Moments of Public Outrage

We know from the Biblical prophets that God hates injustice. He favours the underdog - the 'small people' downtrodden by unjust powerful people and systems. We also know that Jesus gave attention to the marginalised, and called out people of power when their systems of power held people down in misery.

The call of mission for a follower of Jesus therefore includes listening to the marginalised and thinking against all the odds: "they might just be right ...".

Most ordinary members of the public also have in-built senses of justice. They may get distorted, or lost in the confusion of competing factors ... but sometimes they come to the fore at least at the local level.

Very occasionally, a collective outrage at injustice emerges at a national (majority of population) level. This past week has seen just that with the Post Office scandal, brought into the spotlight by an ITV drama. Viewing figures have exceeded all expectations, and people have been moved to combined tears and anger as they have watched the drama of ordinary people being belittled, gas-lighted, harassed and prosecuted by an intransigent big power institution that continually failed to allow any kind of mirror or light shine onto its stance or practices.

People in their hundreds of thousands seem to have instinctively felt for the ordinary folk who suffered at the hands of what had become a corporate monster, and naturally identified with the underdog undertaking a 'David and Goliath' type battle. The collective public response should give us hope: consciences are not dead, and people do have underlying principles of 'right and wrong' even in our highly secularised post-Christendom culture!

The trust in the computer system was a fundamental mistake by the Post Office, and needs to act as a warning light as society embraces further technological advances such as AI and 'intelligent' automation. Its not that these things are always evil, but for us Jesus-followers we have to keep in mind that they are human created systems, and therefore caught up in the brokenness and flaws that we find ourselves in these 'now but not yet' times. Trust God - not the systems we have created!

The nation now holds its breath, waiting to see how this corporate Goliath might actually fall. We know that such battles are not won by wearing heavy armour, but in the spiritual by God enabling well-placed deliverance.