Sometimes when I’m reading about theology, I get lost in the details. I struggle to see the broader significance. Perhaps I can blame my instincts as an editor, the voice in my head always wondering, “So what?” and “What does this mean for us now?”

An Old Testament essay I read in a recent issue of CT answered those questions before they even came to mind.

Fuller Theological Seminary professor John Goldingay, in a passage adapted from his book Old Testament Ethics, brings up our call to understand and obey the Scriptures that were so formative in the life of Christ and his earliest followers. It’s a great piece that challenges some of our typical and selective approaches to how we read the Old Testament.

There’s one part of the essay that I haven’t stopped thinking about. Goldingay is explaining about the commonly referenced theme of “justice”:

In the Old Testament, “justice and righteousness” were at least as much about what you did as about what you advocated for. It was practical and down to earth, personal and costly. It was about doing what you had the power to do on behalf of the people who lived nearby.

I saw that ethical underpinning for loving our neighbors all over the news in the past week. I read about Christians whose faith led them to fight for the children of immigrants to stay and work in the US, a case decided by the Supreme Court earlier this month. We continue to see Christians speaking out for the value of black lives and pushing for change, like the removal of the Confederate battle emblem from the Mississippi flag. I also continue to see the work of victim’s advocates calling for more accountability and transparency in the church.

Over and over again in our coverage I come across people taking a stand not out of defensiveness or self-preservation but out of the passionate desire to care well for their neighbors. Of course, that’s also been a common ethical challenge for those of us who are fortunate enough to be “low risk” in coronavirus terms: How will we take precautions on behalf of others? How can our staying put, gathering/not gathering, social distancing, and giving be leveraged to keep our neighbors safe?

Jen Wilkin also engaged this idea of how we live out the Old Testament law around our obligations to our community and the common good in a recent column. She suggested an unexpected way to love and serve our neighbors: by working on our own spiritual health. “When love, joy, peace, and patience are our daily meditation; when kindness, goodness, and faithfulness are our mindset; when gentleness and self-control are our mainstay,” she said, “these virtues overflow our hearts and become a source of blessing to our neighbors.”

Kate