Mike King

The word justice and especially the phrase social justice have been in the media spotlight lately, thanks primarily to the culture wars and the attention-grabbing techniques of Glenn Beck. The issue of justice has been a focus of human beings since the beginning of recorded history. Often the issue of justice has forced Christians to determine where their primary allegiances lie—with God’s in-breaking kingdom or with political powers and national governments?

The prophet Micah declares in Micah 6:8, “He 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?” Children of God are required to “do justice.”

One of the common phrases of children when they begin to interact with one another on playgrounds, neighborhoods, in social settings, schools, and especially among siblings is, “That’s not fair.”

“Studies at UCLA in 2008 have indicated that reactions to fairness are ‘wired’ into the brain... This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need.’ 1 The issue of justice is a very important part of youth ministry and spiritual formation.

There are many ways the issue of justice has been classified. For instance: legal justice, commutative justice, procedural justice, criminal justice, social justice, punitive justice, restorative justice, universal justice, distributive justice, retributive justice, personal justice, supernatural justice, poetic justice, etc.

Instead of defining all the various forms and types of justice, I will respond to the question by suggesting two primary ways the issue and types of justice will impact your youth ministry.

1) Community Environment. The spirituality of your faith community is greatly influenced by how you deal with many of the different types of justice issues at work in your context. Let’s take the issue of punitive vs. restorative justice as an example. If your culture believes that those within your faith community must be punished (as an example for all) if they violate the group’s values, disobey Scripture, and/or make a serious mistake and sin, then you may be willing to lose a member of the community in order to maintain the group’s ethos and rules. Misguided punitive justice often relies on shame to recover and maintain a sense of order. Punitive justice focuses on the supposed need of the community to punish offenders. I’ve seen many young people in youth ministries significantly wronged and humiliated by unjust punitive justice.

Restorative justice, on the other hand, seeks to repair the wrongs and damages done and works to restore both victims and offenders. Often, restorative justice takes more time and is more complicated to accomplish, but the results are more in line with restoration and God’s redemptive mission. Allowing your environment to be shaped by grace and restorative justice will go a long way toward nurturing a faith community that is a safe place for all. Attempting to make things right for all is hard work but is essential for fostering Christian community.

2) Christian Formation. If we are going to be youth workers who make disciples who become lifelong followers of Jesus Christ, we must help the young people in our faith communities grasp the overarching mission of God. It is not possible to fully cooperate with God’s mission of redemption and restoration without doing justice, as the prophet Micah states in the above verse. The prophet Isaiah weighs in on the mission of Messiah in Isaiah 42:1-4.

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth.”

Jesus Christ will fully establish justice in the earth. As Christ’s disciples, we are to follow Jesus in the movement toward a just world. One of the biggest problems we face in the Christian church today is our propensity to mostly talk about justice. We talk about justice but rarely do justice. And yes, I’m talking about us, I’m talking about you, but mostly, I’m talking about me.

Last week our Youthfront staff watched the movie Romero together as a part of our monthly formational practice. The movie is about the life of Oscar Romero, who was appointed archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, during a tumultuous time in the 1970s. Great injustices were happening throughout the country, and the poor were being exploited, raped, and murdered. Archbishop Romero was assassinated because he was willing to stand up against gross injustice. The movie portrays many different ways individuals who claim to be Christians react to what is going on around them. The issue of what it means to “do justice” was the focus of our staff discussion. The questions we wrestled with following this film are still provoking our imaginations and dominating our conversations.

As youth workers, we must search our hearts and explore what it means to live cruciform lives. As we read the gospels and see the life of Jesus, we see the reality of God’s in-breaking kingdom. Jesus Christ is doing a new thing, and it is this way of life that God is calling us to lean into. This is the way of life we invite young people to embrace. I believe it is a life that moves toward shalom and a world made right, a cause that young people might be willing to lay down their lives for.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice#cite_ref-4

Helpful Resources for Students:

Living Justice: Revolutionary Compassion in a Broken World

Steve Argue

Recently I was with a group of youth pastors and senior pastors reflecting on the topic, What is a question that can only be answered by the youth pastor and the senior pastor together? I’ve been pondering that conversation and came up with what I think is an important question: Who are the people we exclude?

The injustice of reaching out without welcoming in. Often in ministry conversations, there inevitably comes a point where the topic turns toward “outreach” or “reaching” someone. For deeply theological reasons (both redemptive and sometimes dangerous), many churches feel compelled to reach out toward someone, somewhere. What is often missed, however, is that if a faith community reaches out, there also must be a complimentary and equally high value of welcoming in.

