How Long, God? Living Faithfully in a World of Injustice

If You're Not Angry, You're Not Paying Attention

One of the hardest things about being Christian — or Jewish — is keeping trust in a God who's supposed to be loving, just, and in control of everything. Especially when you look at all the violence and injustice around us. It often feels like God is either unable or unwilling to step in and help.

Now, this isn't a new struggle. Moses went through it, and so did Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk. This issue was so common that their passionate calls and complaints about God actually became part of scripture.

Habakkuk's World Sounds Like Ours

When you read what Habakkuk wrote about his world, it sounds a lot like ours. He saw a society ripped apart by violence, fighting everywhere, and a justice system that barely worked — or worse, protected the rich while it crushed the powerless.

How long do I have to yell for help, God, before you do something?

It's a fair question, right? Just add some details and Habakkuk could be talking about us.

How long can well-off countries like ours hoard material resources, cutting international aid budgets further and further, starving people already made vulnerable by extreme poverty — before God finally shows up to bring justice and ensure that our world's resources are shared equitably?

How long can the truth about the way Australia tried to wipe out its indigenous people stay hidden under feel-good slogans and rebranded policies — before God acts to lift up those who've been hurt for so long?

How long can powerful countries keep supporting brutal regimes to protect their own financial interests, ignore genocide where it doesn't suit them, or justify violence when it does? How many bombed hospitals or villages can they explain away before God steps in and brings real peace?

How long, God? How long?

God Doesn't Get Mad at the Questions

No one — not Moses, not Job, not Jeremiah or Habakkuk — ever really got a clear answer from God. Sure, God does respond, but not with easy explanations that make everything add up.

But what matters more is that God doesn't get mad at the questions or at those asking them. In fact, when Job's friends tell him off for doubting God, God says Job is the one who truly gets it.

When we are desperate for an answer to dreadful violence and injustice, God doesn't hand us a solution. Instead, God offers relationship.

The Just Shall Live by Faithfulness

The second portion of the text from chapter two is part of God's response to Habakkuk. God talks about a vision of justice and peace — a promise for the future. Through the prophet, God calls people to keep holding on to the promise and to live faithfully while they wait, standing strong in a world gone crazy.

The climax of God's response comes in the verse that's perhaps best known out of this short book — Habakkuk 2:4:

The just shall live by faith.

Now, there is some uncertainty about this translation because there is an ambiguous pronoun before the word "faith." It could be "the just shall live by their faith," or it could be "the just shall live by its faith" — meaning the faith of God's vision, God's promise.

Either way, that word "faith" is probably better rendered as faithfulness or trust rather than simply "belief." In other words, God calls the hearers of this text to live as people who trust God's promise to stay true — even when things are rough.

God Gets Involved

God's promise might have worn thin after all this time if it weren't for what we've seen of God through Jesus. Jesus shows us that God doesn't just stay distant while we suffer. God, embodied in Jesus, gets involved, suffers with us, and leads the way. In Jesus, God shows us how to turn even hate and anger into forgiveness and love.

The big questions about evil and suffering are still here. We don't know why things are the way they are or how long they'll last. But every time we come together, admit our own selfishness, and share in what is sacred, we remember that God is in this with us.

Every time we reach out to each other, share peace, or hope for something better, we are showing a bit of what God's true reign could look like.

Holding on to that hope doesn't fix everything, but it gives us the strength to stand up for what's right and to keep pushing for peace and justice — until this world that God loves is finally made whole.