What is JUSTICE, I mean really?

The Molecularity of Thought

Granted, we need words to communicate our thoughts. And the history of English Literature has proven to me that the words of our language can do amazingly at communicating ideas, images, even sensory impressions. Take even a snippet from Bernice Friesen's The Book of Beasts: “. . . when Paddy walked to school with him, walked him into the Mother Superior's office, had her dial his father's number and they both left him alone with his father's voice, all he could do was cry, cry for his father to take him home. His father's promises to do just that, his father's sobs blurred into his own shaking relief.” Where would we be without words? Grunting and pointing, I imagine.

But confusion, chaos and deceit are also sown with words. There's much more to our communication than can be unlocked with a dictionary or thesaurus; words are the tools of humans, and humans are complex beings, often unpredictable, often manipulating, sometimes irrational so that the word we hear may arise from motivations we're not aware of.

And then there are words that by their nature cannot be precise on their own. Abstract nouns like love, anger, courage, repentance, forgiveness. JUSTICE is one such word. We may say that it conveys its meaning like a cloud, not like an arrow. When Pierre Trudeau spoke to us about building a “just society,” he wasn't talking about the judicial system but about a culture where justice—just behaviour—is the norm. When families of crime victims cry out against a judgment that “there is no justice,” they are talking about the judiciary, the branch that judges guilt or innocence under the law and metes out penalties for deviant behaviour.

In linking justice and righteousness repeatedly, the Old Testament of the Christian Bible sets more definite meanings of justice for us 

. . . and a pretty high bar. Righteousness in the OT is almost exclusively tied to social behaviour: care for the widows, orphans, the sick and the poor, the mending of quarrels with neigbours, hospitality, and, of course, the imperatives of the Ten Commandments (whose emphases pretty much coincide with Christ's summary of the law and the prophets, namely that all are given to teach us to love God and our neighbour). Some have called righteous practice, primary justice.

Of course, the OT also recognizes a need for retributive, restorative justice; it's certainly not blind to the fact that humans can go badly off track, or that leadership can turn from supportive to oppressive. Crime or any unrighteous behaviour must be dealt with in a meaningful way, and always with a primary goal of restoring the righteous community. “An eye for an eye” sets the outer limit of retributive justice, but the place for punishment is acknowledged, a guiding principle much more religiously upheld in Sharia than in Western justice. It practically goes without saying that in a righteous society where equality, equity, dignity, and fulfillment are granted to all, the need for retributive justice, even restorative justice, would diminish; jails could be converted into food warehouses.

Much of Western Christianity is trapped inside the retributive definition of justice, I fear. Were churches clear and united about their role in fostering, even demanding, primary justice (human rights, equal opportunity, equity of means, universal health care, free education, dignity) as they ought, “the world would [indeed] be about to turn.”

Tomorrow, the Adult Study Class at Eigenheim Mennonite will read and talk about justice through New Testament eyes.