This is the third of a six part series that considers the issue of prophecy and human justice.

Parts 1 & 2

The first article described the background to a court case that recently opened in Stockholm against two top executives of Sweden’s largest oil company, Lundin Petroleum/Oil, now Orrön Energy AB (hereafter Lundin), who are being tried for complicity in war crimes that were perpetrated during 1999-2003 in their oil concession in the conflict zone of the civil war in Sudan.

The second article looked at the difference between perfect Divine justice and imperfect human justice, and attempted to explain why God desires our application of the latter in spite of its flaws. This week we look at why so little human justice takes place, even though God demands it of us.

Naïve worldview

As a former aid worker, I am troubled by the absence of justice for the many victims of Africa’s recent wars. I was exposed there to a different world from the one I had been brought up to believe in — a brutal reality of widespread suffering and injustice, which did not fit my pre-conceived expectations that human and/or Divine intervention would save the downtrodden from the evil being done to them (see e.g. Psalm 76:9).

My incorrect views stem from my university days during the 1980s, when I had encountered the reflections by Jews and Christians on the World War II Holocaust that ‘all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing’. The morally weak Germans had looked away from the crimes perpetrated under Hitler’s dictatorship, but I also knew what happened next: the Allies had then defeated the Nazis, their surviving leaders had faced justice at Nuremberg, and a new, repentant, and democratic Germany had arisen from the ashes of fascism.

I was exposed there to a different world from the one I had been brought up to believe in — a brutal reality of widespread suffering and injustice ...

Humanity—with God’s help—had overcome evil during the darkest chapter in history and had now learned to more actively combat wrongdoing. It thus seemed obvious to me that good always overcomes evil, and that criminals will always face justice. That view was confirmed by regular stories throughout my youth of former SS officers being flushed out of hiding and then brought to trial.

Thus, when I encountered mass atrocities in Africa’s wars during the 1990s and into the 2000s, I held high expectations of my aid worker colleagues in the dynamic aid agency that I worked for. They had often spoken out on behalf of the underprivileged, and the organisation held many internal debates about its interventions. Yet my colleagues refused to criticise the Western oil companies that were exacerbating the conflict in Sudan, despite persistent lobbying within the organisation to convince them to do so.

Looking the other way

In June 2010, just as the umbrella organisation ECOS (European Coalition on Oil in Sudan) released their report Unpaid Debt that described and quantified the mass war crimes that had taken place in the Lundin oilfield in Sudan, I re-opened the debate with a few key former colleagues to try to understand what had gone wrong – why had they refused to denounce what seemed to be an obvious case of unethical and illegal involvement by Western oil companies in Sudan’s civil war?

Was it because they were unaware of the full scale of human suffering in the Swedish company’s oilfield? How would they react to the satellite images and detailed data presented in the ECOS report that showed that 160,000 people had been chased off their land, and an estimated 12,000 innocent civilians had died as a result of the military struggle to control Lundin’s licence area?

 In other words, (in)justice was not their problem — that was for someone else to do.

To my surprise, my former colleagues answered that they would have taken the same decision as before, even though they now recognised that they had failed to appreciate how bad the situation had been for the civilians living in the oilfield. It was not their role to seek justice, they said. In other words, (in)justice was not their problem — that was for someone else to do.

I struggled with that view, for it was obvious no-one was doing anything, and the organisation included some of the few Westerners — apart from Lundin’s employees — who were aware of the atrocities. To my logic, that required the aid agency to speak out as a direct witness to the crimes. But no, my colleagues had washed their hands of that responsibility. Their attitude shocked me, but I have since realised that they had become self-satisfied with their work as humanitarians, as they were doing more than their fair share to help the poor and oppressed.

Self deception

Such self-justification should be impossible for Christians, because we know that we will face Divine justice at the end of the age, when we will not only have to give an account to Almighty God for our evil deeds and thoughts, but also for the good deeds we failed to do (James 4:17). All of us will be brought before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor 5:10), not just those who we consider to be the ‘baddies’.

