Let Justice Roll Down

In Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963, he quoted the Hebrew prophet Amos when he said “we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Amos and MLK both lived in prosperous nations who were proud of their religious heritage. Both were appalled at how religion so often masked hearts of greed and hostility.

Amos roars out God’s disgust over religious piety:
I hate, I despise your religious feasts
Away with the noise of your songs.
Amos 5:22 NIV
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
Amos 5:24 The Message

Amos believed that justice was the life-blood of society as water is life for the land.


Many streams in Israel are seasonal – rapid torrents in the rainy season, but bone dry the rest of the year. Some people’s spirituality is like that – intermittent. But God calls for a steady stream of righteousness – a ‘never-failing’ stream, a system of justice people can depend on. Amos challenges us to adopt a life-style marked by consistency of truth and right living.

John Perkins is one of my modern day heroes who understands Amos’ call to justice. His biography, Let Justice Roll Down, honors Amos’ words. For fifty years, Perkins has practiced courageous faith, practical justice and righteousness in Mississippi and beyond.

Real-world righteousness is down-to-earth. It includes both social and ecological righteousness - doing right by the earth, extending God’s peaceable kingdom - shalom - to the rivers and woodlands and oceans. Seeking justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God is at the very core of being truly human. And the time to do that is today,

To borrow another phrase from MLK’s famous speech, there is “the fierce urgency of now. ... Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.”

Thank you, Amos, Perkins and King for calling us to the kind of righteousness that honors God, builds healthy communities and makes us fully human.