Justice - June 24, 2007

Tonight’s topic is, of course, ‘Justice’. It is, truly, one of the most relevant topics to the 21^st century world. Most of you know me well enough to expect a mention of Tom Wright at least somewhere in this message, so I’ll waste no time and make a reference to one of his many books, ‘Simply Christian’. In it, he opens with 4 chapters under the heading ‘echoes of a voice’. He discusses the 4 key areas of relationships, beauty, spirituality, and of course, Justice.

He describes how in each of these areas – not least in the area of Justice – our search for them goes well unfinished. We can imagine what true justice might look like in the world; we can imagine a world where no one goes hungry, where wages are fair, where judgements and decisions are made apart from distortions of personal or other gain. But… we find ourselves completely helpless in our efforts to bring such a world into being.

In keeping with his metaphor of ‘echoes of a voice’, we hear, as it were, the voices of true relationships, true beauty, true spirituality and true justice ‘echoing’ as if coming from just around the corner. We walk curiously around the corner to find that the echo now seems – elusively – just around the next corner. We just can’t seem to ever quite get there.

Simply put, whether it’s things in our private lives, things in our families, things in our communities, things in our churches, things in our nations and yes – things in the world; ‘things’ are not ‘right’ – and these ‘things’ need to be ‘righted’. The biblical mandate, command, instruction, plea, instruction, etc. is for humans (as God’s image-bearing creatures) and especially the church (as the renewed version of that image!) to be GOD’S AGENTS in ‘righting’ what is not ‘right.’

Overview

Tonight’s message will follow the following basic outline: first, I will discuss ‘justice’ in ethical terms, and along the way show that ‘justice’ is, in fact, a thoroughly biblical theme; second, I will discuss how ‘justice’ works together with ‘mercy’ and ‘grace’, and highlight the need for all three – not just one; finally, we will look at a few things that perhaps keep us from being people of justice.

‘Justice’ in Ethical (and biblical!) terms

In the past weeks, we’ve talked about several of these Christian virtues (love, courage, etc.) in terms of being balanced between two vices. I think it is helpful to discuss true ‘justice’ in this way as well. Justice, like love and courage is not something or some action you DO, but a character, a virtue that is evidenced by how one reacts to or lives in certain circumstances. Last week the clear example was that true ‘patience’ is shown in un-patient circumstances.

Justice, then, is shown in the midst of in-justice. It has EVERYTHING to do with REACTING to injustice. We can OVER-react or UNDER-react. True Justice, I suggest, is between the extreme of OVER-reactive ‘vengeance’ on one hand, and the other extreme of UNDER-reactive ‘In-action’ on the other hand. Vengeance arrogantly tries too hard or in the wrong way to ‘fix’ the situation, and In-action, of course, does nothing. There is a time to act, and a time to not-act, of course, but the ‘vengeance’ and ‘in-action’ I am describing are mistakes for these reasons: On one hand, vengeance, thinking its extreme action will fix the problem, ends up making it far worse; on the other hand, in-action, thinking its passivity is ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’, leaves the injustice un-helped.

Also, how we THINK about injustice is HUGE. It is our THINKING about injustice that leads us to how we ACT concerning injustice – whether we act with ‘justice’ or one of the extremes of ‘vengeance’ or ‘inaction’. The aggressiveness of ‘vengeance’ is driven by attitudes of anger and/or hatred, while the passiveness of ‘inaction’ is driven by attitudes of apathy and/or carelessness.

Hopefully, as I’ve talked about our responsibility to respond to injustice and the ways in which we can respond wrongly, you have already thought of various Bible passages that confirm what I’m saying.

(On that note, I suggest that simply because a message or sermon is loaded with quotations of Bible verses, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is rightly dividing or rightly presenting the biblical material. The opposite is also true; just because a message or sermon may not quote many or any bible verses, doesn’t mean that it is expressing unbiblical ideas. Listening to a sermon or message is not an inactive or passive thing. You need to – you MUST – test every single thing that Peter, Shawn, I or anyone else says – especially Peter McGhee! :) )

At any rate, there are numerous verses that relate to these ideas. In Romans 12, a passage about not repaying evil for evil, but overcoming evil with good, Paul quotes the Law of Moses – ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay!’ which, of course, warns against the extreme action of vengeance. To demonstrate God’s heart against the other extreme of inaction, I would, perhaps suggest reading the opening chapters of Isaiah. Note the action-implied verbs in this famous but largely un-obeyed verse – Isaiah 1:17 “Learn to do good, seek justice, reprove the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” Learn! Do! Seek! Reprove! Defend! Plead! That is NOT inaction! It’s justice!!!

If that’s not enough, take Micah 6:8 where he sums up what God requires for his people – ‘what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?’ Want more? Just about any book by an Old Testament prophet will do! If you have been deluded into thinking that the Old Testament ‘doesn’t matter for today’ then please read the words of John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter, Paul and John!!!

