Today’s author is Prince of Peace member Bob Reichman
One of my favorite courses in college was Logic. I don’t claim to be Mr. Spock – those pesky emotions still manage to get their say in my decisions as I attempt to live long and prosper — but it has served me pretty well over the years. It helps me, for instance, to approach the subject of justice, God’s and ours.
We are taught that God is just, and I firmly believe that God is just because God’s love for all of us is unconditional. But when I say that God is just, I don’t mean that God has made life fair, and that everyone has an equal chance to be healthy, wealthy and wise. We know by observation that is not true. Instead, it seems to me that for God to be just, everyone must have access to God, be recipients of God’s love and what God is telling us and doing for us. Not just Bible scholars, towering theologians, those who have spent their entire lives attending church or those who have been told there is a prescription for salvation. Not just the wealthy, those from loving, accepting families and stable communities. If it is not the case that everyone everywhere can experience God’s love and have access to God, then how can God be called just? If only some can understand what God is all about and experience God’s presence, then God’s kingdom is no better than the world we live in, where privilege, however defined, is rampant.
If God is, indeed, just, what does this mean for us? I think it means that if God is just, we must be also. God gives us the road map (or, I guess these days, the GPS), but we have to drive the car. Amos 5:24 says, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Jesus simplifies it for us when he cites Leviticus in saying that everything comes down to this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Micah 6:8 says essentially the same thing: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Putting that into practice is the tricky part, but I don’t think it’s as complicated as we often make it.
The basic human needs, we’re all taught, are food, clothing and shelter. I would add to those health care and acceptance as an equal, no matter who you are. That means that everyone ought to be valued, and, ideally, everybody should get the necessities. God doesn’t supply them, except in the general sense. God nudges us, sways us, but we are God’s hands and feet in the world. How we achieve God’s aims is where there is room for disagreement, but the most obvious way to meet basic needs would be doing something about the huge disparity in wealth between the richest and the poorest, or for that matter, the richest and everyone else.
That may seem overwhelming, even unachievable, though we could try to chip away at it, but there are also things that can be done on a more personal level. Lawyer Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative in 1989 with the goal of representing the interests of those who may not have received a fair trial. Since then, his organization has enabled innocent people to get off death row and pushed for more fairness and equity in the criminal justice system. (I highly recommend his book, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” and the subsequent movie, “Just Mercy.”)`
Greg Boyle, a Catholic priest, has been working to rehabilitate Hispanic gang members in Los Angeles since 1988, offering them purpose and dignity in the hope of getting them back into society at large by giving them jobs at an organization called Homeboy Industries. There are many failures and heartbreaks, but also hope amid hopelessness. (Boyle has written several books about his experiences. I highly recommend “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.”)
You can probably think of other examples. While most of us will never do anything as dramatic as what Stevenson and Boyle have done, that doesn’t mean there aren’t many ways we can help assure that people have food, clothing, shelter, health care and acceptance. I won’t try to detail them here because the possibilities are endless, and you can probably imagine more than I can suggest. It’s just a matter of making it a priority. It’s what justice – God’s justice – means.
Prayer
God, help us to look for ways to do justice in our world, having access to you, your love and your guidance all along the way.