Pervasive, Consistent Theology

Then I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun:

And look! The tears of the oppressed,
But they have no comforter—
On the side of their oppressors there is power,
But they have no comforter. Ecclesiastes 4:1, New King James Version

And this is the reason for the labor force which King Solomon raised: to build the house of the LORD, his own house, the Millo,[fn] the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 1 Kings 9:15, New King James Version

"Modern society often restrains empathy," detects Gabriel McKee in The Gospel According to Science Fiction, "encouraging us to view others as objects."

Solomon might have recognized here specifically that there is nothing new under the sun. In the same Book of Ecclesiastes in which that principle is stated, Solomon detects the human tendency to treat one another as objects. He sympathizes with the oppressed, attempting to count their tears in the image of the mutual Creator of both king and slave. The tendency to treat each other as objects is not a modern one.

Neither, alas, is the tendency to separate one's stated theology from one's functional theology as it plays out among humans. Solomon, as CS Lewis points out in Screwtape Letters, is merciful until it becomes risky. He objects to object the case and in principle, but when compassion interferes with his objectives, material, countable, Solomon-centered progress must go on. Tim Keller adjudicates in Every Good Endeavor, "If you are not willing to risk your place in the palace for your neighbor, the palace owns you."

We are no longer safe, then, trading the Bible's general principles. They apply to us. They dictate our actions in our offices, in our homes, and among our fellow congregants in our churches. To truly sympathize with the vulnerable is to put one's own interests in a subordinate position. To truly bottle the tears of the suffering, as God does and as Solomon aspires to do in theory, is to cry out to God on behalf of the hurting, and to back up those pleas with the heart of a servant put into action.

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