Justice
Justice
I sometimes wonder why justice seems such a reach for us. If we submitted to the great commission, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” and if we obeyed the great commandment, “love God and your neighbor as yourself,” issues of justice could not be avoided. Our journeys would be characterized by Micah’s great requirement: “What does the Lord require of you? / To act justly and to love mercy / and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). We would be people who fought unemployment with job training, illiteracy with education, pollution with technology, oppression with legal protection, disease with medicine, danger with safety, poverty with help, chaos with order, fear with love, hunger with food, and on and on. We would grieve over injustice and oppression. We would courageously use our gifts and talents to oppose the results of the Fall.
Unfortunately, justice is not something we can take for granted among Christians. We, like the world around us, like our comforts and balk at sacrifice or inconvenience. While we endorse the notion of justice, our time and energy goes into personal development and material accomplishments. What is fulfilling to us at any given moment has more bearing on our life than the call to create a society in which justice and love visibly reflect God’s nature.
We never outgrow the need for prophets who remind us of the “great requirement.” We need to search our hearts and see where putting our own agenda first makes us part of the problem. Eugene Peterson suggests that a faith that doesn’t serve justice can end up making us worse instead of better. It can actually separate us from God and his ways instead of drawing us to him.
Truth and holiness are always matters of substance, not appearance. Issues of justice consistently involve allocation of real and substantive resources: money, time, opportunities, goods and services. At the 2004 Spiritual Formation Forum in L.A., John Perkins claimed, “Justice is always about what one owns.” The Christian life is not a game where the one with the most toys wins. What we have and own is never simply ours. We are stewards of what God has given us. God holds us responsible for what we do with what we have.
Followers of Jesus are to share their resources and work against the evil that robs the world of God’s care and love. Lifestyles and choices that love and value people more than things is the litmus test of faith. A high school group in my church continually reminds me of this truth with their prophetic name “Get over Yourself!”
Reflection Questions
- Where does concern for the injustices of this world fit into your thoughts and life?
What is your general reaction to volunteering time to causes in your community that serve the poor, oppressed and needy?
- What is it like for you to be treated unfairly? What difference can an advocate make?
Spiritual Exercises
- Become more aware of justice issues in your community through fact-finding excursions. Take your children or a small group with you. Call ahead and arrange a time to meet with folks involved in food banks, housing for the poor and elderly, shepherding homes, halfway houses, etc. What kinds of needs are represented by these organizations? What kind of help are they seeking? Volunteer to help.
- Go on a short-term mission trip. Expose yourself to needs of the world.
- Begin reading about justice issues. Sign up for the Internal Justice Mission weekly e-mail update.
- Consider your responsibility before God for what you own. What effect does God’s view of the gifts he has given you have on you? • How could you share your gifts with others? Could you tutor? Could you help settle a refugee family? Could you teach someone English? Could you provide training opportunities for first-time legal offenders?
- Start a prayer group that prays through the concerns of the newspaper. Pray for peace and justice issues. Be open to what God might want you to do.
Resources on Justice
International Justice Mission www.ijm.org
John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development www.jmpf.org
Let Justice Roll Down by John Perkins
Send My Roots Rain: A Spirituality of Justice and Mercy by Megan McKenna
“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving too little away. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.” —C. S. Lewis
Stewardship
DESIRE | to live as a steward of God’s resources in all areas of life; to live out of the awareness that nothing I have is my own |
DEFINITION | Stewardship is the voluntary and generous offering of God’s gifts of resources, time, talents and treasure for the benefit and love of God and others. |
SCRIPTURE | “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:6-7) “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18) “The earth is the LORD’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1) “Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth. . . . But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” (Matthew 6:19-20) |
PRACTICE INCLUDES |
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GOD-GIVEN FRUIT |
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