When Justice Backfires

 When Justice Backfires

"He expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!"
— From Isaiah 5

The fall of a culture doesn’t begin with its enemies. It begins with its own people, convinced they are fighting for justice, yet blind to the rot beneath their feet.

Every great civilization starts with something magnificent: freedom, innovation, beauty, learning. But generations rarely stop at gratitude. Instead, they begin asking: Why do they have more than I do? Why do they deserve it? “Deserve” becomes the word on everyone’s lips.

Dig into the past, and you will always find faults. No nation ever rose without some mixture of conquest, injustice, or favoritism. The builders were human. And humans are never spotless.

The tragedy is that later generations weaponize these flaws. Instead of building on the strengths they inherited, they nurse resentment, convinced they are owed more. Justice morphs into score-settling. Love collapses into self-interest. Even righteousness gets recast as self-righteousness.

Isaiah’s warning is clear: when people chase “justice” and “righteousness” for selfish ends, they end up with the opposite. Walls fall. Societies unravel. And the cry of despair replaces the song of blessing.

History shows that once this collapse begins, it may take centuries—sometimes half a millennium—to recover.

Isaiah’s vineyard parable is not ancient poetry. It is a mirror. The question is whether we dare to look into it.