Let's say someone approached you and said that your place of worship was sinful, and would be destroyed by God. If you don't have a place of worship, then imagine your favorite charity or non-profit. The point is the same. This thing that you believe is special, and holy, and set-apart, is somehow seen as evil enough to deserve God's judgement? How would you react? What would you say?
It's reasonable to think that you might want to defend your organization. You might talk about all the different programs you run for the poor. You might tell stories of people who have found community. You might talk about the long history of your organization, and how you have always pshed through the hard times togther. This would be a reasonable way to defend yourself. Except there's one problem. It doesn't make sense?
If someone is accused of murder, it is commonly thought that with a horde of "good character wittnesses," one can be able to find freedom. This is absurd. It is well known that no amound of good work should free someone from justice for any attrocities they have committed.
Amos 4:4-5 is a powerful passage. After laying out the oppression and injustice that God's people have been involved with, Amos has a mock call-to-wroship filled with sarcasm. He makes it clear that while his people have been living oppressive lives, their worship has been unacceptable. At it's base is the connection between worship and behavior. Worship is done by the heart and, apparently, acceptable heart-filled worship is not possible while opressing and subdjigating others.
Amos derides the people for bringing their sacrifices to the temple every day, and special tythes every three days. This is interesting since these particular sacrifices were only required annually, or every three years. The people have increased their sacrificing hundreds of times over, and yet God is not pleased with it. He is still appalled by their lack of compassion and mercy.
This is directly transferable to the present day. No amount of giving, tithing, volunteering, conversing, hosting, fasting or any other spiritual act can make our worship to God more favorable when we are actively and intentionally participating in the oppression of others.
The rest of this section is filled with a series of judgements. To the modern reader it sounds like a wrathful God, uncaring to people and selfish, bringing disaster and famine to the people of earth. But what I see here is the declaration of people not returning to their God amid disaster. However you feel about the Old Testament, and no matter what interpretive model you use, the people of this time believed that God would bring disaster in order to show his power, and bring people back to him. But these people refused to see him, even within tragedy.
I think that there is a deeper lesson here. When we refuse to see God in what is happening in the world around us, then we are refusing to see God. I don't know if God intentionally brings disaster for special purpose. But if I refuse to wrestle with those issues, then I refuse to look for God. If I say to myself, "I don't believe God would do this," and never look for God in disaster, then I am refusing God's place and power in the most significant points of history.
I beleve that these two ideas are connected. If we want out lives to look like real acceptable worship, then we are going to need to look for God in all the negative and tragic things of the world. We are going to have to struggle with the issue that God is within disaster, not to reconcile why he might do it, but at least to struggle with God's power and qualities within it.
For discussion:
1) The Old Testament makes it clear that sacrifices are not what God is after, but he did demand sacrifices. What does God want? What is true worship?
2) How do you struggle with God within disaster and suffering? What do you beleive about God's involvement in disaster? Do you think that what you believe matters? Why or why not?
3) What is the connection between worship and disaster?
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