Doing Justice

Philosophy

Justice is the imperative of all Christians being formed into the image of Christ. It is at the very heart of God, one of the attributes that describes the entirety of God’s being - for God is just in love, just in transcendence, just in omnipotence, just in wrath, just in God’s relational nature. Micah reminds wayward Israel that she has been told what God desires; it is not extravagant sacrifice, holocaust or oblation (Micah 6:6,7). Instead, says the prophet,

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8 NRSV)

Do Justice

In an interview with the Canadian program The Hour, Tony Campolo states that on judgment day the question isn’t going to be about theological belief. “It’s not going to be ‘virgin birth - strongly agree, agree, disagree...’”(Campolo, The Hour). He says Jesus offers only one view of judgment day, and his question will be: how did you treat the poor (Matthew 25:31-46)?

In this familiar passage, the Son of Man, the King of a new glorious kingdom, will separate the “sheep” from the “goats” based on what they did to the poor, the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, and the homeless. He claims with authority that he was that overlooked and ignored person, what they did or failed to do for the least, the did or failed to do for him, the King of Glory.

Jesus, in this passage, tells us the continuing meaning of the incarnation. He is not off in the cosmos somewhere away from us, he is found in the “least of these.” We serve Jesus in the weak, the poor, the oppressed and disadvantaged. If we wish to grow in Christ-likeness we must be where Christ is to be found. This calls for a significant re-ordering of society around the weakest. Justice means not only individual acts of charity, but also a complete changing of the way we do society. Serving this King of Glory means serving through the upside down values of this new Kingdom. Just as the Son of Man ascends to his throne, we are called to establish his reign in our lives and sphere of influence, the world.

Stephen is a great example of the early church living out these words. Luke tells us that the early church held their possessions in common and “there was not a needy person among them” (Acts 4:34a NRSV). Inequity soon arose. The widows who were Greek Jews were being overlooked. The disciples picked seven people filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom to bring justice to their food distribution system. One of those people was Stephen. Along with the seven the twelve laid their hands on Stephen and commissioned him, demonstrating the importance of this work. It has long struck me as significant that it was important these servants be filled with the Spirit. Soon the Spirit is working wonders through Stephen. I wonder if those wonders, like those of Jesus, were directed to the poor, the sick and oppressed. Soon arguments arose and Stephen stood in the prophetic tradition speaking truth to the power of the Sanhedrin. In him we have an example of how to do justice and the reliance on the power of Spirit it takes to accomplish the work.

Love Kindness

Justice is primarily relational. Justice is the right and just exercising of power (Haugen 51). This describes a relationship between a person with power and one without. Addressing in justice means entering into relationship. We enter into relationship with people of powerlessness (Jacobsen 63) as well as people of power (39). The call here is that those relationships be marked with kindness, tenderness and mercy.

Not only should there be kindness and tenderness in our relationships, we should love to be kind and merciful, it is to be a delight. This is the fruit of transformation. The kingdom come to our lives changes what is not possible on our own. The act of loving our enemies and the unlovable is unnatural. We need supernatural power to be the body of Christ. When the church acts as the body, she can change the world through personal relationship.

Another way relationships engage justice is through the Christian’s call to radical subordination. We belong to each other and are called to submit to one another. Yoder calls us to take this command and find in it a nonviolent resistance to unjust use of power (Hobby and Patton 9.1).

When Paul sent the runaway slave Onesimus back to Philemon, he made a plea based on relationship. Onesimus had become a dear son to Paul (Philemon 10). Out of love for him, Paul pleaded with Philemon to show mercy and kindness as is due a brother. Paul also appealed to his relationship to Philemon to convince him to do what was right. Even in his relationship to Philemon, he refused coercion trusting that Philemon would be kind spontaneously (14). We don’t get to know Philemon’s response to the apostle, but one can sense the delight Paul has in loving both Philemon and Onesimus as brothers in Christ.

Walk Humbly

The 14th century classic The Cloud of Unknowing describes the place where the kind of transformation takes place that enables us to do justice and love kindness. For the anonymous mystic that place is between the cloud of unknowing that hides God in God’s naked nature and the cloud of forgetting under which we hide all that we know, all that would distract. “Then let your loving desire, gracious and devout, step bravely and joyfully beyond it and reach out to pierce the darkness above. Yes, beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with the dart of your loving desire and do not cease come what may” (Johnston 55).