While you’re at it, you might want to consider actually paying attention to the excellent studies in Titus we’re doing! Perhaps you can count the number of times Paul uses the phrase ‘good deeds’ or ‘good works’ in one of his shortest epistles! Let me be clear, we’re not talking AT ALL about earning your way to God or being ‘good enough’ to be saved. But ever since Luther, we’ve almost been scared to death to tell anyone they should be doing anything! That’s precisely the role of the prophet!

OK, now that we’ve presented the case that justice is indeed a key biblical theme (!), let’s now consider how ‘justice’ works alongside the other biblical themes of ‘mercy’ and ‘grace’.

Mercy, Grace, AND Justice

First, and quickly, the difference between ‘mercy’ and ‘grace’. We’ve been talking about justice, as an attempt to ‘right’ what is ‘wrong’; to react appropriately toward injustice; to give injustice what it deserves. ‘Mercy’ is different to ‘justice’ in that ‘mercy’ does not give what is deserved. It pardons the criminal and lets him/her go free. Now, ‘grace’ takes it a step further, in that ‘grace’ gives what is undeserved. It is the language of ‘gifting’ or ‘gracing’ someone.

If justice is a biblical theme, and it is, then mercy and grace are most certainly also biblical themes. For some reason, I think we talk more about mercy and grace than we do about justice. In light of this, I think justice is particularly one of the more important areas of concern for the church today, especially for the comfortable, complacent, Western, affluent church. The people of God are called to be people of mercy and grace, yes (make no mistake!), but we are also called to be people of justice.

Not only do we need to show ALL three at various times, I want to suggest that we all will be met by all three at the hands of God Himself. God is not only infinitely merciful and infinitely gracious, He is also infinitely just. Like the mystery of God’s sovereignty AND our free will both being realities, I suggest that God’s mercy, grace AND justice are ALL part of His character.

God’s grace says that you will be given what you didn’t earn – i.e. salvation.

God’s mercy says that you will not be given what you deserve – i.e. punishment

God’s justice says that you will get what you deserve – i.e. rewards (good/bad)

God most certainly is an impartial judge, but he doesn’t have to blindfold Himself to do so. God’s judgements are perfectly in accordance with His character; and He is THE merciful, gracious and just God. Finally, let us consider some obstacles in the way of us becoming and being people of justice.

The struggle for True Justice

Half of these obstacles could be summarised by the great obstacle of all obstacles – our sin and selfishness. The other half could be put to simply ignorance. Ignorance of reality and ignorance of just how difficult things really are. We’ll look quickly at some examples as we close.

First, we are lazy. I found a quote by William Easterly, from his book, “The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good”

[A tragedy of the world’s poor has been that] the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get three dollars to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.

… It is heart-breaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can’t get twelve-cent medicine to dying poor children.

Tonnes and tonnes of grain and resources have literally been parachute-dumped into poverty-stricken areas of the world, only to be quickly seized by local bullies or others with power. This and other troubling examples, show how simply ‘throwing’ foreign aid at the poor will not cause lasting change and has little or nothing to do with true justice. True justice is hard. This is what is encouraging about organisations like Tear Fund. They do the hard work and get involved in the communities they are trying to serve. They operate in ways that meet real needs in real and lasting ways. Aid without concern is dangerous. Aid to relieve guilt is dangerous. Lazy aid is no aid at all.

Secondly, we don’t care enough. This of course, has to do with the attitude discussed earlier – apathy. For too many of us, if everything seems fine in our lives, we would rather not think too hard or for too long about how things are in other peoples’ lives.

It’s probably not the best example, and not meaning to unjustly criticise any government, but it could be said that many welfare systems operate just well enough to keep people quiet. Actually moving people from being un-skilled and un-employed to being skilled and employed is very, very hard work. Many welfare systems don’t end up encouraging people to gain skills and work. Indeed, these are merely a few brief thoughts dealing with very complex and confusing issues, but I think it’s a fair summary to say that a good welfare system gives people a hand-up, not a hand-out. And this balance is simply too hard. I don’t think all the blame can go to government, either. The public doesn’t seem to care enough to pay the amount of taxes needed to develop and maintain a caring, working, balanced welfare project.

Which leads us to a third hurdle – justice is just simply HARD. It takes work. The fight for justice is against very tough, but real circumstances. One example might be the education systems like NZQA. There are very real and difficult inequalities in the world of education. How do we fix it? What does justice look like here? I’m thinking that helping the struggling ones is a good thing, and many attempts to do so look good in the short term; but how do we do that without lowering standards for them and crippling them in the long run?

