Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Justice

Quiz: who wrote, "Justice sometimes doesn't matter in a way"?

A. Martin Luther King
B. Mother Theresa
C. Ghandi
D. Juan "in a million"

If you answered D you got it!

Quickly, I've been thinking about the role of social justice in Christianity today and it seems to me that Christians ought to be leading the way in promoting justice throughout the world and surely there are a lot of Christians and orginizations which do, but on the whole it seems like a large part of the church is lagging in this area. I think the Bible shows that God is the ultimate champion of justice (Psalm 89)and he invites us to join him. The key I believe is in Micah 6:8. We are called to love mercy, act justly and to walk humbly with God. This was the essence of Jesus's ministry (see Isaiah 61). He also said that he didn't do anything he didn't see his Father doing. I think that as we partner in relationship with God our character is transformed and we are empowered to accomplish what he set out to do. The mistake of the right is to minimize our present role in God's kingdom and emphasize "saving souls" for eternity. The mistake of the left is to say that social justice is the gospel, and to emphasize issues rather than the character transforming empowerment of being in relationship with God (John 15). Dallas Willard brilliantly sorts this out in chapter 2 of The Divine Conspiracy. I'm telling you check it out. Signing off!
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2 comments:

Bill said...

I think you're right Wes, that the church does lag behind. And I, too,feel frustrated with how little it seems that we are impacting society although I know that there are many organizations and individual Christians that are champions for justice out there; like those working to liberate young women and children from child prostitution rings, and like Living Water that we saw working in Ethiopia to bring clean water to those who have none. What do you feel are the major areas of injustice that the church needs to be awakened to? Just curious, because I want to be awakened as well. Mom signed in as Bill :)
P.S. Read Isaiah 58

12:31 PM
sarahjane said...

I don't know if this is on the same track, but I noticed that it often seems overwhelming to process all the social justice "issues" in the world. I think about the Sudan, the tsunami relief, Iraq, etc. and feel like it's too much to be able to do anything about. Sometimes it's like, there's so much that needs done that i cannot do with my little "resources". what's 50 dollars going to be help with in asia? in the end i might just forget about doing anything because it's too much. the other day in my creative writing class a kid read a paper he'd written about death. he talked about seeing all the 24/hr coverage on diana's death, and then this ticket-tape went across the bottom of the screen announcing mother theresa's death. he realized that if all mother theresa got was a small blurb on the bottom of the screen, what would he get in his death? (much less than that). He was depressed by the fact that it seemed no one cared about her death. then he wrote something like, "but i realized that while the world may not have noticed mother theresa's passing, every person she ever clothed felt her death, every mouth she ever fed noticed she was gone, every person she ever came in contact with was mourning her passing." it encourages me to do what i can, and maybe the church (as each person affects another) will step in line more than they are now.

sorry, it's a little off-track, but it's all i've got for now! :)

10:25 AM

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