Where is God's Justice? Oh wait... Maybe I Don't Want It

We read a chapter like Job 24, and we know it speaks the truth about the appalling morass of human exploitation, poverty, oppression, brutality and cruelty. And, like Job, we wonder why God seems to do nothing, to hold nobody to account, and to bring nobody to instant justice.

Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty,
and why do those who know him never see his days?

Some move landmarks;
they seize flocks and pasture them.

They drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
they take the widow's ox for a pledge.

They thrust the poor off the road;
the poor of the earth all hide themselves.

Behold, like wild donkeys in the desert
the poor go out to their toil, seeking game;
the wasteland yields food for their children.

They gather their fodder in the field,
and they glean the vineyard of the wicked man.

They lie all night naked, without clothing,
and have no covering in the cold.

They are wet with the rain of the mountains
and cling to the rock for lack of shelter.

(There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast,
and they take a pledge against the poor.)

They go about naked, without clothing;
hungry, they carry the sheaves;

among the olive rows of the wicked they make oil;
they tread the winepresses, but suffer thirst.

From out of the city the dying groan,
and the soul of the wounded cries for help;
yet God charges no one with wrong.

- Job 24:1-12

And then we shudder because we know that if God were to do that right now and deal out instant justice, none of us would escape. For whatever grade and levels of evil there are among people in general, we know that it is something that lurks in our own heart. The evil we so much wish God would prevent or punish in others is right there inside ourselves. None of us needs to be scratched very deep to uncover the darker depths of our worst desires and the evil action any of us is capable of, if pushed. As we try to stand in judgment on God, we don't really have a leg to stand on ourselves.

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?

-Psalm 130:3

Answer: Not a single solitary one of us.

- Dr. Christopher Wright, The God I Don't Understand, p. 33, 34