Former Blackout Artist

When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. – Isaiah 1:15-17

As I was reading Isaiah yesterday evening, I couldn’t help but think about the polarizing issue of illegal immigration. And it made me wonder: Is God troubled by what He’s seeing?

As Isaiah begins, he brings us into a courtroom. Heaven and earth are called as witnesses, because what is unfolding isn’t a private moral failure, but a public breach of covenant. God is bringing His people to trial. He is both the one bringing the charge and the one who will render judgment. Judah stands accused, Isaiah bears witness, and there’s plenty of evidence to render a guilty verdict.

What makes God’s indictment so remarkable is that His people are still outwardly religious! They gather, they pray, they offer sacrifices. They even speak religious things. And yet God says something terrifying: “I am not listening.” The problem isn’t that God has grown distant; the problem is that the people have grown indifferent. Their worship continues, but their hearts no longer respond to what God responds to. Their hands are lifted in prayer, but God says those same hands are stained – not because they have committed acts of violence (although some may have…), but because they have failed to act when justice demanded it.

Isaiah does not accuse Judah of having the wrong political system or the wrong national borders. He accuses them of neglecting the vulnerable while congratulating themselves on their righteousness. They have learned how to maintain order without compassion, devotion without obedience, and religion without love. God does not reject structure or law – He rejects hypocrisy. He rejects a faith that can sing and pray while ignoring suffering in plain sight. Jesus dealt with this same hypocrisy hundreds of years later. Let’s just say it was a common problem.

And still is today.

This is where Isaiah gets uncomfortably close to our own crisis moment. Scripture refuses to let God’s people retreat into easy, safe areas. Law and order and authority certainly matter. Romans 13, by no means, is erased by Isaiah chapter 1. But Isaiah 1 stands as a warning: law that is completely separated from mercy becomes something God Himself opposes. Justice, in God’s economy, is never cold, and mercy is never careless. He demands both, even when holding them together feels impossible.

The sharpness of Isaiah’s words comes into focus when God defines what He actually wants. “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” These are not just guiding values… they’re embodied actions. God does not ask whether Judah has strong arguments. He asks whether they have allowed their hearts to be shaped by His own.

Scripture consistently reveals that God binds His reputation to how His people treat those with the least power. The widow, the orphan, the poor, and the foreigner – they’re not side concerns. They’re moral barometers. God measures the faithfulness of His people by whether they notice, protect, and advocate for those who cannot repay them. This is why the prophets speak so fiercely. This is why Jesus identifies Himself not with the strong, but with the hungry, the imprisoned, and the stranger (Matthew 25:35-36).

And yet Scripture also refuses to condone disorder. Compassion does not mean the absence of accountability, and mercy does not require the erasure of law. The Bible offers no shallow solutions, and that is intentional. God seems far less interested in giving His people a clean resolution than in shaping them into people who reflect His character in the midst of enormous tension.

This is where the question becomes personal and uncomfortable, for everyone. Not, “What is the correct policy?” but “What is happening inside me as I watch this unfold?” Do images of suffering move me toward grief and prayer – or toward justification and detachment? When consequences are harsh, do I mourn, or do I feel quietly satisfied? Have I become so certain of my position that I no longer feel the weight of human pain? Do I value certain populations of fellow human beings no different from animals?

Of course, Scripture doesn’t forbid disagreement. It does, however, warn against delighting in suffering. God never celebrates brokenness, even when judgment is deserved. He asks in Ezekiel 18:23, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” The implied answer is no. God’s justice is always mingled with grief. When God judges, He does not gloat. If His people do, something has gone very, very wrong.

Jesus brings this tension to its sharpest edge in Matthew 25. He does not ask nations whether they solved complex social problems. He asks whether they recognized Him. He does not commend correct reasoning; He commends compassion. “I was a stranger—did you see Me?” It is a haunting question, because it suggests that Christ often comes to us disguised as inconvenience, disruption, and need. This hits me especially hard. When I see someone in need, do I see them as an inconvenience or do I see them the way Jesus does? If I’m honest, I must confess that sometimes I’m looking the other way.

Isaiah’s courtroom scene leaves us with a lingering examination that no argument can escape. Are we troubled by what troubles God? Are our hearts still capable of being disturbed by suffering, even when it is complicated, costly, or politically inconvenient? Or have we learned how to explain pain away so efficiently that it no longer has an impact on us?

The most dangerous posture Isaiah exposes is not being wrong – it’s being unmoved. When God says, “Learn to do right,” He is calling His people not merely to correct behavior, but to re-learn how to love what He loves and grieve what He grieves.

So the question that remains is simple and yet so incredibly searching: Are we delighting in what is happening today? Or does it bother us?

Because if it bothers us – if it weighs on us, unsettles us, drives us to prayer rather than certainty – it may be that God has not yet hardened our hearts, and we are still standing within reach of His mercy.