justice(11/3)
What I must say
There’s a fear which keeps surfacing in my psyche. It’s the fear that I will be taken away from my children by a society increasingly free to exercise violence towards nonconformity. This fear arises most often when I read articles about the narrow edge our society balances upon with the upcoming presidential election. On a political level, I do not care whether one votes for a Republican or a Democratic candidate.…
How to pray for my family
It’s my sense that many Christians in the United States are confused about our social location. We believe that we’re living in Israel. As Israel’s prophets confronted the kings of Judah with a call for Torah living, so we are convinced that the American Church’s role is to call for a national return to Torah. We’re mistaken. We do not live in Israel, we live in Babylon. We are not Isaiah, we are Esther.…
Restoration demands both justice and purification
It didn’t occur to me until reading Matt Webb’s musings, but sometimes direct restitution is insufficient for true justice. Webb quotes a 1917 paper by Walter W. Hyde called The Prosecution of Lifeless Things and Animals in Greek Law: Part I to make his case that Greeks felt that, even if the perpetrator of a crime could not be brougt to justice, the community still required purification from the offense.…
Any law that degrades human personality is unjust
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.…
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create a crisis that can no longer be ignored
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality
I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea.…
Birmingham epistle
Letter From Jail is a beautifully typeset rendition of Martin Luther King Jr’s epistle from Birmingham jail, with a crucial and timeless analysis of justice, oppression, love and race. It is also a stunning example of a modern day epistle in the same vein as Galatians.
God favors mercy over judgment
Even in the midst of judgment the LORD shows mercy to individuals who repent. Joshua’s conquest begins with the story of a Canaanite woman, Rahab, who’s faith gave Israel courage and delivered, not only her own life, but the life of her father, mother, and all her siblings (see rahab preserves israelite spies). This stands in juxtaposition to the Canaanite kings who, upon hearing of Israel’s military victories, banned together to destroy them.…
God is slow to judge but swift to execute
It’s a pattern in the LORD’s judgment to be long in coming but swift and complete in execution. The wickedness of those dwelling in Canaan did not bring destruction upon their heads for over four centuries, but when it was full, retribution was like the days of Noah or Sodom and Gomorrah. He offers each generation, from the time Abram walked the land until Joshua began to deliver cities over to destruction, the opportunity to repent.…
God promises humans deliver retribution
Israel’s destruction of the nations who inhabit Canaan matches the pattern of the flood narrative as a consequence for filling the land with violence, but I’ve wondered why, this time, it was Israel who delivered the consequence. I mean, Noah was a passive observer when God let creation collapse upon his generation. It didn’t bother me too much that the LORD uses people to deliver retribution since the LORD uses Babylon later to do the same thing to Israel, but recently I realized that’s what the LORD had promised to do.…
American racism
Dear Son, History, as you’ll learn in school, is infected with human injustice. You are right to be horrified by the fires of Auschwitz and enraged at the bombings of the Twin Towers. These are unimaginable and public evils that scar the fabric of our society for generations; eternal monuments to the brutality of humans who cast off their humanity and descend into beastly chaos. In the shadow of these tragedies, a person may overlook the numerous smaller memorials to unrighteousness which litter the graveyard of American history.…
Organizational injustice is systemic
In my excavation of Bradberry and Greaves' book Leadership 2.0, trying to dig up an insight, I unearthed a jarring discontinuity. Bold claims are made in the first choppy pages of the chapter on organizational justice, but the actions fall short of the vision for organizational justice. “The ability to get what we deserve from the tremendous effort that we put into our work,” “the feeling that your efforts are respected and valued,” “[feeling] empowered” and “feeling satisfied with how you spent your time” are all given as definitions for organizational justice (pg.…
Entrepreneurs will be judged first
The corruption of justice is abhorrent to the LORD. “[Jehoshaphat] appointed judges in the land in all the fortified cities of Judah, city by city, and said to the judges, ‘Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the LORD. He is with you in giving judgment. Now then, let the fear of the LORD be upon you. Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the LORD our God, or partiality or taking bribes’ (ESV, 2 Chronicles 19:5-7).…
Justice is more than absence of harm
💬 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Deuteronomy 10:17-18 (ESV) As I reviewed the many passages about justice for the fatherless and the widow, so many refer to defense and the absence of oppression that it might appear a righteous person is one who doesn’t directly harm the poor.…