Evil is Evil, Good is Good.

It was a rather dull Wednesday morning; I was alone and not feeling well so it was a difficult one. I then had the sudden urge to read the Bible and sure enough a scriptural passage not only pierced through my heart but it also had my brain running at full speed. It challenged me, the church that I am a part of and mostly the country and continent that I belong to. It was the kind of passage that jumps out the Bible and demands your attention. Perhaps let me share this scripture and how it challenged not only my thinking but my role within my community at large.

The scripture is found on the book of Isaiah 5:20-23 and it reads as thus: ‘Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes, and shrewd in your own sight! Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant at mixing drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!” NRSV

This writer, supposedly Isaiah, sketched this passage within a certain context. The people of Israel and Judah had become self-absorbed and had forgotten what it means to live in community, especially since Yahweh is a communal God. Barnes relates that biblically, the term darkness denotes “ignorance, error, false doctrine, crime” whereas the term light denotes “truth, knowledge and piety”. Bitterness signifies sin (see Acts 8:23; Romans 3:14 & Ephesians 4:31). The implication of how this term is used in this passage implies that sin is bitter, and has a bitter outcome and holiness is sweet, and has a pleasurable outcome. The passage speaks of people who have become inflated with their own knowledge, one that leads them to cease from being led by the one who gives such knowledge. It also speaks of how the guilty were set free through bribes and the innocent robbed of their rights. I reckon that Israel and Judah became a society that was poverty stricken, disease stricken and violently tempered not because God had turned his back on them, but because of all the injustice that they allowed to creep into their society.

In South Africa, we live in a context where the majority of its people are Christian but often times one is tempted to think that God has relocated. This country has just undergone two trails where two men had brutally killed the women they claim to love. The first one, Oscar Pistorius was found not to have committed murder and thus charged with manslaughter. In the second trial Dewani was found not to be guilty of the murder of his wife. In December I had to bury an aunt who was murdered then raped, yes in that order. Recently in uMbulumbulu a 15 year old girl was found hanged on a tree wearing nothing on her lower body with evidence of sexual assault. Through observation, we have a nation that has come to accept such violence and is not angered by it. They are more angered by how the national soccer team performs, and many are angrier at the fact that we were knocked out of the AFCON. We are an angry nation, but sadly we are angry at the wrong things.

The poverty, crime, maladministration of funds, disease and unemployment remain the biggest challenges that should anger South Africans. But the national soccer team angers them even more. Haven’t we as a nation, defined good as evil, darkness as light and bitterness as sweet? Has not our police force and judiciary system failed the victims and the innocent but condoned and acquitted the evil doers? The task of the Church remains huge, but first it has to speak!!! Rev. Nyobole, the ex-General Secretary of Conference (MCSA) was conducting a workshop. In speaking about the witness of the church, he stated that the Church cannot relate to this government like they did to the apartheid government. This was because the current government is democratic and therefore belongs to the people. Due to this, he stated that when they have objections to certain things, the heads of the church request meetings with that department to express their concerns.

I still feel that this does not capture what witnessing is, corruption is public and the people feel its wrath. Crime, poverty and unemployment are also public. How then does the witness of the Church remain private? How is it okay that people who are affected by these challenges do not hear the Church denouncing them? The people who get to hear about these concerns are the propagators. I thus argue that it is the role of the church to audibly define good from evil, light from darkness and bitter from sweet.