WHEN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT JUSTICE AS CHRISTIANS, what exactly are we talking about?

Micah 6:8 in part reads: “...what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness (or steadfast love) and to walk humbly
with your God?” The scripture seems to summarize what constitutes true religion. There are echoes here of the Great Commandment, the teaching of the prophets, and the practical advice of the book of James. That is the connection between the worship of God, liturgical acts, sacrifice, tithing, and how neighbors, strangers, the weak, and less desirable members of society are actually treated.

Richard Foster, in Streams of Living Water, has identified three great themes of the social justice tradition (by the way, I believe that justice always has a social dimension; we will discuss further
below what the other dimensions are) as mishpat (justice with social, ethical, and religious connotations), hesed (compassion, also lovingkindness or steadfast love), and shalom, which “conveys the idea of a harmonious unity in the natural order as well” (Isaiah 11:1-9) (see pp. 168-171, Streams of Living Water). It is within these three great themes then that we talk about justice. Our understanding here is that it is not some extracurricular activity that religious people should be engaged in; rather we want to argue here that it is central to the very essence of being religious. The prophets bear witness to the times when covenant communities wandered away from the mandate of being alternative communities of “shalom.” The understanding here is that compassion, mercy, and structural issues are all at play. So when we go into classical and contemporary discussions of themes of justice in political theory, ethics, and philosophy, the questions of the forms that justice takes are important. Whether here we may talk of distributive or restorative or punitive or contractual justice, all those forms of the questions with a whole host of theorists behind them will have to answer the question raised above: What does the Shalom of God look like and what is our part in bringing it about?

The project of the people of God, here understood as a small band of former slaves who were liberated from tyranny and charged with creating alternative communities that reflect shalom, becomes normative for those who believe. The memory of redemption from bondage of Egypt (Exodus) was always alive in the minds of the writers. Even in the contemporary period, when times of remembrance come around the Jewish liturgy, the smallest child will ask, “Why is this night different from any other?” The answer has to do with God’s redemptive acts, as if they were happening in the now. To go back to our initial question then, what does it mean to talk about justice? It seems we have to take seriously our own journeys of redemption and the grace that has been shown us by God through Jesus, and that the grace shown to us we have to show to others as well.

Acts of compassion, service, prayer, study, contemplation, and meditation are all a part of what we are called to be about as we seek to be formed into a more just person. These acts of worship will also lead us to aid the neighbor in real conditions of suffering and injustice (we have to make certain analysis of social situations in terms of causes and what solutions may look like), and we are called here to intervene in situations that dehumanize. We are also called then not only to stop the pain but to go deeper and address the structural roots of those acts of injustice. In the end, we are not as it were “messiahs,” but people of faith trying to be faithful to the call to shalom in our time. Our studying, prayer, community practice, social analysis, and witness should then always point to what ultimately our vocation is: to reflect the new community of folks liberated by the grace of God and to create conditions that more accurately reflect what the kingdom is ultimately to be about. This in short is one way of attempting to answer the question above.