Our work for justice needs to be a labour that is empowered and energised by love. Working for justice takes all of you – heart, mind, soul and strength. It takes endurance to keep going when things don’t work out like you thought. It is really, cool, hip and trendy to be all-out for fair trade or to sound the so-called ‘global warming’ alarm – and there are very real issues in both of these areas, but we need to be somewhere between jumping on the band-wagon on one hand, and scoffing at it on the other. With all these issues and more, there are difficult questions to be asked and difficult answers to search for. Justice is just simply HARD. But those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings like eagles. If you abide in Christ our life, our vine of spiritual strength you WILL bear the good fruit of justice. So – church – Learn to do good; Seek Justice.

Humility

Northcote Baptist Church

3 June, 2007 – Evening Service

I really appreciated Peter McGhee’s sermon on courage last week. Among other things he highlighted how all virtues are flanked on either side by vices.

Now, I think we have a tendency to think about virtues in terms of them being on the other end of the spectrum with an opposite vice – suggesting that one hand you have a given vice and on the other hand you have the opposite virtue, with the goal of being all the way on the virtue side. The English language works this way, actually. The ‘grammatical opposite’ of humility is indeed pride, but humility isn’t just a grammatical term! It’s a virtue! It has to do with character! And in terms of character, I think it works differently. I agree with those (including Peter) that view virtues as being centred between two vices.

Last week, Peter presented the virtue of true courage as being between the vices of rash over-confidence on the one hand, and false fear on the other hand. I want to suggest this week that – like true courage – true humility is found between two vices. But first, a word about humility.

We often think of ‘humility’ in terms of doing humble things, and might expect a sermon to instruct us ho to be humble. But humility is not a ‘thing’ you ‘do’. It is a virtue that is evidenced in certain circumstances. Humility may be one of the most elusive virtues, because the harder you try to show it, the less truly humble you are! As for myself, I think I’m progressing toward full humility quite well - probably further than most!!! :)

As a short aside I’ll quote from the Book of Moses – meaning the books that were written by him. Deuteronomy 34:10 – keep in mind that this verse is within the books of Moses – “But since then there has not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses.” Good ole’ Moses showing the humility! Now for those that are worried about Moses’ character right now, let me put you at ease. This section of Deuteronomy records the events after Moses’ death, so it would have had to have been written by someone other than Moses. It just makes for a quick joke.

OK, now let’s look at the relationship between the virtue of humility and the pair of vices on either side of it.

I looked for a while at Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and let me tell you, there is more that has been written in the field of ethics than you care to read! Different people have discussed ‘humility’ with different categories and using different contrasts, and it all gets quite extensive very quickly. Nietzsche actually called humility a weakness and a false virtue, saying it hid people’s weaknesses. Others contrast ‘humility’ with ‘vanity’, having ‘pride’ in the middle as the desired virtue. So the connotations tend to shift a bit, I think. Peter McGhee lectures in Ethics, so talk to him if you have detailed questions!

Basically, humility has to do with how we view ourselves. I’d like to suggest that true humility is somewhere between self-AGGRANDISEMENT and self-ABASEMENT. It’s just as important not to think too highly of ourselves as it is not to think too lowly of ourselves. We – get – this – messed – up – so – often!

Psalm 8 contains a beautiful passage that I think expresses the proper balance. To those that are a bit on the prideful, arrogant side, verses 3-4 say, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?”

But lest we forget the dignity of being made in the very image of the Creator, verse 5-8 remind us how great we were created – “Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands. You have put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea; whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

We weren’t made to grovel around constantly reminding ourselves that we’re ‘just human’ – as if that had anything at all to do with being humble. We were made to rule over the earth! If you don’t believe me, read Genesis 1 again! That’s what David is drawing from in Psalm 8.

All too often we speak of humanity as if it were a mistake or something that holds us back! When we think and speak that way, we are actually more in agreement with Greek philosophy than the Scripture! Now don’t get me wrong, sin is real and has greatly distorted God’s original intent, but the creation is still beautiful and declares the glory of God and humans are still made in His image. It has been well said: “it’s not that humans are the problem, they have a problem - sin.”

I’m not trying to minimise sin or the wrath of God. Most certainly not! God’s holy, righteous nature demands that he must hate and punish sin, but we must remember that God is angry not with how he made us, but with what we’ve done with ourselves! Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not because they were humans – made in God’s image, but because they had irreversibly shattered that image. I think the Flood and the destruction of Canaan should be understood in this light as well.

My grandpa has had to shoot and kill some horses that were dying in a field due to neglect. Their hoofs had overgrown. Therefore, they could not walk; therefore they couldn’t get enough food for themselves and were starving. They simply could lie on the ground as they literally were wasting away. My grandpa had horses of his own, and loved them. He literally hated shooting them, but he had to. Tom Wright describes this as happening with humans as well. In a sense, he says, when humans rebel and resist God and neglect each other, they become less and less human in doing so – bringing themselves to destruction. Again, humans aren’t the problem – they have a problem.

