Justice: more than an idea
God has told you, O mortal, 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? — Micah 6:8
The wider context illuminates a deeper meaning. The question unfolds in the manner of a courtroom, and it is the people of Israel who are on trial. The culminating passage provokes a reflective response. Living out God’s grace is not a balancing act between the harm we cause and the sacrifices we offer in atonement.
The act of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God is what occurs when we pay attention to our internal sense of self, each other, and the systems that distribute justice itself.
Justice is not just an idea – it is an activity. We must resist ossified justice.
If we are careful with our history, we know that justice, especially as it relates to our responsibility to care for each other (and the least among us), has not been our forte. The American project was forged out of the destruction of this continent’s indigenous populations. Its early economic prowess strapped to the backs of enslaved Africans. The hegemonic power of patriarchy and whiteness is rooted at its core, and daily we are reminded of its ferocity.
We should pay close attention.
There is the temptation to collapse into pessimism – to do so, though, would ignore the actual progress made.
At the same time, tehom, the (ever-present?) face of the deep, the ancient waters of the formless void, lurk underneath.
As people of faith who live in the United States, we must be mindful of the pull between theocracy and the ambivalence of secularity. It is Karl Barth, writing after World War II, who reminds us of the sin of linking Christianity to the West. And it is Charles Taylor, in The Secular Age, who illustrates the inherent danger of a Christian faith pacified through its weddedness to nationalistic fervor.
The moral arc of the universe, to borrow the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s oft used phrase, bends only in so far as we understand the degree to which we are co-creators with the Divine.
American elections have consequences, realities we will understand as they come to pass.
But our work does not really change. Voting in an election is no more the end of our participation in its democratic process than the notion that the extent of our Christian worship is confined to an hour on Sunday morning.
There is still ecological degradation, economic exploitation, the denial of our common humanity, and the world-ending violence of the pax Americana.
So, we persist in our work, in our prayers, and in our humble walk with God. We recommit ourselves to loving God and to loving our neighbors as ourselves.
This little light of mine – I’m gonna let it shine; this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine; this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
