling” ignored and being ignored? Are they the same?

Nehemiah has answers. As a bold leader, he always seemed to have answers. Too many foreign wives? Pull out some hair! Enemies at the gates? Carry a weapon in one hand and wall-building materials in the other! Things were simple for Nehemiah: he saw and problem and he fixed it. A social conservative and strong advocate of self-defense through violence, Nehemiah was not particularly inclined toward bleeding-heart social programs. Yet when he saw a group of people who had lost the ability to grow their own food and provide for their families, he instituted a liberal program of affirmative action.

Nehemiah 5:1-5

Now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, . . . “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers, our children like their children. Yet behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are forced into bondage already, and we are helpless because our fields and vineyards belong to others.”

Nehemiah brought this charge against those who were collecting the taxes, the nobles who were his Jewish brothers. When they had no reason for why they were perpetuating a system that kept people in bondage (despite their own history with bondage in Egypt), Nehemiah ordered them to “walk in the fear of our God” by getting rid of these taxes and restoring the property back to these people. The text says they did so without complaint!

Have you ever heard of something so Biblical and yet so similar to affirmative action? This is the concept of the jubilee! The concept of God’s extreme mercy: while you were yet sinner’s Christ died for you. Go now and do likewise. Give back to people and see to their needs.

This is the difference between feeling ignored and being ignored. If we have any capacity to give money or provide mercy we are the ones ignoring problems. We are not ignored—have we not been blessed by God itself? If you have any energy at all to reach toward reconciliation, any capacity to apologize, any capacity to forgive—these are gifts from God. And God does not give gifts needlessly, but in order to bless all people.

Even if you believe taxes should remain low in order to stimulate job creation and economic growth, how are you using the money you save from tax cuts? How could you put that money to the kinds of uses Nehemiah might have asked you to do?

[This post published in part in order to address the "Art Advocacy" requirement for IS 503. Hi Coup!]