on justice and the church…
A friend asked me last week if I could help her with a definition of “social justice” that was both Biblical and apolitical. It is a term that has come to mean many different things to many different people, but I said I would do my best to provide some clarification on the subject. What follows is a more fleshed out version of what I sent her…
“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. …to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” – Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn was a somewhat radical socialist historian and political science professor who didn’t have any faith background that I know of. Kind of an odd place to start for a talk about faith and justice, huh? But I think Zinn is on to something here when it comes to the role the Church is called to play here on the Earth. In my opinion, the role of the Church here on Earth is to build the Kingdom of God. Central to understanding this role is understanding the nature of the Kingdom of God. When Jesus ascended into Heaven, he left behind the promise of the Holy Spirit and that one day he would return at the end of days to establish a new Earth to replace the current, broken world. The Church lives in the tension of being in the presence of God (the Holy Spirit) and also awaiting His return (the second coming).
Now, you point out that the phrase “social justice” carries heavy political baggage these days. I want to make a couple of assumptions that I think anyone can agree with as I move toward a Biblical and apolitical definition of “social justice”. The first is that I think most people can agree the central narrative in the Bible from Genesis to Revelations is the relationship between God and His creation. You see this in the Garden of Eden; in God choosing the nation of Israel as his Chosen People and dwelling among them in the Temple; in Jesus taking on flesh and dwelling among the disciples; in the Holy Spirit coming down and dwelling in the hearts of Christians; in the bride and groom imagery of God and the Church, etc. Second, the story arch of that relationship begins with perfection in the garden, destruction with the fall, atonement on the Cross, and restoration at the end of times. Are we good so far? God desires a relationship with his creation and is moving through time to the eventual restoration of that relationship in the completion of the Kingdom of God. Therefore, the nature of the Kingdom of God is the restoration of relationships; between people and God and between people and each other.
Just as God is pursuing us, we as Christians are called to pursue Him; to seek him and imitate the example Christ gave us. Daniel Groody (a professor at Notre Dame) says, “Lived out in its personal and public dimensions, Christian spirituality is the way in which the invisible heart of God is made visible to the world by revealing the life of Christ in the lives of his followers.” As we exist in the tension of waiting for the second coming and the establishment of the New Earth, are we not called to live out the Kingdom in anticipation of that time? If God so loved the world that He gave His only son to die for the restoration of the world to the right order of eternal life in relationship with Him, should we not also seek reconciliation and restoration? I firmly believe that the core mission of the Church is to restore relationships as we live out and build the Kingdom that God will one day perfect and complete in the return of Christ. To me, this is “social justice” at it’s most basic level, restoring brokenness to righteousness.
I think, and this is certainly getting more into my personal opinion at this point, one of the struggles for Christians and the Church is when we look at the most broken relationships, the and people who most need healing and restoration, we don’t like what we find. Make no mistake, this is not easy work. The role of the Church isn’t to bring healing and restoration to the shores of Miami beach or the slopes of Aspen. We are called to be “in the trenches,” so to speak, working with the homeless, the addicted, the infirm, immigrants, the poor, those who are most vulnerable, those who remind us of our own tenuous station in life. I think the most frightening thing we sometimes experience is the humanity of the people we help because it is a reminder of our own broken existence. We want to build an image for Sunday morning, or Monday morning, of Friday night of ourselves and perfectly put together when in reality we have all this pain and dirt just below the surface.
I know this is difficult. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m far better at talking the talk than walking the walk. But if we as Christians, as the Church, want to seriously engage in the work Christ has called us to we have to stop fighting over the how and start focusing on the who. When the Church is restoring relationships between the least, the last and the lost, between each of us, between us and God, that is when the Church is doing social justice.
