Hidden Foundations for Seeking Justice (part 2)
I love and support the conversation about justice we’re having in our culture. As a Christian, I don’t see how one can worship a God who, “hears the cry of the poor, ” (Psalm 34) or speaks through the prophet saying “I the Lord love justice,” (Isaiah 61:8) and then turn a deaf ear to those crying out to be seen and heard. At the same time, it’s important to remember that justice is medicine, not food. As a medicine, justice helps the body remove evil, malice, oppression, unfairness, and cruelty, but on its own it cannot sustain the body to grow into what is good, true, and beautiful.
Medicine is necessary when we are sick. Food sustains is into health. We need both.
In my post, Hidden Foundations for Seeking Justice (Part 1), we identified 3 foundational practices for Christians seeking to do justice; practice listening, participate in worship, and learn systems thinking. These practical habits will help shape us into the kind of people who pursue justice, not because of the burning intensity of a moment, or by being carried along by the energy of a movement, but with the integrity of a life hidden in Christ.
Here are another 3 crucial foundations for Christians seeking to do justice.
1. Explore Your Emotional Iceberg – In Pete Scazzero’s Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Pete uses the image of an iceberg to illustrate an important point too many of us ignore. Just as most of the iceberg is under the water, so most of our motives and emotional energy is under the surface of our lives. We can move quickly, from input to input, simply skimming the surface, not really knowing or understanding what is driving us.
This is particularly tempting for those of us with an activist orientation. We see a video or read an article that triggers something within us. A sense of injustice flares into outrage. We click, we share, we comment, re-post, donate, sign, etc. Our activism is reactive. We never stop and consider what our exposing event has ‘triggered’ within us, or what it might mean.
Reactivity, even if it’s directed towards something good, is rarely sustainable or healthy. For example, I got pretty angry in a conversation recently about education. The friend hadn’t said or done me any harm, but was simply expressing a viewpoint that made sense to them. Because educational injustice is an emotional trigger for me, I very quickly became critical, and then downright hostile. Was I mad at my friend? No. Was I championing educational justice? Not really. If you could look under the surface of my emotional life, you’d see that I was working out grief and anger from my own experience and the experience of people close to me. Working out this anger on my friend does nothing to advance the cause of educational equity, even if working for justice in this area is good in itself.
We explore our emotional iceberg when we learn to ask;
- What am I (really) mad about?
- What am I (really) sad about?
- What am I (really) glad about?
- What am I (really) scared of?
Exploring the iceberg helps us to ground our justice seeking in our values and vocation rather than in our passions and emotional triggers.
2. Steep in Scripture – Any Christian engagement in seeking justice has to be anchored in scripture. Without scriptural reflection we simply end up adopting categories of justice from popular culture. Is justice based on a social hierarchy or personal merit? Is the aim of justice equality of opportunity or outcomes? Or, to be more concrete, when someone says, “black lives matter,” are they endorsing a political platform, or stating a theological truth?
In scripture we discover what God is like. The origin stories in scripture describe God in loving relationship with his creation, intent on preserving and restoring what is lost through human rebellion. The image of God revealed in Genesis is one of justice. We see God working within, and sometimes subverting, human systems in an effort to bring blessing to the nations. The exodus narrative reveals God as the liberator and law giver, one who is patient in love, and yet by no means ignoring the guilty. God continues to work within and in spite of human injustice from the settling of the land of Canaan through the exile. The prophets preach against injustice and idolatry. Psalm 68:5 describes God as, “Father of orphans and defender of widows.”
In the New Testament we see a community emerge around Jesus as he teaches about the kingdom of God. God’s justice, according to Jesus, is coming in and through his work. Jesus’ death and resurrection launch a new community. This community lives within a corrupt human empire while faithfully announcing Jesus as Lord, and not so subtly suggesting that Caesar isn’t. The epistles attempt to work out how this new community is to live faithfully and justly together. The book of Revelation is a barely veiled critique of the Roman Empire, declaring the ultimate victory and justice of God.
This biblical story is all about justice! Attempts to read the story of scripture that screen out justice pull the larger story out of shape. That said, the arc of justice in the biblical text does not fit neatly into our contemporary justice slogans. It was never meant to.
Anchoring ourselves in the story of scripture fuels us to work for justice without being coopted by the interests of a particular party or movement. For Christians seeking justice, our commitment to party, political philosophy, or group identity are secondary. We are primarily committed to God, through Jesus, as revealed in scripture and empowered by the Spirit.
3. Cultivate Stewardship and Responsibility – In his paper Revelation and Christian Hope, N.T. Wright describes the unholy trinity of money, sex, and power at the center of corrupt human empire. In contrast Wright draws on the human vocation, renewed in Christ, to steward resources, build relationships, and fulfill responsibilities. This is a helpful insight for Christians seeking to engage in justice work because it begs an unavoidable question. Is our justice work an effort to exercise wise stewardship and fulfill our responsibilities, or is it an attempt to amass, or hold onto, power?
This is an important question. In his book How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi argues that self-interest, especially group self-interest, is the primary driver behind policy. For Kendi, policies are secondary justifications for decisions made out of naked self-interest. Within this worldview it is tempting to see power as the means to maximize group self-interest.
While Kendi’s thinking is radical in some parts of his book, his perspective on power and self-interest is not. It is the default understanding of the Christian Right as well as the Black Lives Matter movement. Power is seen, not as a bestial temptation, but as a means for good. As far as I know the only popular challenge to this view is in the imaginative work of J.R.R. Tolkein, whose story hinges on a temptation to claim power for oneself and thereby brining destruction and domination instead.
Christians, especially those committed to justice work, need to build habits of stewardship and responsibility against the temptation to grab at power. My friend Jonathan has spent years orchestrating his personal life to maximize environmental stewardship as a key component of his justice work. If you asked him, Jonathan would say, “You can’t give away a freedom you don’t have.”
Cultivating stewardship and responsibility is not instantly gratifying work. It involves paying attention to how we spend money in the midst of a consumer culture. It means regularly asking, “what are my responsibilities to my family, colleagues, and neighbors,” before trying to change the world.
The fruit of building stewardship and responsibility is trust. The more deeply we are shaped by stewardship, the less likely we will be to try and control others. The more we see our justice work as emerging out of our responsibility to our neighbors, the more likely we are to partner with others well and build relationships.
Exploring our emotional iceberg, steeping ourselves in scripture, and cultivating stewardship and responsibility are hidden foundational disciplines for Christians seeking to do Justice. On their own they will not lead to meaningful change, healthy relationships between racial groups, or greater accountability in the face of injustice. What they will do is shape us into the kind of people capable of pursuing justice in a way that is healthy, God honoring, and holistic.