In our Lenten series on A New Creed (1968 rev), we are looking at the final section which says we are called to be the Church, and how we are to act in order to Be The Church.
For me, this is a LOADED sentence! I seems so Don Quixote – finding something as elusive as justice, and jousting with ghosts and ideas. So is this even possible to do? Or more determinably, is it something it is possible to ignore?
First we must ask what do we mean by ‘justice’ and what do we mean by ‘evil’. Secondly we must ask are they related, and if so, how? Finally, but by no means leastly, we must ask how will we seek, and how will we resist?
This is also a key component of our denominational identity and faith – to seek justice – so what does it mean to our spiritual well-being if we do not “seek justice and resist evil”?
Let’s begin with what do we mean by “justice”?
Often in the past few years, we’ve heard the phrase “Justice for…” and then the name of the person or group for whom someone/some group is “seeking justice”. In Manitoba we’ve heard it used in demonstrations against the use of lethal force by the police – esp in instances where such a response is ethically (and strategically) questionable. Justice for Afolabi Stephen Opaso ,for Eisha Hudson, for John Barrion, for Errol Greene for Tanya Nepinak, and the other hundred, maybe thousands, of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and 2-Spirited people. It is the rallying cry in the Black & Indigenous Lives Matter movement(s). It is the rallying cry of a number of victim-advocate groups.
But what is it that is being called for? When you think of ‘justice’, what images come to mind?
Is ‘justice’ different from ‘revenge’ or vengeance?
In my experience of working as an advocate (on ‘both sides of the street’ with victims and offenders), relating to the Canadian court and penal system, I have learned that many people don’t want justice when someone is arrested; they want vengeance, some version of 39 lashes. “Lock ’em up! Throw away the key!” “They should go to jail and never come out” are heard in the public square. Understandable. When someone has hurt us, it’s okay to be hot-ripping mad about it. So I have learned two important lessons. I have learned court systems are not based on justice; they are based on punishment. And I have learned that inflicting punishment equivalent to our being mad doesn’t actually help anyone – not us to feel better, and not the offender to reduce the risk of reoffending.
For example, often someone abused by their domestic partner has wanted justice – a way to restore a balance of power in the family, a way for the abuser to get help; what they usually get is a copy of a probation order which include provisions of no-contact. It was seldom helpful to the victim, the offender, or the situation. Imagine someone whose home has been burgled. What they often want is for their things to be replaced, their sense of safety restored, and for the convicted person to offer a true apology. Instead, the convicted person goes to jail for a period of time. The person burgled person receives none of what they want or need. Those situations do not make justice.
What about in other situations? We hear calls for Justice for Gaza, mostly from Arabic, Muslim and increasingly other voices – including Jewish and Jewish Israeli voices – condemning the group retributive violence by the Israeli military. There are others, mostly Jewish voices but also tohers, who are calling for Justice for Israel, and supporting expansion of settlements and military presence in the (occupied) Palestinian territories in light of the rising anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence. And both sides claim their acts of violence are based in a desire for justice and peace.
The truth is there can be no peace unless there is justice. Or conversely, no justice, no peace. And the heart of the biblical prophetic tradition affirms that. Poetically, the biblical prophet Amos cries: “There are those who turn justice into bitterness, and cast righteousness to the ground.…Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you….[You say you worship the LORD, your God but] though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (5:7-24 abridged). And in the Book of Leviticus 19 (and repeated in Deuteronomy) it is very clear: ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.”
Justice – the treating of the poor equally with the wealthy, not stacking the deck in favour of the powerful against those who struggled, not giving preferential treatment because of what you will get in return – this kind of justice is a force, a mighty force that can change the land. A cursory search for the word “justice” (especially in the Hebrew testament) will bring you to dozens of passages that say similar things.
It isn’t by accident that when we reflected on what it means “to love and serve others” I shared a quote by Professor Dr. Cornel West: Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public. You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people. You can’t save the people if you don’t serve the people. (And Dom Helder Camara, bishop of Brazil, is quoted as: When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist.”
