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?
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I always recall Ruth Given's comments on a SS class(?)
discussion and the view there was similar to that you mention. The understanding of biblical justice is certainly different from how I see it.
Did you really get a number of such comments Sunday?? I wonder if the implication is that most folks did not really hear MT's sermon or read Jake's or Bill's articles.
Perhaps we need to try to describe Biblical justice as we think that it is best interpreted, perhaps with Biblical examples or textual quotes. Matt? Bill? Jake?
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