“THOSE IDEAS SEEM incongruent.” Those were the words said to me by a seminary advisor after I described myself as an evangelical Christian committed to winning souls for Christ and doing justice. The unfortunate truth behind his statement is that justice and Christianity are not synonymous in the minds of most, and evangelical Christianity and justice are even less synonymous. But the verse highlighted in Kazi Joshua’s article, Micah 6:8, paints a much different picture.

“And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” This verse provides a lens through which to understand the life and ministry of Jesus. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied, “...love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind...and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22: 36-40). And how does one love his or her neighbor: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. In short, it is impossible to truly love neighbor and be unconcerned with doing justice.

However, the connection between love of neighbor and doing justice is often overlooked in American Christianity because of the dualistic nature of our faith. There is body and there is spirit; that which is secular and that which is sacred; and never the two shall meet. We read the Gospels from this vantage point, and the ministry of Jesus is relegated to the spiritual realm. But this is not a fair reading of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

Ched Myers, in his book Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, argues that the miracles of Jesus, as presented in the book of Mark, were not simply acts of compassion aimed fundamentally at meeting people’s spiritual needs. He suggests, rather, that these miracles had great social and political ramifications and were in some cases blatant acts of civil disobedience. This is particularly true of the healing narratives, specifically Jesus healing on the Sabbath. Myers asserts that Jesus’ healings were an affront to an unjust social system.

In the Pharisaic system, illness was linked to poverty and was used to enforce a system that left some on the margins of society with no hope of acceptance and incorporation. One’s status as clean or unclean determined one’s place and role in the social order, and the power to name clean and unclean was held by a select and privileged few, the Pharisees. In addition to holding the power to name and to determine a person’s place in the social stratum, the Pharisees also had the power to say who of the unclean could be cleansed and when. Reading Mark’s account of Jesus healing on the Sabbath in light of this social commentary reveals a powerful truth about the connection between love of neighbor and doing justice. Jesus was not simply showing compassion, in the way that that term is used in evangelical Christian communities; he was confronting an unjust system by giving access to people who otherwise had none. In doing this he directly challenged and usurped the authority of the Pharisees who alone held the power to say who was in and who was out and how one comes in.

Jesus’ ministry was holistic. He was concerned with both the physical and spiritual needs of the people to whom he ministered and with the systems that kept those persons physically and spiritually oppressed. Typical evangelical Christian communities that engage in charity often do so with little or no regard to the unjust systems that create the need for charity. Often the focus is on “witnessing” to Christ’s love through service, this being a means towards leading people to Christ. On the other hand, many Christian communities that go beyond charity to the work of doing justice often do so with little regard for “saving souls.” However, neither of these is sufficient in and of themselves to fulfill the call of loving neighbor. We must, like Jesus, be concerned with the whole of a person, flesh and spirit. Doing justice, for the Christian, must involve both a genuine concern for the eternal soul and a desire to see lives transformed by Christ, and a commitment to confronting and working to change systems and institutions that oppress and marginalize people. In this way we love God and neighbor; this is what the Lord requires.