The Shadow World: A False Justice

From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace. - Jeremiah 6:13-14

The biblical concepts of righteousness and justice are linked to the same Hebrew and Greek words, therefore the concepts are inseparably linked together. These words point to the world being "made right" in every sense. In being made righteous, humanity is set in right relationship to itself, to the created world, and to God. It involves seeing what is true about ourselves and turning away from that which is false. It involves dealing with the injustices we perpetuate in order to make the world whole again.

The modern cry of "no justice, no peace" can be heard in the words of Jeremiah quoted above. Jeremiah was a young Hebrew prophet who was instructed by God to confront his own people for forgetting who they were. They had forgotten about their own liberation from slavery in Egypt and had forgotten the God who rescued them. Their greed for power and wealth leads to Jeremiah telling them, "Your skirts are stained with the blood of the innocent poor."

Like Jeremiah’s stubborn audience, many today still yell "peace, peace" when confronted with our own injustice. While the oppressed are suffering and dying, we simply tell them to not be afraid while they lay bleeding. We close our eyes and cover our ears to their pleas for help. We suddenly expect everyone to get along despite the wounds that we have inflicted. Confronting the injustice and acknowledging our involvement is simply too uncomfortable. The peace we demand, and the self-righteousness we feel, is hollow.

The biblical vision of righteousness is not a shallow personal morality in which we get into God's good graces by refusing to drink, cuss, or have sex before marriage. In many religious circles, personal purity is demanded while social justice is written off as a worldly or political agenda. By focusing on moral issues that impact no one except ourselves, we get to feel superior without any real social responsibility. "Turn to Jesus" becomes a pious way of telling other people to deal with their own wounds before they bother us again.

Biblical righteousness, instead, is a call to participate in setting the world right, to use our power and privilege to ensure justice for those without power. It's joining God in the "ministry of reconciliation" in which we bring things together not by insisting on peace, but by creating it through our own actions. It takes personal sacrifice, not empty promises. It requires that we take the plank from our own eye before pointing out the spec of wood in someone else's eye. It requires seeing every human as our neighbor, and then seeking to live out the greatest commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. There is no self-righteousness, but only our participation in the world being made right.

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice." - Martin Luther King, Jr.