What is "Justice"?

I have noticed both from the conversation that I was a part of last sunday morning (the justice & mercy week) at Wieuca and the week on Justice & Mercy at my friend's church several months ago, that there is significant confusion around the word "justice."


Many folks hear the word "justice" and think of punishment/courts/laws. So instead of biblical justice and mercy, the combination of the two terms is understood as "punishment and being nice." To paint an extreme spectrum, justice is for the government and tough-minded people and mercy is for bleeding-heart liberals or little old ladies. One example of how fixed that kind of understanding can be, I heard someone acknowledge that justice and mercy had a direct relationship in that God, in God's sovereignty is mysteriously fully just and fully mercy. That was the explanation, as if we were discussing how divinity and humanity were made one in Christ. The lesson was that mercy & justice were polar opposites and it takes a huge God to do both perfectly. How easily we do mental gymnastics with the lesson to get it to fit our pre-existing paradigms is astounding.

Our society does not give people a chance to think beyond a quid-pro-quo response. Even when justice is understood as "doing the right thing," folks often default to the right thing being punishment. Biblical justice is also misunderstood sometimes to be the wrath of God (plagues, etc.). It's also mostly understood as an individual ethic. Granted, governments and legal systems are necessary, but it seems as if our understanding of justice is based on pop-religion rather than any kind of substantiated Biblical basis. This reinforces for me the need for the Biblical view of (restorative) justice to be highlighted consistently.

I can't tell you how many comments I heard where people said things like, "Oh yeah, I'm the mercy person in my marriage--my spouse is justice person who will take it to you."

I only hope that the message came through that Justice & Mercy are the same package--but I wonder since I heard about as many comments like I referenced after the sermon.

What have the rest of you heard in regard to this?

Footprint of our Products

The following is a song by an african american female group that sings of justice issues:

I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America
In the cotton fields of El Salvador
In a province soaked in blood,
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.
Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time
In South Carolina
At the Burlington mills
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of
Dupont
Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela Where oil
riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,
Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas
To the factories of Dupont
On the way to the Burlington mills
In South Carolina
To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador
In South Carolina
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric
for Sears
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—
Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications
For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse
It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse
On sale for 20% discount
Are my hands clean?
-"Are My Hands Clean?" by Sweet Honey In the Rock


Some websites on more ethical spending:
http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies/04-04-alternative-ethical-clothes-review.htm
http://www.fairlabor.org/index.html
http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/index.php?s=59&PHPSESSID=52a241ef26b6e65c1b375d08e156701f

Test Post

I've attempted to set up a google group to help get notices out for emails. This is just a test.

Steve's 1st post

Matt and Scott, Here is my first post. I saw an interesting story at www.standingwomen.org:

The women of Ohio call upon the women of the world, from the day-old babies to our most senior elders, to stand with us to save the world. Sharon Mehdi wrote a wonderful short story for her five-year old granddaughter, The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering that has inspired us. A quick summary of the story is:A busboy who worked in a café whose window faced the public park noticed that two grandmotherly looking women had been standing in the park all day without moving at all and without talking. They were dressed up in their Sunday best and were just staring at the town hall. He asked the other patrons in the café what they thought the women were up to. They speculated on a variety of things. Then, a five-year old year who was in the café spoke up and said "One of them is my grandmother and I know what they are doing. They are standing there to save the world." All of the men in the café hooted and howled and laughed. On his way home the busboy decided to ask the women what they were doing and sure enough their answer was "We are saving the world."Over dinner that evening the busboy told his parents and he and his father hooted and howled, but his mother was totally silent. After dinner, the mother called her best friends to tell them.The next morning the busboy looked out the café window and the two women were back, along with his mother, her friends, and the women who had been in the café the day before. All were standing in silence staring at the town hall. Again, the men hooted and howled and said things like "You can't save the world by standing in the park. That is what we have armies for," and "everyone knows you have to have banners and slogans to save the world--you can't do it by just standing in the park." The next day the women were joined by the women who were in the café the day before and a number of their friends. This brought the local newspaper reporter to the scene. He wrote a derisive article about the women. The day after it appeared, hundreds of women showed up to stand in the park in silence. The mayor then told the police chief to make the women leave because they were making the town appear to be foolish. When the police chief told them they would have to disperse because they didn't have a permit, one of them responded that "we are just individuals standing in our public park and we are not giving speeches or having a demonstration so why would we need a permit." The police chief thought about this and agreed with them and left the park. At this point 2,223 women including the mayor's wife, the police chief's wife, and one five-year old girl were standing in the park to save the world. The news quickly spread and soon women were standing all over the country. The story ended with women standing in every country throughout the globe, standing to save the world. See http://www.grandmotherbook.com/

Please stand with us for five minutes of silence at 1 p.m. your local time on May 13, 2007, in your local park, school yard, gathering place, or any place you deem appropriate, to signify your agreement with the statement below. We ask you to invite the men who you care about to join you. We ask that you bring bells to ring at 1 p.m. to signify the beginning of the five minutes of silence and to ring again to signify the end of the period of silence. During the silence, please think about what you individually and we collectively can do to attain this world. If you need to sit rather than stand, please feel free to do so. Afterwards, hopefully you and your loved ones can talk together about how we can bring about this world.

Posting, etc.

Scott & Steve...

can both of you attempt to make a new post? I want to make sure the permissions are set up correctly.

Thanks!

Matt

Welcome

Here is a post to get the ball rolling.