What is also of great interest to me is that in the Hebrew testament the word for justice and the word for righteousness are often coupled or interchangeable. One of my spiritual teachers and mentors, Rabbi Joel Wittstein of blessed memory, once preached this:
“In Hebrew the torah passage reads: ‘tzedek, tzedek tirdof” –justice, justice shall you pursue. The word for justice and the word for righteousness are synonymous. So practicing justice / living the way of torah righteousness are the same. And tirdof has the send of urgency. So God is telling us: Pursue justice like you’re late for work and running after the last train, pursue it like it’s the last call for boarding call for the plane – run like hell after it. Seek it out, look for it like you’d look for a long-lost lover and don’t stop until you find it!”
Tzedekah, righteousness — or right-us-ness – is what biblical justice is all about. Justice and loving are intertwined. Both promise fulfillment.
And Jesus says the same, not surprisingly as he is rooted and nourished by the same prophetic tradition. In Matthew’s gospel (23:23) Jesus says: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”
So if biblical prophetic justice is about balancing power and dignity, we have to ask where do we see the need for justice in our community? In our province? country? What relationships are skewed?
It may be helpful to bring in the other part of the sentence: we are called to resist evil. Is evil the opposite of justice? Is the evil we are to resist our human propensity to protect our own (family, property, way of life) regardless of how it will affect others?
And why do we need to do that because we are ‘the Church’?
In the 4th century of the common era, a community of ascetics who lived in the desert, implied it is our human brokenness that directs us to break away from living in right relationship with others. We are born being self-centered, and to try to get what we need when we need it. That isn’t a bad thing; it is evolutionarily dictated for our survival. But when we stay in that mindset, in that brokenness, we turn our backs on the invitation of Christ to be reconciled to one another, to different parts of ourselves, to God. Conversely, if we say we are disciples and followers of the Jesus Way, we bury that part of life.
In other words, to pursue justice, to make our relationships rightly balanced, is what it means to imitate Christ. “But if according to Christ we resist not evil, though they that are evil be not amended, yet they that are good remain good.” And it is work, because the pull to being selfish (what they call ‘evil’) is deeply ingrained in us (again, perhaps it was evolutionary survival). (They also make the comment that people who have been hurt hurt other people1.)
In other words, if we are seeking justice, we are also resisting the evil that tries to upset that right relationship. Which is perhaps why part of the Prayer of Jesus says “may we not be led into temptation and deliver us from evil.” Or as Rev. Jim Cotter’s paraphrase states it, we pray “from the grip of all that is evil free us”.
But justice is not static. It is about balancing our relationship, living equitably. That can sometimes be like shifting sand (as in the Palestine-Israel relationship). To seek justice, thereby resist evil, is about navigating the shifts.
Then there is the question of could resisting evil require us to do something that is also wrong? As in “two wrongs do make a right”? This is the core of the theory of just war (which Augustine introduced in the 4th century), and which was built on by some who resisted the evil they saw in the Nazi regime in 193’s Germany. In his essay “On Responsible Action” Professor Rev. Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer say sometimes we have to do something we otherwise think of as evil2 (in his case it was the plot to assassinate Der Führer).
So, clearly there can be diversity of opinion in how we resist evil. But the seeking of justice and resisting of evil is inherent to the work of living Christian faith.
In our newest statement of faith A Song of Faith3, this work of seeking justice and resisting evil are seen as Dr. West said, as what it means to live with Christ’s love at work within us.
To use more theological language, perhaps to see justice and resist evil is our embodiment, our mirroring, of the grace we experience – the unconditional love of God we come to know through Jesus. We are called to be the Church — Christ’s body in our world — if we do not seek justice and resist evil, we are turning our back on the one we call Lord of our lives.