Within the physical walls of churches, ministries have reached out to kids, students, and emerging adults, providing them with programs and pastors. These initiatives have often created a silo effect, where the groups reached end up entrapped and still unwelcome in other parts of the community. Consider the main service and the many looks they get when kids act like kids and students dress like students. Similarly, how many youth pastors have touted parents as the primary disciplers of their kids (inaccurately quoting Deuteronomy 6), while systematically excluding them from all youth ministry programming, except to ensure they pay for ever-rising mission trips? Reaching is valued. Welcoming is not.

In an odd sort of way, church programs designed for specific groups (especially young people) become ghettos of segregation, contradicting Jesus’ prayer for the people of God to be one. Something is wrong when adults want to populate their church with the next generation as long as they don’t touch anything and when youth pastors want parental support while excluding parents from their thinking, relationships, and programming.

Thus, the question remains for our faith communities, Whom do we exclude? Where are the lines drawn within one’s own church? And might the very structure, assumptions, and spirit of our faith communities be the walls that feign outreach but actually communicate, Keep out? When we reach out without welcoming in, we perpetuate the injustice of exclusion.

The injustice of preserving distance between your space and our space. Beyond local congregations, churches attempt to reach out to the poor, needy, and oppressed. I commend the good work done across the street and around the world. My only concern is that most of the people whom churches reach out to remain conveniently “out there.” When we reach out, we can be generous and compassionate on our terms, in our time frame, away from our place. How many of the poor, needy, and oppressed are actually welcome in our churches and homes? I know the issue is more complicated, but the simply perpetuated message of separation exists where: We will reach out to your space, but you are not welcome in our space.

Sadly, many churches are known more for what they are against, welcoming people as long as they’re “just like us.” Emerging adults often feel like strangers in their own home churches and are accused of leaving; single men and women are often overlooked because they don’t fit into a traditional family; and the marginalized of all kinds find sparse connection. Whom do we exclude?

Whether internal segregation or external separation, churches can have a welcoming problem that contradicts the nature and purposes of God. Throughout the biblical narrative, we see God as one who pursues and calls people, committing to be their God; who comes near through incarnation; who extends God’s love to all, engrafting outsiders, calling them “my people,” “my friends,” “my co-heirs,” and “my children.” We are a people who have been welcomed, empowered to welcome.

These are not easy issues to work through, but the level of difficulty cannot dictate the level of necessity. Faith communities’ inability to welcome the “other” typically has little to do with espoused theology and doctrine and has more to do with fear of the unknown, love of power, and resistance to change, fueling postures to keep the other “out there.” I’m not saying everyone in our faith communities is intentionally cruel, but many may be unaware of these injustices, blinded by their majority lenses. In either case, “reached” outsiders remain excluded and unwelcomed.

Senior pastors and youth pastors must work together to communicate a consistent posture of welcoming that will take more resolve, dedication, and sacrifice than any mission trip or outreach program. For it will call us to change us, more than them, to be we.

The reason I am a follower of Jesus is that someone welcomed me in. Yes, even me. This is the beautifully overwhelming, barrier-breaking, system-crushing grace that God offers to all. It’s a justice issue that must be owned by senior pastors and youth pastors together. It’s a justice issue that declares that, as we seek to change the world, our worlds may need the first changing.

Dave Rahn

Justice originates with a set of standards; a code; the law. The notion that there are various forms or types of justice implies that there may be different rules that apply to different contexts. This reminds me a bit of the construct of intelligence and research by Howard Gardner and others to make the case for multiple, domain-specific intelligences. Are we better served by looking at justice through categorical filters (e.g., economic, political, or racial) or by thinking of it as a holistic concept like that which is freighted by the Hebrew word shalom?

We live in a day when the social construction of knowledge is all the rage. Morality can be defined without the need to establish a first cause or authority. My own doctoral research was embedded in this wing of social science. The moral domain is defined by universal obligations that people agree are right or wrong regardless of circumstance, situations, or culture. The conventional domain acknowledges that there are some contexts where matters of right and wrong are of a different quality, rooted in legitimately acknowledged authority, and regulated by a source that can alter the standards at any time.

So it’s always wrong to hit other children so as to hurt them (moral), but it’s only wrong to chew gum in class if the teacher says it’s wrong. And Mrs. Snider, my paddle-wielding, second-grade teacher at William Carr Elementary, made it clear always that chomping was impermissible in her presence.