Why then do Christians and believing Jews not do more to combat injustice? One reason is that many are not aware of what actually goes on in the world, because Satan is a deceiver (Rev 20:3). As God desires justice, so the enemy hates it, and therefore does everything possible to stop it, aided by the oppressors who want to avoid facing a human court. This means there are powerful spiritual and human forces at work to prevent news about what really happens to the oppressed from reaching those who could help release them.

 All of us will be brought before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor 5:10), not just those who we consider to be the ‘baddies’.

But another contributory factor is our self-deception. This includes our desire not to know what is happening out of our sight and mind, to avoid the responsibility to get involved in the nasty and dangerous world beyond our safe and often comfortable lives. In his book Good News about Injustice, Gary Haugen explains (p. 46):

‘As one who wept over his own faintness of heart, the apostle Peter urges us to begin by preparing our mind for action (Matt 26:69-75; 1 Peter 1:13). Such preparation comes from a return to Biblical truth. In particular, we need to see what the Bible says about the world’s true nature and its real needs.

The Bible declares that the world is fallen, sinful. Often I am ill-prepared for action in a dark world of injustice because I have gotten used to a little lie within my mind. I have gotten used to the idea that the fair garden that I have worked so hard to carve out for myself and my family is normal. I have gradually adjusted to the idea that “the world” into which Christ has sent his disciples is actually a reasonably pleasant backyard patio. Certainly it is no garden of Eden—there are unruly shrubs, unpleasant neighbours, rainy days, tearful nights and even vandals. But in my garden the Fall is being managed. Gradually in my mind “the world” referred to in the Bible is defined more and more by the boundary hedges I share with my neighbours. Accordingly, I hone my Christian witness for engagement in this domesticated garden. I come to see the full armour of God as battle dress for fighting weeds, backyard pests, and trespassers.

…We can easily forget that the spirit of darkness rules over our present age. In the affluent West it manifests itself in a spiritual barrenness… Outside the affluent West, however, in the Two-Thirds World where most of the children God created actually live, the Fall is being played out in ways more familiar to the Biblical writers: it is manifest in a world of brutal injustice. As the apostle Paul wrote about the fallen world, quoting the prophet Isaiah and King David: “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom 3:15-18).

Resist rather than conform

My secular aid worker colleagues had constructed a worldview that avoided their responsibility to directly confront such evil people. Christians and believing Jews cannot apply this self-deception, but are instead called to resist rather than conform to our dangerous world — and risk the consequences of potential legal action or even physical harm. Acts 7:52 describes how before he was stoned to death, Stephen, the first Christian martyr, asked: 'Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute?'

 My secular aid worker colleagues had constructed a worldview that avoided their responsibility to directly confront such evil people.

If this reality causes us to hesitate, we should remind ourselves of the prophetic words given to Jeremiah (21:12) that: "This is what the LORD says: “Administer justice every morning; rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed, or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done—with no one to quench it."

A consequence of God’s anger is indicated in Proverbs 21:13: 'Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered.'

May the Lord grant us all greater compassion, so that we may be stirred in love to assist the oppressed, and may we live under a greater fear of God, so that we may be more obedient to His commands, to ensure justice for widows, orphans, and all the downtrodden.

In the fourth of this six-part series, I will reflect on what I believe to be evidence of God’s intervention to bring Lundin’s top executive to a human trial.

Phil Clarke is a former aid worker and executive director of the Danish branch of Médecins Sans Frontières, and is currently the director of the independent war crimes investigation agency Bloodhound that he co-founded in 2006. He has been involved with efforts to bring Lundin to justice since 2001, and produced the report Justifying Blood Money in 2013 to expose Lundin’s lies to shareholders while it explored for oil in Sudan. His debut novel Falling Night was published in 2023, based on the experiences that led him from humanitarian aid to documenting war crimes.