There is no shortage of opportunity to seek justice and resist evil. Do we set aside pre-conceived notions and listen to those who are calling “Justice For…” rather than dismissing them? Where we see evil, or the absence of justice, perhaps we can center ourselves, join with others in community, and listen to the Spirit of God at work within us to seek where, and how, love is asking us to respond. Because to sit back and do nothing in the face of evil and injustice is not an option.
Notes:
1 “For without this command, the commands of the Law could not stand. For if according to the Law we begin all of us to render evil for evil, we shall all become evil, since they that do hurt abound. (This was found in a commentary on Matthew 5:39 ‘do not repay those who do evil’; but this was the only source I could find today.
2 From David Bivin JerusalemPerspective.com 2699 (accessed Feb 24/24): On justice:
Referencing Psalms 37:1, 8, Proverbs 24:19 and Matt 5:39 (do not render evil for evil).
“….Likewise, the Good News Bible is apparently the only translation of the New Testament that uses “revenge,” or anything similar, to render Matthew 5:38-39: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But now I tell you: do not take revenge on someone who does you wrong. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too.” It is surprising there are not other versions that translate in the same way. Following “But I tell you,” the context demands “Do not take revenge,” since the first part of verse 39 speaks of “an eye for an eye,” in other words, punishment that is a response in kind.
“In idiomatic English, Matthew 5:39a might read simply, “Don’t try to get even with evildoers.”[9] Not “competing” with evildoers is very different from not resisting evildoers. Jesus was not teaching that one should submit to evil, but that one should not seek revenge. As Proverbs 24:29 says, “Do not say, ‘I will do to him as he has done to me. I will pay the man back for what he has done.’” Jesus’ statement has nothing to do with confronting a murderer or facing an enemy on the field of battle….. Resist Evil Our response to evil does have to be resistance—it is morally wrong to tolerate evil. However, we also must continue to show love for the evildoer.
It should be noted that loving and praying for one’s enemies in no way precludes defending oneself when one’s life is in danger. One is morally obligated to preserve life, including one’s own. Jesus never taught that it is wrong to defend oneself against life-threatening attack. However, he consistently taught his disciples to forgive and not to seek revenge against those who had attacked them. As Proverbs 20:22 counsels, “Do not say, ‘I will repay the evil deed in kind.’ Trust in the LORD. He will take care of it.”
Later on in the same article: “The Jewish position on this issue is summed up in the rabbinic dictum,
“If someone comes to murder you, anticipate him and kill him first.”[10] The sages taught that if one is in danger of being murdered, he should defend himself, even if there is a measure of doubt about the intention of the attacker. Furthermore, if another person’s life is threatened, one is obligated to prevent that murder, if necessary by killing the attacker. The sages ruled that a person who is pursuing someone else with intent to murder may be killed.[11] In light of this, it is very unlikely that Jesus, a Jew of the first century, would have espoused pacifism.
When we examine Jesus’ words from a Hebraic-Jewish perspective, we can see what has been obscured by mistranslation and lack of familiarity with Judaism. The passages construed to support pacifism actually condemn revenge rather than self-defense. It is not surprising that this interpretation is consistent with Jesus’ other teachings and the rest of biblical instruction.
3 From A Song of Faith , adopted in 2012 as one of the statements of doctrine of the United Church of Canada:
….. We are all touched by this brokenness:
the rise of selfish individualism
that erodes human solidarity;
the concentration of wealth and power
without regard for the needs of all;
the toxins of religious and ethnic bigotry;
the degradation of the blessedness of human bodies
and human passions through sexual exploitation;
the delusion of unchecked progress and limitless growth
that threatens our home, the earth;
the covert despair that lulls many into numb complicity
with empires and systems of domination.
We sing lament and repentance.
Yet evil does not—cannot—
undermine or overcome the love of God.
God forgives,
and calls all of us to confess our fears and failings
with honesty and humility.
God reconciles,
and calls us to repent the part we have played
in damaging our world, ourselves, and each other.
God transforms,
and calls us to protect the vulnerable,
to pray for deliverance from evil,
to work with God for the healing of the world,
that all might have abundant life.
We sing of grace.