"Sadly I sing this song of grief for you" (5:1).* We do not know the tune of the song by Amos, but we know the lyrics. "Beautiful Israel lies broken and crushed on the ground and cannot rise. No one will help her. She is left alone to die" (5:2). It was not so much the brokenness of the land that saddened the prophet. He grieved the loss of God’s presence in Israel. When God is gone "the city that sends 1,000 men to battle, only 100 will come back. From the city that sends 100, only 10 will come back alive" (5:2).

Where is God? Why has God’s presence been removed from Israel? The Israelites were honoring God. They were engaged in religious feasts and conducted serious meetings. They offered burnt offerings and thank offerings. They sang hymns of praise. What is wrong with God? What more does God want? Isn’t God a little too demanding?

And God spoke through Amos:

I hate it when you pretend to "honor" me. I hate your "religious" feasts and serious meetings. I will not accept your burnt offerings and thank offerings. I will not look at your offerings of peace. Away with your hymns of praise. They are just noise to my ears. I will not listen to your music, no matter how lovely it is. (5:21–23)

"Seek me and live," said God. This puzzles me. Aren’t singing praises, honoring God, and performing religious rituals symbols of ways we seek God? How many more hymns and offerings? How many more feasts and serious meetings? Why do we spend so much time and energy honoring God through hymns, festivals, offerings, and meetings when God is not pleased with these gestures? Where have we gone wrong?

In Amos 5:5, God said, "Don’t seek the idols of Bethel, Gilgal, or Beersheba." Again in verse 25, "You sacrificed to me for 40 years while you were in the desert, Israel. But always your real interest has been in your heathen gods." This is where we’ve gone wrong. Heathen gods love praises and songs, festivals and offerings. Jehovah wants justice and fair play.

Why did the Israelites praise Jehovah with their mouths but serve heathen gods in their souls? Are there correlations between praises and the lack of justice, festivals and the lack of fair play?

Perhaps. Heathen gods are projections of human desire: the desire for praises, the pleasure of festivals. Heathen gods fuel desire for self-glorification and expand the id’s territory (as in Freud’s structure of the ego). Jehovah confronts us and challenges us to move further, from the self to the others. Amos 5 reminds us that justice is first and foremost a theological endeavor.

The Israelites thought they were worshiping Jehovah. They thought wrong. They were thinking their thoughts and creating their own gods, but God wasn’t there. God cannot be created; God creates. God’s voice is radically different from ours. Amos heard God’s voice while punching holes in the sycamore fruits, fruits for the poor. The rest heard their own voices and thought theirs was God’s.

As a young pastor, I served at a church in an educational institution where many non-Seventh-day Adventist students were expected to attend morning worship, evening worship, and divine service. They had to kneel in church before the God they did not believe in and sing praises to the Being they did not know, and were not allowed to purchase anything or leave the institutional grounds on the Sabbath.

I grew up being told that in the last days we would be persecuted. We would be forced to attend church on Sunday and purchase on Saturday. I thought we were supposed to be victims of the Sunday law. I asked why these non-Adventist students were expected to observe the Saturday Sabbath, and was informed that they needed to learn the truth about the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I knew about the Sunday law, but the Saturday law confused me.

"We need to worship the true God on Sabbath." I learned this when I was very young. I learned the importance of singing praises, joining the ceremonies, keeping the Sabbath holy, refraining from bad health habits. I was taught to help the poor by helping them to know God because that was more important than improving the conditions of their lives. So I wonder if we are worshiping the true God when doctrines are more important than people, health habits than justice? Where is Amos 5 in this whole process?

I have come to believe that justice is a theological issue and that we worship the true God only when we go beyond praises and offerings and do it God’s way: bringing justice to society, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the orphans, and helping the widows.

*All biblical quotations are taken from the Simplify Living Bible.

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