Social Justice

You remember that scene in the movie “Seven” when Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and company walk into that apartment, air-fresheners strung everywhere, and find some “dead guy” tied to his bed – except he wakes up and starts writhing and gasping? This is the blogging equivalent of that.

I have a problem with the social justice movement – not that I think its unnecessary or wrong or bad, though I think some off-shoots from it can be misguided. No, it’s the name that I don’t like. Social Justice. I think it’s got a bad title and here’s my reasoning:

In our world, nay in our universe, justice is by and large the rule. God has designed our lives (and I say “our” lives to mean human lives) to follow a pretty uniform standard of justice. This is from the big-wigs of corporate America to the poorest of poor, the most plighted of the disadvantaged in…geez, just pick a place – you get what I’m driving at. I would say, for 99% of the world justice is served. Now, one might counter and say there most certainly is NOT justice in our world. How could you even say that with so many innocent children going hungry every night or getting sold into child prostitution or suffering from AIDS if there truly is justice? To say that is preposterous, calloused, and downright uncompassionate. Well, here’s my rationale behind the statement.

I don’t think we can pin down justice to being only personal – eye for an eye, ear for an ear thing. Sometimes that’s how justice works, but most often justice works as a long term, cultural slant, and in my view, in that line of thinking, justice is served almost without exception. We here in America are getting “our” just rewards, just as those people of backward, third-world countries are getting “theirs.” That may sound horribly elitist, “un-globally” minded (which seems to have become the unpardonable sin these days.) but let me explain what I mean. True “social justice” rarely serves those who work the hardest for it. We would all agree that the general order of things follows this basic pattern – “do the work and enjoy the product of the labor afterwards.” We all know this to be true. We all work for a week, sometimes two, and then receive a paycheck. We cook a meal and then eat it. We study and go to class and then receive the degree. Etc, etc, etc. We’re all familiar with this principle. Rarely in life does that natural course reverse itself. I seldom get the pay-off at the beginning and then do the work for it later (except in what the general populace would call deviant behavior) In that same way, I think the natural justice of life works. Our forefathers before us for the most part, worked extremely hard to build a culture that would be prosperous and righteous. A lot of them never got to see the rewards of their work. Think about the men that fought in the Revolutionary war or the settlers on the frontier plains or the civil rights/women’s rights workers of past decades and centuries. A lot of them never got to see the just rewards of all of their hard work. In fact, a lot of them lost everything for an ideal that they never saw come to fruition. One might say, they never got true justice in their life, but justice doesn’t work that way. Justice is a slow, plodding, methodical entity that always delivers, but rarely when we want it to. In fact, if truth be told, I seldom receive right now the justice my actions deserve.

Just this past week I was at Nazarene Youth Conference in St. Louis, and I’ll be darned if on the way back I didn’t average about 12 mph over the speed limit. Now, I didn’t get a ticket – in fact, I don’t think I’ll ever get a ticket for my heinous, reckless abandonment of the law during those 2 days of driving. I have cheated the system - thoroughly bamboozled the element of justice in our society. Or have I? Very likely, I’m not the only one who sped during the course of my trip. In fact I’m willing to bet that most of us on the road were traveling at an excessive rate of speed and probably a few at a dangerous pace. And, I’m willing to bet, during that time there were accidents where people got hit and injured by someone going a little too fast. Those people that got hit weren’t necessarily doing anything wrong. They were just innocent bystanders driving their cars at normal rates of speed, but, that’s usually how justice works. The actions of the general public affect the public as a whole. A general disregard for laws and "rightness" will often affect people who had no part in the disregarding simply because they're part of the group. Actions done today will influence other actions done tomorrow will influence trends next week will influence cultural directions a year from now. This is why I think it’s true that “Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people.” My sin can very easily become your sin, can very easily become our sin, can very easily become our nation’s sin – and then we feel the effects.

Now, don't take this to mean that I think excessive speed on the highways is a major socially debilitating concern. I was just using it as a simple illustration to make the point that: I think the nations, the people, the cultures that promote destructive behavior either through turning a blind eye to wrong doing or by blatantly advocating improper practices will soon rain down the rewards of that behavior on the people. If a culture doesn’t place a heavy emphasis on education or adopts an inefficient, corrupt educational system, their populace will eventually reap the rewards of it. If there is a constant power struggle among warring peoples which keeps an economy from flourishing, you can rest assured that in time the people of those cultures will experience hardship. Justice will be served – we don’t need to advocate for it. He’ll always be there eventually.

No, I would submit that instead of social justice we should call it social mercy. If I remember correctly, Jesus almost never pushed justice among our human relationships. He knew that would happen naturally. He was constantly telling us to turn the other cheek and go a second mile for our fellow man - to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Jesus pushed mercy because He knew it would help break the cycle of justice that our sin so rightly deserves. He knew His act of mercy was the only thing that could save us and an act of mercy from a fellow human would push us towards that ultimate act. If we could see it in this light, mercy is the broken link in the chains of justice that bind our human existence. Now, this isn’t to say that justice is bad or shouldn’t exist. God created our system to work this way and if you remember, He called all of His creation good. I would just encourage everyone, there’ll be plenty of opportunities for justice.- when you get the chance, show mercy.

On a similar note, why is it that truckers seem to be the only group that has to constantly justify their professional existence. No one else feels the need to do that. You always see, trucker t-shirts and hats with things like “truckers keep America rolling” or “If you got it, a trucker brought it” or “Without truckers, the only thing you’d have to put in your mouth would be your foot.” (all found on trucker t-shirts). No one else seems to have this inferiority complex. You never see nurses wearing shirts like “How’d you like to draw your own blood, buddy” or chefs wearing shirts with “I’m the only defense between you and an unhealthy dose of e-coli.” I even remember talking to a couple truckers. They seemed really peeved at life. Maybe we need to start a social justice movement for truckers.