A Cry for Justice

I grew up under the notion that justice was somehow separate from the gospel. It belonged to the sphere of society and political order, and the gospel had nothing to do with it. The gospel as I perceived it was fixated on issues of eternity, far beyond the socio-political realities around me. There were a few mild implications on my parents’ work in regard to the dire economic issues surrounding us on all sides, but my traditions keep a pretty high wall separating questions of faith, doctrine, and theology from peering into issues of social justice, economic inequality, racism, and other forms of inequality.
That was a comfortable place to live, growing up in one of the world’s nations most plagued by economic and social inequality. We weren’t in Bangladesh or the caste system of India, but we were surrounded by mansions bordered by slums with a hundred families having access to a single working faucet. Children wandered around the favelas without pants, for there was no money for diapers. At church, we preached to the heavenly riches beyond the struggles of the daily grind and left questions of justice to be dealt with at an individual level.
I was at home with the concepts. They were what I knew. We preached God’s love in regard to eternity and turned a blind eye to the lack of that same love in the social, legal, and political structures that hemmed us in on all sides. Justice was the realm of law and order, of keeping a superficial peace, of calming protests, and keeping everyone in their respective places. The wealthy continued to live in mansions and pick up their children from school via chauffeur or helicopter just a stone’s throw from a favela where a loaf of bread was a prized possession.
We viewed the residents of the favela as people to fear, for they might hold us up to take some of our belongings. We didn’t really question why there were several thousand people living in the same area in which 300 of us went to school. We didn’t concern ourselves with just how different sets of options were laid out before us and those living in the slum next door. We did not pay attention to what policies kept us apart, the different opportunities presented to us, or the very different worlds we inhabited within spitting distance of each other.
Justice was about obeying the rules. Did it matter that the rules meant those born in the favela could never have the education I was afforded? Did it matter that the rules meant those working to clean our classrooms could never afford to send their children to study alongside me? Did it matter that a father with whom I went to church did not have the luxury of more than 4 hours of sleep, so that he could finish high school, work, and provide a survival for his growing family?
The inequality all around me did not bother me enough, because I was insulated from it. Sure, I had encounters with youth begging a bite of my sandwich at a lunch counter. Sure, I once ordered one of them a meal before management ran them out of the establishment. That was an easy response to an immediate need that seemed in keeping with Jesus’ commands to feed the hungry. It just did not solve anything for the youth whose name I never even asked.
I was never taught that I had a voice in the political, economic, and social systems around me. Along with that voice came a responsibility, a gospel responsibility to speak for those without the same voice I was privileged to bear. My culture taught me, instead, not to make waves. It taught me to be nice. It taught me not to stir the pot. It taught me that I should keep my head down and accept the status quo, to help keep everyone in their appropriate places, to not upset the apple cart.
That’s what my culture and society taught. It’s just not the way of Jesus. It is what too many of the Christian leaders around me accepted as normative, but it is not the way Jesus addressed the power brokers in his own society, both the religious and the political. He spoke of a new way of living under God’s reign that threw away the realities of the economic, social, and political structures to make way for a new way of living in which we consider one another as neighbors, friends, and family. He spoke of allowing love, forgiveness, and reconciliation to have a chance such that the entire fabric of society was transformed by God’s justice.
I’m still struggling with what that looks like. I’ve never seen such a society before. Until “Justice rolls down like waters,” however, it will need to be the cry of my life to use my voice for transformation. There are too many around me struggling to breathe, with no voice of their own. Until their voices can be clearly heard and our society can answer in affirming ways, I must continue to cry for justice. Otherwise, what are my voice and my breath worth?


— ©Copyright 2020, Christopher B. Harbin

http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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