Nineteen years ago today, our world was forever changed. As I think back on that day, I am reminded of a line from President George W. Bush’s memoir. He looked at those around him and said that those who committed this atrocity would pay. Later that day, he told the American people that justice would prevail. Over the rest of the years of his presidency, he sought to fulfill that promise.
Today, we seem to have forgotten what justice means. We see injustice all around us. Racial injustice, political injustice, and judicial injustice dominate the daily news. Over the past few weeks, we have been discussing the way Christians should respond to all that is happening around us. We spent significant time discussing the reality that our response must start with the gospel. However, our response does not end there. For the next several aspects to our response, we must turn to Micah 6. Here God informs Israel that he is not impressed with their extravagant acts of religion. He was not impressed, because they forgot the heart of what it means to be the people of God. In Micah 6:8 God informs them, “He has told you, O man, 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?”
God requires that we do justice. However, I am fully convinced that Christians and our culture have completely forgotten what justice means. We have come to define justice as, “others doing whatever I think they ought to do.” This is more than a wrong definition. This leads us to completely misunderstand God himself. For, justice is the very nature of God.
Justice is defined as “the quality of being fair or reasonable and the administration of the law or authority in maintaining this”. When we speak of the justice of God, we are speaking of God following and upholding His righteous law. Here is why this is important. Often, we decry as injustice, things that are not injustice because we don’t like them. Other times we call things just that are not just because we don’t like the people that have been unjustly treated. Each incident must be looked at in accordance with God’s law and civil law.
When we speak about racial justice, we tend to run to extremes. Either everything is racial injustice, or there is no racial injustice. We fail to do the hard, mental work to nuance the situations, and realize that racial injustice does exist. But that does not mean that everything is racial injustice. So, the response as believers cannot be to fall in line with Black Lives Matter and call every police shooting a case of racial injustice. But neither should we respond callously with the statement that All Live Matter and ignore the racial injustice that is a part of the history of this country. Of course, all lives matter. Of course, black lives matter. When a person (regardless of race) threatens and attacks a law enforcement officer and is shot, that is not injustice. However, we should be able to admit that there are sometimes that bad law enforcement officers respond unjustly. And we should seek to see those law enforcement officers held accountable through our judicial system.
This raises the next issue of justice: time. Because we are depraved, finite humans, justice requires time. We must allow the court proceedings to take their course. This is the major issue with the racial tensions today. No one is willing to allow justice to take time. We want it immediately. This also falls into the category of political injustice. Some feel that all the executive orders laid down are unjust. But we must be reminded that just because we don’t like it, does not make it unjust. Again, we must be willing to nuance the situation. Some orders are unjust. Some are not. Christians ought to love justice enough to be able to nuance between the two. We haven’t! And it has hurt our gospel witness. If we believe that a law is unjust because it violates the law of God, we ought to stand against it, work to change it, and, if the time calls for it, to defy it . But if the law does not violate the law of God and we simply don’t like it, we ought to humble submit to it, while we work to see it changed.
Justice is a hard row to hoe. Holding to justice will regularly place us at odds with the secular culture and (sadly) with the Christian culture. If we are going to obey God in this world, we must do justice. We must be willing to admit that just because we don’t like something does not make it unjust. We must also be willing to admit that just because it fits our political proclivities does not make it just. We need to ask the question, “Does this align with the law of God and civil law.” And we ought to vote, encourage our legislators, and lobby to see our civil laws align with God’s laws. Be a person who loves justice.