My concept of justice by nature is warped and sick. It looks like the bad people being punished, and the ones who have made mistakes to receive retribution. Even vengeance. I have been known to take in a good revenge movie from time to time. Batman is my favorite superhero, dispensing justice without too much regard for due process.
Before you are tempted to take that on a grand, societal-level scale, know this: it takes place in the smallest of ways with the smallest injustices. The dumbest example that probably reflects the poorest on me is my driving. You would be amazed at the sheer weight of injustice I have suffered at the hands of other careless, horrible drivers. But not quite as amazed as you would be that in my mind I have never made a mistake or been [unduly] unkind in my life as a driver. The scales of justice in my sad little heart and mind are forever tipped in my favor.
But then, last night as we are meeting with a couple in Sioux City, dreaming and plotting about what this crazy adventure of a new community of faith will look like, we looked at a passage in the Scripture I will continue to chew on the rest of my days.
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
_Micah 6.8To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
It is a passage I have read (and even sung) for decades, and it still needles me. Many translations read "do justice"...or "do justly". It means to do right in everything for everyone. I think most often for me it has been reduced to making sure people get what they deserve. That is how I most often process justice, and can even get a little high in dreaming about big scary people getting what's coming to them. As if wrongs are righted with more wrong, more hurt, more physical, emotional, economic, and spiritual violence.
Yet, as with everything in the Scripture, YOU HAVE TO KEEP READING. Lest our concept of justice be reduced to a perverted vengeance, the very next words are: love mercy. By its very definition, mercy is people NOT getting what they deserve. So how do people do justice without people getting what they deserve? What kind of justice is that?
Apparently there is justice that leads to healing, not punishment. There is a justice that leads to peace, not to further division, wounds, and hatred. There is a justice that loves mercy. The kind of justice that rescues and restores.
If your justice doesn't love mercy, it's not justice. It's something smaller, weaker, and warped. It may feel good, but it is ugly and dangerous..it is a cancer, a drug. If your justice is about everyone getting what they deserve, your world is small and sad, because no one gets what they deserve.
We spent some time last night reflecting on a paraphrase of some of Jesus' words, and I was devastated by them:
For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you wanted more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserved. (From the Richard E. Stearns Version of Matthew 25)
God help me. I am guilty. Thank you God for not giving me what I deserve, but mercy and grace in the love of Christ, and an opportunity to see you redefine my self-righteous sense of justice.
Will you pray for me, and for the communities of faith in Bangor and Sioux City, that our definition of justice would have mercy at the center, and that justice would flow in our communities?