It’s not a problem for us to exert ourselves as human beings – morally, spiritually, physically or otherwise; but it is a problem for us to exert ourselves independently of God! As Psalm 8 says, we have been made ‘a little lower than God’! In other words, if you look around, you’re not going to see anything that comes closer to being God than a human being. No one is calling upon plants or animals to solve the problem of poverty. No one is depending on cats and dogs to sort out the violence in the world. This is the job of God’s image-bearing creatures – you and I.

I actually think that being made in the image of the Creator should lead to the appropriate kind of humility that we need. We are not, nor ever will be God – we are His Image. So, we have NO valid reason or motivation to think too highly of ourselves. On the other hand, we aren’t simply worthless collections of atoms – we are made in God’s Image! Makes sense, doesn’t it? God opposes the proud, and gives grace to the humble.

So, pride is bad – and self-hate is just as bad. OK. Now I want to show how both pride and low self-esteem can be a bit sneaky. We all have probably seen pride in its most obvious form – i.e. someone who has no problem letting everyone know just how cool they are! But there is another kind of pride that is masked with a kind of false-humility. This is a little more sneaky. Someone may think they are really cool, but always ‘play the cards’ so they appear really humble.

It’s also true with low self-esteem. We know what low self-esteem in its most obvious form looks like – someone who honestly thinks and acts like they are worthless. But there is another version of this that is masked with a kind of false confidence – a false bravado. This is quite sneaky. Someone really feels miserable about themselves, but exerts a lot of effort to convince everyone – including themselves? – that they are actually quite cool.

Of course, this is most common in Western, affluent culture. We have ‘stars’ and ‘famous people’ to compare ourselves with. On MySpace you can compare your profile with others – more comments, more friends, etc. This rank and file individualism is the very toxic wasteland that has people always thinking about how ‘they’ look or how ‘they’ measure-up to the culture around them.

This individualism show up in all kinds of ways in the Church. Our notions of ‘spirituality’ have everything to do with how spiritual ‘I’ am, what experiences ‘I’ have, how spiritually fulfilled ‘I’ feel, etc. instead of the kind of spirituality suggested in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, self-control.

As a matter of fact, both the false-humility AND the false-confidence mentioned earlier are most certainly present in the Church – except they are uber-spiritualised. We’ve got all these modern notions of what a ‘spiritual’ person looks like. We’ve got all these expectations of what ‘spiritual’ people do. Talk about pressure to perform!

Perhaps the most troubling thing I see in this regard is the rampant positivism in many churches today. This is not humility! If things aren’t going well, a humble person admits it and doesn’t use various positive Christian words to cover it up. God forgive us for being too structured and too busy to allow and encourage this kind of honesty and humility. God forgive us when our systems of church actually encourage fake-ness and positivism.

We must be a community in which people can be REAL – sharing their faults – and ALSO at the same time a community with doesn’t leave people unchanged. Now THAT is a tough balance. We have to be BOTH accepting and challenging. Forgiving and Rebuking.

So, we’ve talked about how being made in the image of God leads to appropriate humility. We’ve talked about the false-humility and false-confidence that is so fuelled by the individualism of our culture. And, we’ve talked about the need to be REAL in our church communities. To use technical language, we’ve discussed three things relating to humility: anthropology, sociology and ecclesiology.

But, I must say that a sermon can have an infinite number of ‘ologies’, but if it doesn’t have a good Christology, then it’s going to be an incomplete sermon. So, in closing, let’s review these three categories as we consider Jesus Christ right smack-dab in the middle of each.

Anthropology. Humanity. What does it means to be human? Jesus Christ is the MAN. The image of God (in which we are all created) doesn’t get ANY clearer than Jesus Christ, who (as Philippians 2 says) being in very nature God, didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even the death of the cross.

THAT is a robust Anthropology. Go forth in THAT kind of humility.

Sociology. Culture. How do we relate to the world? Jesus Christ is the word made flesh – the light that has come into the world, and in the same way we need to ‘incarnate’ ourselves INTO the world – our light needs to shine in the darkness. But the darkness (in our case, the darkness of individualism) cannot overcome the Light of Christ, who (John’s Gospel says) was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him… But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.

THAT is an intentional, incarnational Sociology. Go forth in THAT kind of ethic.

Ecclesiology. Church. How are we to BE the church? Jesus Christ is the One full of Grace and Truth, and we must be so in our actions and attitudes toward one another. With Grace, we must forgive and accept each others’ failings; both being real, and encouraging realness in others. And with Truth, we must challenge and correct one another; all the while being open to this ourselves. We must love with the fullness of Christ, for (as John’s Gospel says) of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

THAT is an Ecclesiology of Grace and Truth. Be THAT kind of church.

May we, in our Christian communities, in relation to and life in the World and in our robust Image-of-God humanness, look to Christ as our pattern for true humility.