Jesus for Justice [Justin]
In Matthew 12, Jesus first establishes himself as superior to and exempt from sabbath rules. He then travels around healing people, and Matthew takes a moment to apply an Isaiac vision to Jesus’ ministry:
Many followed him, and he healed all their sick, warning them not to tell who he was. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations.He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.In his name the nations will put their hope.” Matthew 12:15-21
The original quotation from Isaiah reads:
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations.He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.In his law the islands will put their hope.” Isaiah 42:1-4
In both renderings, the establishment of justice is mentioned twice as a primary task of the chosen servant of God. It’s clear that this justice is not brought about by Saddam-like force or coercion: “A bruised reeed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he wil not snuff out.”
It should therefore be a primary concern of God’s people to establish justice, and see that justice is indeed done where it has ostensibly been established. In case we need some help looking for causes in which we can work for justice, here’s a starter list:
- The imprisonment and death sentence of Cory Maye
- Basing school funding on local property values (i.e. rich kids get better public schools)
- Racial profiling in traffic stops
I think it’s tempting (for conservatives especially) to see the establishment of God’s justice as something that will have to wait until the parousia. In a sense, there are elements of God’s justice that will not see fulfillment in this life. Jeremiah complained:
You are always righteous, O LORD,
when I bring a case before you.
Yet I would speak with you about your justice:
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all the faithless live at ease? Jeremiah 12:1
In another sense, though, we can do something about the injustice in the world. We may not be directly establishing God’s justice, but I don’t know that there’s really a difference between justice brought about by God directly and justice brought about by those seeking to do God’s will.
What do you think?
Just a couple of comments on this point above: “Basing school funding on local property values (i.e. rich kids get better public schools)”
(1) Around here at least, the school funding is based on property TAXES. There’s a subtle but important difference between that and basing it on “local property VALUES”. Example: We live in basically a middle-class, somewhat blue-collar neighborhood and are getting reamed by high property taxes to fund new school construction, although our property *values* are average and actually depreciating. We’ve got our house on the market right now, and when we looked at the houses in the more affluent neighborhoods near us we were shocked to find that although the property VALUES are a lot higher on average, the property TAXES are in some cases 20% less than ours per year. So the economics of it is a little more complicated than “rich kids get better schools”.
(2) The implication here, I guess, is that poorer kids get worse public schools. But what makes a school “good” or “bad”, “better” or “worse” frequently has very little to do with money and has a lot to do with how the schools are managed. Public school expenditures in low-income districts across the board are higher than they have ever been, and yet student achievement has gotten worse and worse. Much that is due to corrupt or apathetic administration, aloof school boards, bad curricula, and a culture among schoolaged kids that can charitably be called “non-academic”. Putting more money into a school system that is radically flawed to begin with is not going to solve the problem.
What might promote justice more readily in this case would be allowing families to make their own choices about how to educate their kids rather than the government, which is clearly not getting the job done in this demographic. That gets us to the concept of vouchers and charter schools. (Ironically though some of the most strident “social justice” types refuse to even consider the possible benefits of alternatives to a system that is clearly broken beyond the ability of more money to repair it. )
Robert-
Thank you for elaborating on some of the complexities of school funding. I agree that higher property taxes aren’t the answer, as they can result in extremely high and unfair taxes. I think the whole idea of funding schools via property taxes needs to be rethought.
And I agree that schools are receiving more money than ever, but I’m not sure that’s the case in fixed dollars, and there is certainly a gap between rich and poor. I don’t know of any schools that have continued to decline in performance over the long term (i.e. decades), but I do know that a lot of schools are more segregated than they’ve ever been. A good read on this topic is Jonathan Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.
Vouchers and school choice: I agree that they should be a right of parents. I don’t expect them to immediately do better than public schools, but having choice is important, and a matter of justice. Otherwise, the only people with any choice are those rich enough to send their kids to $10K+/year private schools.
As Christians, we cannot ignore the “social aspects” of the Gospel. Some have gone so far as to proclaim a “Social Gospel”, where justice is a predominant theme, however the “Personal Gospel” of repentance and faith have been ignored. There are others who have gone to the opposite extreme. Jesus calls us to both.
I think it is hard to consider anything that occurs within the borders of the US unjust when compared to other parts of this globe. I’m not sure if God wants us to seek out the source of the greatest injustices against the most oppressed and work first there. But from a purely human standpoint, this seems right. Which makes me think that school funding and racial profiling ought to be the least of our worries. Or at least not our only worries. Not trying to be judgemental here–I’m speaking to myself as well.
virusdoc-
In principle I agree, but as I look on our attempts to bring about justice in other parts of the world, the track record isn’t great. We’ve installed a lot of dictators, started a lot of wars, and done a lot of stuff that in retrospect may not have made a positive difference overall. It’s a tough one.
