justice

In a world of fallen men, where the poor are oppressed, women and children--even whole families--are exploited for others’ gain, where some live in comfort and others in squalor, where some do violence to innocent people out of hatred for their ethnicity or religion, what is to be the response of the church? What about the part of each individual within the body of Christ? “Is this not the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6). Isaiah speaks of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked. James, speaking to the church, said that “pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress…” (James 1:27). From the brothels of Cambodia to the diamond mines of the Congo, from the prisons of Nigeria to the streets of Grove City, people suffer—whether their suffering is caused by another or is the result of their own choices, they are the cold, the hungry; they are under the yoke of suffering.

In this age of information, we are without excuse: we know that people are oppressed; we know that our neighbor is in need. Yet apathy clings to the church—clings to us; we wallow in it, looking to programs and governments to care for the orphan and the widow. Complacency after information may be complicity--partaking in the oppression by default, by virtue of silence and inactivity, but what is it about the church today, about our model of Christianity that breaks down at the point of action? Why is there no synthesis of orthodoxy and orthopraxis, of doctrine and action? Surely biblical faith incorporates action. Right belief for the Christian not only entails action; it incorporates it somehow. Has our theology strayed from justification by faith alone but not by a faith that is alone, which implies that a living and vital faith is one that is demonstrated to be genuine by works, to a justification by faith alone, a faith that stops after a one-time personal transaction of verbal assent with God?

American Christianity has a problem of synthesis. We of all people have most reason for loving our neighbor; we are called to do so, but more than that, we can look at the suffering around us and cry at the injustice knowing that it is not simply what is. We were not created for misery, but for joy; but for the corruption of sin, man is glorious. Yet many of us, people of so-called orthodoxy, wallow in complacency when it comes to the orphan and the widow, focusing instead on right belief. We watch others, without the right belief, carry out the right practice. We need first to renew a robust and proper doctrine of justification in the church—one that goes beyond the sinner’s prayer to a subsequent working out of salvation. Not a salvation by works, but a salvation demonstrated by works. James said that salvation without works is dead (James 2:17). A church that stops at the sinner’s prayer and offers a trite assurance of heaven to the individual will not look outside its doors to the oppressed on its doorstep. If I rest in my right belief and fail to love my neighbor, fail to at least try to break the yoke of oppression in the world, I may above all things be confident that my faith is dead and I am lost.

deadly unserious

I feel like maybe I'll be in school for so long that I'll miss out on life. But the thirties are good, right? If I don't do normal people things until I'm over thirty, have I wasted my life? I just want to be involved in something beyond myself. I'm pretty sure that I don't want to do the law thing though. Let's face it: I HATE paperwork. I also really don't feel motivated by the intricacies of the justice system. But then, am I interested enough in justice to put up with it? I don't have the math/science background for medicine, but I have a persistent interest in healing. For the most part, I get the science that I have done. The problem is, I'm interested in alternative medicine, but what women in Somalia need is not an herb but surgery after violent rape.

I'm interested in justice, healing, and alleviating suffering, but to get involved in something like the UN or one of its subsidiaries seems to me to be pouring out my life into a fruitless, temporal hole. I'm convinced that societies are only changed when the people are changed, i.e. they accept some new set of assumptions/standards. This only seems to happen through conversion. When people have a hope and a rational God and standards of behavior, everything from their basic hygiene to their business practices change. Justice can only be established in a culture that has some concept of external principles, and people are only respected and not exploited (i.e. not sold into sexual slavery, etc.) in a culture where each person has value.

I just don't know where I fit into that. Also, it's wrong to look at the problem of the world and use the Christian message as merely a means to the end of fixing temporal evils. It is more than that. But I am frustrated equally by the evangelist who pays no attention to the body of the convert and the justice advocate who places more emphasis on missional living than on the Gospel. Can there be any consistent fusion of the principles?

I should be studying for Totalitarianism. And my World History paper. And a dozen other things. I finished the book Dr. Mitchell lent me: On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, by James V. Schall. It was excellent. But then maybe I just like it because it lent justification to my pursuit of a "useless" education, that is one that is focused on pondering the things that are good to ponder in and of themselves. They serve no immediately useful purpose and yet are good for that very reason because they reflect our own creaturehood as people created as "playthings of the gods"- that is, unnecessary yet delighted in by a supremely self-satisfied God. I need to ponder the "useless" things, the bigger questions, before any of the rest of it (disparate classes filled with rootless information) makes any sense, before a vocation makes any sense, before I can find any satisfaction in what I choose to do with the few years that I have in the world.