The process the mystic describes is commonly called centering prayer. The position between the cloud of forgetting and the cloud of unknowing is a place of humility. We must release all the notions we have of God, and any notion of comprehending him. This is the via negativa, the apophatic way to God. Relinquishing words and ideas leaves us alone with our naked intent before a naked God. A true experience with ourselves as we are, and God as God is, leads to perfect humility.

Before such goodness and love nature trembles, sages stammer like fools, and the saints and angels are blinded with glory. So overwhelming is this revelation of God’s nature that if his power did not sustain them, I dare not think what might happen (Johnston 65).

Walking humbly with God means entering this place of discipline and allowing God to transform our character. We cannot, of our own power, change ourselves, let alone change the injustice of the world. We need the humility to realize that we need God and God’s transforming work. While we can’t learn to love the unlovable and the enemy, we can exercise our love, hurling it at the darkness that conceals the awful abyss of God’s being. Centering prayer requires that we focus our love on God humbly without expectation. With such action grace enlarges the capacity of our hearts to love.

In Acts when Peter and John returned to the fledgling church after being released from Sanhedrin imprisonment, the believers prayed a prayer that focused first of all on the awesome power of God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them” (Acts 4:24b NIV). From that center they continued to ask God to give them strength to continue to expand the Kingdom. In the same way our spiritual transformation is the center from which we engage the world.

A Model

From that center I can change the world. There is a model to be developed that creates a cycle by which personal transformation turns upside down the world’s injustices and the injustices we face fuel our transformation into the image of Christ. For such a dynamo to spin, both action and intimacy must be attended to.

Tony Campolo calls us to praxis. “It means that what we think and what we do should not be separated. We learn best when we rethink our beliefs and convictions at the same time we are living them out” (Campolo and Darling 188). It is this rethinking and reevaluating that challenges us and forces us into some of the paradoxes of Christian Mysticism we might otherwise not encounter.
With praxis at work I will become alert and aware of the injustice around me – my personal transformation and exposure to injustice will see to that. I develop what Vander Meulen cites as Epiphany Eyes, which see through to the underlying reality (Vander Meulen 62). Spiritual transformation is all about seeing reality, weather the reality of the world as it is, or the reality of the sovereignty of God that will make the Kingdom come. As I look to develop a model for seeking justice through my own life and ministry there are a few principles I find helpful.

Relational

I feel that it is not enough to sit back and send emails to my legislators, though I find that easy to do. What is rising up within me cries for relationship. I would much rather sit down over a cup of coffee with my elected officials, my congregation and most of all the victims of injustice. I want to learn from them, I want to share God’s passion with them. I am convinced for a change to take place, our best hope is in the personal transformation of people, and that occurs relationally. Lord, let the fire spread into a movement.

Communal

I have friends who as a married couple went to Atlanta for a Mission Year. They lived in intentional community, and were tasked to build relationships in their neighborhood. Now they have moved back to Michigan and are doing the same thing in Saginaw. They aren’t appointed, professional ministers; they are simply living out their transformation. My wife and I have wanted to live in intentional community for some time, even sharing our home for a few months last year. As I approach justice community building will be a centerpiece, in the context of the congregation, village and our home. Lord, build through and around us a transformational community, willing to engage the world.

Glocal

Finally as I approach justice I will embrace glocalism. I will think globally and act locally. I will keep my eyes peeled by grace, on the world around me and around the globe to spot injustice, and then find ways, creative grace filled ways to engage the issues locally. This will mean agitating my community as well as celebrating the dignity of God’s creation.

Father, take these meager thoughts and through praxis hone me. May we change the world together! Amen.

Works Cited

• Campolo, Tony, interview by George Stroumboulopoulos. The Hour CBC. 2007  March.
• Campolo, Tony, and Mary Albert Darling. The God of Intimacy and Action. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2007.
• Haugen, Gary A. Good News About Injustice. 10th Aniversary edition. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsiy Press, USA, 2009.
• Hobby, Nathan, and James Patton. “The Politics of Jesus, Simplified: a simplified summary of John H. Yoder's classic book.” Savage Parade. 2005  January. http://web.archive.org/web/20080308233554/http://www.geocities.com/savageparade/poj.htm.
• Jacobsen, Dennis A. Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2001.
• Johnston, William, ed. The Cloud of Unknowing and Book of Privy Counseling. New York: Doubleday, 1973.
• Vander Meulen, Peter. “Do Justice - Keep it Simple.” Christian Reflections (The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University) Global Wealth (2007): 60-64.