Justice is Love in Public
Author Cornel West commented that we must never forget that justice is what love looks like in public. What a privilege it was to see this embodied in two Christian schools that had been established in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. With a team of senior students, a teacher and I visited the Hope Nursery school and the Hope Primary School, which had been established in a slum area of the city. These students who lived in abject poverty now belonged to a school community that demonstrated the love of Jesus through their teachers and where they experienced the healing of restored relationships, and the provision of material needs through child sponsorship.
As my Australian student team reflected on their service, we discussed issues around the pain and suffering that had been inflicted on the people over many years by corrupt leaders. Uganda had been called “the Pearl of Africa” on a visit by Sir Winston Churchill, but the country had experienced grave injustices. My students were longing to know how they could be peacemakers and make a difference in the lives of these children.
In our culture, we see this yearning in many students who are becoming social activists, because they have a heart to heal injustice, but the narrative that is shaping their understanding is flawed. Anchored in cultural Marxism, fighting for social justice is seen as a powerful force where people are classified as oppressors or the oppressed according to their identity group. The goal is to demolish what exists and plant a new society with a socialist vision. But we tell a better story – seeking to raise students to be wise peacemakers, engaged in their culture, telling an alternative story animated by the vision of the Kingdom of God.
The Bible makes justice a mandate of faith and a fundamental expression of Christian discipleship. Through the lens of Scripture, justice means loving our neighbour as we love ourselves and is rooted in the character of God, as revealed in the law of God and embodied in the Person of Christ, who fulfilled the law and the prophets. As God is just and loving, so we are called to do justice and live a life of love. Human rights are not determined by society (social justice) but by God who made us in His image.
God’s justice can be defined as putting things right as God designed them to be. God’s moral law enables humans to discern between right and wrong, good and evil. Social order, anchored in the Word of God, flows from this moral framework. Without divine law, the implementation of the law is reduced to force. Without personal virtue, social order breaks down, resulting in the loss of freedom.
God’s people are called into His grand story to be a community who embodies the life of Christ. The community, being created in God’s image and bound together in love, are sent into the world to be a visible expression of God’s presence and action in the world. The life of the crucified and risen Christ is most clearly seen where grace and forgiveness, holiness, compassion and justice are practised through His people by the power of His Spirit.
The practice of justice is to be an overflow of our response to the Gospel’s transforming power in our lives. Justice must flow from the transformed hearts and minds of individuals. There is no social sin that does not arise from personal sin.
Our school culture is to demonstrate in attitude, work, action and Gospel proclamation the character and reality of Jesus. In a world where every area of life is affected by the Fall, our community is called to be salt and light. We are to equip our students to be agents of transformation in our culture, rather than being conformed to it.
But often the wounds of the world barely touch our students’ hearts and minds, as we talk abstractly about justice and injustice in the curriculum. The question is, how can we structure, both within and beyond the classroom, life-orientating teaching and learning, that will enable them to serve in ways that reflect the love of Jesus? This is the way of responsive discipleship where students learn what it means “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
Back to the story of our students who went to Uganda. On their return to school, they assisted to organise a Ugandan day for the whole school; a fund-raiser to raise money toward a secondary school building for the students coming through the Ugandan HOPE schools.
The whole K-12 school was involved in celebrations and activities to bring the love of Jesus to others. How our hearts were moved to see Kindergarten students bring their jars of 5c pieces they had collected as an offering to the Lord. $20,000 was raised in one day. Truly our students embodied what justice looked like. Their lives became places for divine and human interaction, a vehicle through which God can enter the world.
May the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi be our prayer and the longing of our hearts.
“LORD, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred,
Let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that
I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning
That we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are
Born to eternal life.”
(St. Francis of Assisi)
Grace and Peace
The TEC Team