Missions Resources - Bibliography
Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World
Authors: Haugen, Gary
ISBN: 0-8308-2224-0
Publisher: Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1999
Summary:
Click here to see readers' reviews, or to write your own!
If you are like me, you are more or less aware that injustice prevails around the world, but it seems distant. And if you read about it, you get buried in a avalanche of statistics that dull your senses. In Good News about Injustice, Gary Haugen skillfully navigates between these twin troubles.
The U.N.’s chief investigator of the Rwandan genocide, and currently the director of the International Justice Mission, Haugen is just about the world’s most qualified person to report about outrages, but he never wavers from his Biblical vision of hope. Precisely because of this balance, the victims in his stories never feel like numbers. Be prepared to be amazed, and shocked, but without ever losing passion or hope.
Haugen starts off discussing the dillemma of wealthy Americans: injustice, particularly the spectacular injustice of the developing worlds, seems so remote that it is easy to become part of the problem. He then takes the reader on a brief tour through the Bible, showing God's passion for justice and hatred for the abuse of the weak.
It was astonishing to me to see how pervasive the call to justice resounds throughout scripture, particularly the prophets. It was as if my eyes were being opened for the first time: How could I have read those passages so many times and never seen them? How is that possible? How is it, for example, that I had heard dozens of sermons on Jesus and Lazarus, and never saw the significance of Jesus' tears? I had always heard that Jesus, the great objective, detached enlightened theologian, was weeping over the sin in the world, or was weeping over the abnormality of death in a world created for eternity.
No No No! It's so obvious. Jesus was weeping just like anyone else. He loved Lazarus, and it hurt him to see this pain. Jesus felt compassion - he did not merely think it.
Gary Haugen shows how crucial an understanding of Jesus' compassion for the weak and oppressed is, for making an eternal difference in our world today.
He never makes a point he cannot back up with scripture and real experience. He never lets the reader think too much theology, at the expense of action.
-Paul Grant
Write your own review!
Have you read Good News about Injustice? Do you want to post a comment?
E-mail it to me at pgrant@ivcf.org, and I'll post it (no vulgarities or unprintables,
please - you know!) Please put Haugen Review in the subject line. Sign it like this: "Desiree from Idaho". Thanks! -P.G
No Reader Responses Yet - Be the first!
Print
Email
Comments
Be the first one to add a comment.
To post a comment, please login or register