Please forgive my short detour into an area of obscure inquiry that I lived in 20 years ago while pursuing my PhD. I am convinced that the social forces interested in exploring a relativistic basis for knowledge have only accelerated in the last two decades. Years ago, the quest for truth was at the heart of all questions of morality and justice. Today’s discussions pursue such wisdom without any need to anchor it in notions of absolute truth that can be known, however imperfectly.

So I return to my original question about the question. How is it somehow better to divvy up justice into assigned analytical categories for improved practical use if that guidance is as weightless as anything that spins away from its gravitational orbit? Can you tell I’m concerned about self-referential justice, even that which is cloaked in community consensus as “self?”

I have only the desire to know and live more thoroughly according to justice as defined by the rule of God our King. Hundreds of detailed Torah regulations did not bring about this justice. The Ten Commandments also failed to usher God’s people into justly living communities. Even the great commandments, reduced to two huge summary pursuits that allow us to affix them to our bumper stickers, do not give us power to live justly. But when God graciously saved me and dispatched his Holy Spirit to live within me—well, I’ve got a fighting chance to actually make a difference.

And so I’m not interested in expanding my circle of concern unless I can keep my circle of influence from shrinking (thanks, Covey). I live in a small town that has a history of racial bigotry. I became part of a multi-ethnic church plant over five years ago, driving 35 minutes each way to participate in this fellowship. For me to love my black and brown brothers and sisters better—and to experience more love—my wife and I would probably need to relocate.

But we are not called to live in another community; we are called to live in this broken Indiana town and be salt and light. And so, for now, our Sunday church excursions fortify my resolve to live justly in our hometown. And, though it may seem like a woefully small and insignificant response, we have resolutely chosen to pay whatever the pump price is at the community’s ethnic-owned gas station so we can contribute to a welcoming atmosphere reflective of the shalom of God.

This little move is one that my blue-collar neighbors understand. It takes a page out of John’s epistle: We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 John 4:19-21). It tips toward doing something where I live—that makes a difference now—rather than talk about injustices where I do not live.

I am drawn to justice in reality; actions I take because I am compelled to be faithful in my obedience to the Lord Jesus. All else is another type of hype, and I frankly fear being distracted from acting on what I know I should do by wondering about what else could be done. With Paul, I want to live up to what I’ve already attained (Philippians 3:16).

What is the difference between embodying justice and performing just acts?

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Chris Folmsbee

To embody something is to personify it or to be an ideal example. Justice is making wrongs right. Hence, to embody justice is to be a living and active illustration of what it means to make right the wrongs of this world. This embodied, consistent justice comes out of who a person is and has become—out of their way or rule of life.

To simply perform a just act is not to consistently embody but rather to occasionally take action. Taking occasional action on behalf of others is morally and spiritually fitting. Dependably embodying justice, though, is more. It is morally and spiritually forming in both self and others.

Dependable embodiment stems from a life of attentiveness, discipline, and selfless practice. And though it may be created through the above description, it is formerly birthed out of a holy love that is wrought by God and God’s grace, showered upon humanity—which, consequently, is passed on through the varied expressions of the one love that began it all. These expressions are performed in the hopes of righting what has been wronged because ultimately, God is a merciful God, and because of that, humanity still has the capability of being a compassionate people.

So the difference between embodying justice and performing a just act is quite simple. Where the question begs, Should I act justly?, there is most often standing a person who performs justice as an occasional act. Where the question begs, What kind of a person will I become if I don’t embody justice?, it is there that the consistent person stands and the morally and spiritually forming habit of righting wrongs takes up residence.

Just acts are morally and spiritually fitting, and the embodiment of justice is morally and spiritually forming. Inside of these truths one can appraise his life and answer the question, Do I embody justice, or do I simply perform acts of justice?

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Brooklyn Lindsey

What if Christ had this same mindset—viewing setting things straight as a side job or something he needed to do as a part of his ministry plan? Love wouldn’t allow him to view it that way. It was who he was—a just man, a just God, and a just Spirit.

Embodying justice in our lives, ministries, and future plans often calls us to really believe the stuff we say about justice. Doing justice becomes a response to a God we are beginning to understand more fully because we’ve allowed the Spirit to teach us and show us how to live.

And how should we live? Micah throws us an answer by saying that we should seek justice and walk humbly with God.