Agree in general about school financing and racial profiling. What about church budgets … seems that there is very very little budgeted in Christianity for the poor … most church budgets focus on buildings and salaries that have little to do with asisting the needy in our community. Christians have a deep desire to help the helpless … in some sense that is what Jesus’ message of justice is all about.
I agree with you totally Greg. As Christians, we need to be about the business of bringing Kingdom values into the present world. We have long called for people to be saved, but we need to be answering the question of why. Why be saved? Is it solely to save your own hide? For too long we have allowed the answer to that question to be a resounding “yes.” Then we wonder why members of the church struggle with ethics and have little or no interest in social or economic justice. There is a purpose to God saving us. He saves us so that through us, he can be about the work of redeeming a fallen world. Salvation is the continual work of God in and through us, not a heavenly insurance policy. Until we start teaching it that way, we will contine to struggle with immature Christians in the church
Justin -
You’d be surprised about private school costs. I don’t have the precise stats, but the median annual tuition for a private school in the US is, I think, around $3500. The one up the street from us (run by a large Protestant church) is about $2500 a year; the Catholic school in town is a little more than that. There are actually not a whole lot of $10K+ private schools out there, actually. It’s just that the one’s that *are* really expensive tend to be very well known. Compare that to the ~= $7000 per year per student tax expenditures for public schooling. If a voucher or tax credit refunded even half that to parents, that would pay for a year at half the private schools in America.
About injustice in other parts of the world, my perspective is that we need to set our own house in order, to work toward rectifying the injustices here in the US first rather than try “fix” things in other nations. Smacks of overlooking the log in our own eyes to work elsewhere first.
TM - Justin has said it before, but it bears repeating - who are “our” people? Why the necessity to create this dichotomy between US and them?
“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” Psalm 24.1
Texas Mark-
I see your point about the hypocrisy of trying to fix other nations when we ourselves have unresolved social issues. I think our support of human righs as Christians needs to know no borders, but as far as policy, I agree with you - the plank in our eye needs to be removed first.
Racial profiling in traffic stops
Justin:
Working in the Public Safety/Law Enforcement field, and having conducted a ton of traffic stops, I have to correct you here. I can count the number of times on one hand where I knew the race of the person I was contacting before hand when stopping a vehicle. Those times when I did know the race of the person, it wasn’t a factor in my decision to initiate a traffic stop. The fact that the law had been violated was my cause for initiating the stop.
“Racial Profiling” is a misnomer and is largely a myth. The term comes from abusing the concept of criminal profiling. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, law enforcement had great success interdicting drug smugglers and transporters on federal highways by using a profile. This profile included the time of day, make, model and year of vehicle, age of the driver and other occupants, race of the driver and other occupants, sex of the driver and other occupants, and driver behavior upon noticing the presense of law enforcement.
Profiling in this manner was very successful and took millions of dollars worth of drugs off the street. The profile was also challenged in court because of its use of race. That case made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled that law enforcement may use race as a factor in making a stop as long as race wasn’t the sole or majority factor in making a stop. (I’d provide a case law citation but I don’t have the time to find it at the moment.)
Finally, for everyone working in law enforcement out there, I’d like to say that most of us are quite tired of all being called or compared to racists. Are there abuses? Sometimes, but there are in every other profession known to man as well. Don’t be so fast to judge a law enforcement officer for taking enforcement action against a minority as being caused by race. 99.9% of the time its because the person being arrested/cited/sprayed/hit/shot/etc violated our laws and we are reacting to it because that is what we are employed to do.
-Clarke
Clarke-
I was referring specifically to people being pulled over for “driving while black,” that is, being pulled over without a violation because they were driving “too nice” a car. I should have linked to the specific instance I had in mind, which is documented here (click the “Part 2″ video on the right side under the video player).
I understand that if a person is breaking the law, you certainly can’t ignore it simply because it creates a disproportionality in the racial breakdown of crimes reported. Certainly, if someone is doing something wrong, it needs to be dealt with, regardless of race.
But racial profiling is alive and well in traffic stops. I don’t mean to imply that it’s comletely routine, or that police officers are all racist, but the experience of many people of color (especially African American males) is unfair treatment because of skin color.
I was just browsing around and I came to your website through Wordpress themes. I was excited to see that you are a Christian. I just wanted to say hi before leaving your website and encourage you in your faith. Please say a hi to me using my email if you can
thanks
Abs
[...] Jesus for Justice http://www.radicalcongruency.com story added by adam to justice section 19 days ago. Justin looks at Matthew 12:15-21 - one of Jesus’ primary tasks was to establish justice. It should be one of our primary tasks of his disciples too. I think it’s tempting (for conservatives especially) to see the establishment of God’s justice as something that will have to wait until the parousia….In another sense, though, we can do something about the injustice in the world. We may not be directly establishing God’s justice, but I don’t know that there’s really a difference between justice brought about by God directly and justice brought about by those seeking to do God’s will. 2 votes | comment | send [...]