“Then a shoot will come forth out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch will bear fruit out of His roots. The Ruach of Adonai will rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and insight, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Adonai. His delight will be in the fear of Adonai. He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor decide by what His ears hear. But with righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the poor of the land. He will strike the land with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Also righteousness will be the belt around His loins, and faithfulness the belt around His waist.” Isaiah 11:1-5
Here is a messianic promise that Isaiah wrote for us to be aware of. There are various signs of being in tune with the Spirit of God and all of them are important, but I want to focus on how righteous judgment is made. Often, we are quick to just repeat whatever we hear and make snap judgment based on our own limited perspective of a situation. But that is not how righteousness goes about things. A sign of is righteousness is ensuring we are being fair in our evaluations instead of showing favoritism or bias. We might be tempted to assume having a lot of good things in a material sense means having a lot of good character traits but that is not a safe assumption to make.
We shouldn’t show partiality toward the rich and despise those who have less than us, because classism is not godly. Some may say that this passage is biased because it focuses on ensuring justice for the poor rather than for the rich but it is not prejudice to push for a corrective focus where there tends to be neglect. If those who tend to be looked down on by society are judged fairly as a result of people actively working against the prejudices that are most ingrained you can have more confidence all cases are being held fairly. But the same cannot be assumed of the reverse, a society that focuses on catering to the rich or whoever is popular and rewards or ignores the impact of doing so and denies the need for questioning bias cannot be assumed to be fair to anyone, even to the rich and popular, as all it would take for them to be discriminated against is for someone else to be a slightly richer or more popular than them even if it makes no moral sense.
Righteousness means looking out for those who have it the hardest, not kissing up to whoever is popular because it is popular to do so. When you are tempted to judge someone quicky take time to pause and honestly reflect on if you are actually being fair or if you are being motivated by prejudice and misguided assumptions. Respecting the Lord will be reflected in how we treat others. When we are more invested in how God sees us than what others think we won’t put the personal interests of the rich or popular over God’s requirements for us to judge fairly.