Humility is something I’m familiar with but not something I’m comfortable with. I’m not great at admitting when I’m wrong or when I don’t have an answer. I would like to say that I’m a person who thinks about justice more than most, but I still struggle with getting so focused on me that I forget that God wants justice to be a part of the definition of who I am.

While attending seminary, I was immersed in a more diverse culture. There were students and professors who understood what it meant to be “the least of these.” Through their eyes, for the first time, I began to see what it meant to live justly. It would have to begin with the attitude of my heart, the content of my words, the way I viewed those affected by the just acts of others.

It was a defining moment for me, to learn about justice from a new perspective, and I began to think differently, view life through different lenses, and speak differently too. Justice couldn’t be the end goal anymore. It would have to be a way of life for me, even when life gets full and loud and demanding.

With that said, I hope to seek justice with my mind and heart. It’s important to find ways to understand what justice is and what it means to those who receive it. After all, we’ve received justice that we didn’t deserve.

I’m still standing. There’s a movie playing for my daughter in the background to keep her from saying my name too many times as I write, and I realize that embodying justice is a journey on a path to the kingdom Christ has called us all to seek—even if that path lies in the simple and crazy life of a youth pastor’s house. Seek justice. Walk humbly. These are words not just to live by—but words to be defined by.

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Claire Smith

Have you ever had the distinct feeling that you were left out because you were different? Have you ever been in a situation where what people received was determined by whom they knew and/or what they had? Maybe you have even benefited from this. Where was the justice?

Justice is about access to the abundant life God intends for all. Everyone is able to participate in life, especially the disadvantaged. James 1:27 expresses a clear preference for the vulnerable, the widows and orphans, representing those who are denied entry into all of society.

There are some people for whom justice is about getting even. “I want justice,” we hear, void of compassion. Yes, actions have consequences. We need law and order. However, blind desire for one’s rights will destroy the very essence of justice because in our blindness we easily destroy those who stand in our way.

So I’m talking about justice that pertains to God’s reign and desires that were embodied by Jesus. In refusing to pass the blind man on the road whom everyone else tried to shut up (Mark 10:46-51), Jesus made a declaration: Even if nobody else values you, I will. Warren Carter points out the way in which Jesus’ ministry struck at the very structures of society. He notes of Matthew 22:34-40, “[Jesus’]declaration resists every societal system that benefits a few at the expense of the rest and deprives people of necessary life-giving resources…protests all such injustice and oppression as contrary to God’s will.”1

We hear it on the lips of Amos when he spoke out against bribery and the rich having their way at the expense of the poor: “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 4:24).<

Justice is a lifestyle issue. Yes. It’s okay to do good deeds and engage in right actions. Many people benefit from these just acts, and we feel good. We share a part of our lives for a moment, or moments. But could we go deeper and live it and act to bring about structural changes that last for more than a moment?

Here are some more questions that will help us:

Do you have to force yourself to notice those who are different from you and involve them, or do you do this as a matter of course?

Are you quick to speak up for and take action on behalf of those who cannot do so for themselves, or do you have to be pressured or cajole into doing this?

Do you by your position and influence stand in the way of those who need access? Which oppressive structure(s) are you effecting?

Last question.

Are you living like Jesus?

Am I going to make a push for you to encourage and/or empower young people to embody justice? No. Take it as said. We need to move from episodic acts to lifestyles of justice.

But I am going to ask you: How do you embody justice in your activities and relationships in your youth ministry? What do your structures perpetuate? Who is in and who is out? This is where it takes root.

Comments

Paul Sheneman commented on 23-Feb-2010 08:14 AM

Great perspectives!

Four points popped out to me amongst the slants.
1. Embodied justice is formative and defines life. Occasional just acts are not.
2. Embodied justice produces a humility.
3. A Biblical understanding of justice is needed (Justice is about access to the abundant life God intends for all. -Smith)
4. Embodied justice is cultivated where we are at (youth ministry)?

All together, these slants push for a youth ministry that moves beyond event based acts of just to one which engages injustices on a consistent bases. And Smith seems to point to the fact that to move in that direction takes an evaluation of the youth ministry activities and structures. However, for the youth worker trained in the event based model, I wonder what does embodied justice in youth ministry look like? In other words, how does such a youth worker begin to cast a vision of embodied justice in youth ministry?

How would you describe the various forms or types of justice?

Mike King

Steve Argue

Dave Rahn

Comments