This is the sixth entry in our new series, TIKKUN OLAM. In it, we intend to explore what justice looks like in the eyes of God, and how we are called to partner with God in the healing of the world.
This week we intend to turn a corner to what we each can do in the name of justice, but before we do we should pause and reflect on the theology of justice we have laid out thus far:
The cry for justice begins not with practical solutions but a deep-felt conviction that things are not as God desires them to be. If we too quickly jump to trying to fix the world on the world’s terms, we miss the prophetic call to feel the injustice around us, and turn to God for heavenly visions of a world made right.
The pursuit of justice stems from understanding that God created the world and called it all “good”, and that “evil” is the corruption of creation. By placing the current ills in a timeline of God’s story, we see that God created all things to reflect God’s glory, and that God will eventually put all things right. This helps us discern what is good and evil in the present moment.
Biblical justice is primarily seen as restoration of dignity for all image-bearing humans, and not simply retribution for wrongdoing. The scriptures frequently refer to righteousness and justice together as part of our vocation. While mishpat encapsulates legal order and fairness, tzedakah is a call to radical kindness and generosity.
While God can and does work through human institutions for justice, we cannot abdicate our role as Christians in the repairing of the world. It is evident that God works through governments to enact some sort of order, while not endorsing any acts of government that dehumanize or overstep God’s law. We are to call out injustice wherever we see it, and not assume someone else will do the work that is ours as the Church.
Our repentance is evidence that God’s mission to reveal His justice has pierced our hearts, and our participation in God’s mission to reveal His justice to this world is the evidence of our repentance. We do not do anything to earn God’s grace; however, we embody forgiveness by taking up the call to enact justice in our time.
Are you overwhelmed yet? This is almost by design. Our heart here is not to rush too quickly ahead to little things one can do to stave off the feelings of powerlessness, but to develop a grand theological vision of what God desires and the work it takes to get there. It is in this framework of understanding goodness, evil, justice, and vocation that we can now ponder what each of us are called to do with the precious time and resources God has given us.
Jesus offers us a brilliant little parable that helps us discern how we must posture ourselves to the world when it comes to doing what is right:
A lawyer got up and put Jesus on the spot.
“Teacher,” he said, “what should I do to inherit the life of the coming age?”
“Well,” replied Jesus, “what is written in the law? What’s your interpretation of it?”
“You shall love the Lord your God,” he replied, “with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your understanding; and your neighbor as yourself.”
“Well said!” replied Jesus. “Do that and you will live.”
“Ah,” said the lawyer, wanting to win the point, “but who is my neighbor?”
Jesus rose to the challenge. “Once upon a time,” he said, “a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and was set upon by brigands. They stripped him and beat him and ran off leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, and when he saw him he went past on the opposite side. So too a Levite came by the place; he saw him too, and went past on the opposite side.
“But a traveling Samaritan came to where he was. When he saw him he was filled with pity. He came over to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. Then he put him on his own beast, took him to an inn, and looked after him. The next morning, as he was going on his way, he gave the innkeeper two dinars. ‘Take care of him,’ he said, ‘and on my way back I’ll pay you whatever else you need to spend on him.’
“Which of these three do you think turned out to be the neighbor of the man who was set upon by the brigands?”
“The one who showed mercy on him,” came the reply.
“Well,” Jesus said to him, “you go and do the same.”
(Luke 10:25-37 NTFE)
A significant component of the Jewish religion is the debate between teachers to ascertain the heart behind the Law. Many of Jesus’ interactions with scribes, Pharisees, and Sadduccees are in the tradition, asking challenging questions and trying to poke holes in the opponent’s claims. The lawyer in this story is doing this very thing - while he answers the broad question correctly, he seeks to micro-define the word “neighbor” to suit his preferences. For him, a “neighbor” means “a fellow Jew”, because God is solely the God of the Jewish people.
Rather than responding descriptively, Jesus tells a parable that uses the extremes of our assumptions to open us to bigger possibilities. To illustrate the prejudice in the heart of the lawyer he uses both a priest and a Levite (the most devout offices in the community) to show how personal piety can deny the call to justice. According to the Torah, if one were to touch a dead body one would be considered “unclean”, and therefore compromised when it came to the regular duties of the temple system. Better to ignore the possibility this man might still be alive and maintain one’s own holiness in the name of duty.
Jesus then juxtaposes the alternative to the religious elite with an unnamed traveling Samaritan. In our day and age we associate the term “Samaritan” with someone who does good deeds, but in the first century there was quite a different connotation altogether. The Samaritan people were considered half-breeds by Jews who were concerned with blood purity as a measure of superiority. This tribe had some common ancestors with Israel, worshipped the same God in similar ways, yet it was their getting it “wrong” that was offensive. At least Gentiles could claim ignorance; Samaritans are detestable. So imagine the lawyer’s reaction to the one who is genuinely being faithful to the Greatest Commandment being, not one of his own religious leaders, but an outsider, a heretic!
What is perhaps most striking for our purpose today is the recognition of two things. Firstly, the Samaritan has the margins in his life to stop what he’s doing and act on compassion. He is willing to allow himself to be inconvenienced for the sake of the hurting. He does what he can in the moment to binds wounds, but he then goes the extra step to get the injured man to an inn; as there were no hospitals in their day this was the place to go for long-term treatment. He pays the inn-keeper for his service, and promises to pay anything additional needed to bring the man back to full health. The Samaritan also knew his own limitations and had the financial capacity to pay a professional to do the ongoing good work.
For Jesus, the “neighbor” is not something who looks and thinks like you, believes the same way you do, or is even in day-to-day proximity. The “neighbor” is anyone before you who is in need of mercy. His challenge to the lawyer is to recognize the Samaritan as “neighbor”, lest he be the one in need of mercy who might one day be left for dead on the side of the road.
By naming both our passions and limitations, we are better able to discern how God is inviting each of us to help repair the world. We often suffer from paralysis when it comes to justice - we can’t do it all, so sometimes we do next-to-nothing, keeping our heads down. Yet God created us with limitations that we are meant to bless, not as an excuse but to embrace our smallness and better discern how we can contribute.
So how do we bless both our individual passions and our limitations? I find the words of Paul profound in helping us understand what is ours to do:
Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.
Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.
(Galatians 6:4-8 MSG)
While as Christians we should generally care about all injustice, we each have capacity to really invest in two or three causes. Last week Ely told us, “The Father will never burden your heart just to torture you”. Sometimes the ache we feel when we read the news may be God’s ache; the allure we feel when we see the helpers may be the urging of the Holy Spirit to pay attention to what we are passionate about. Sometimes it’s the getting out there and trying stuff that sets a fire in our hearts. Exposure to real people in real struggles will do more for us than any amount of statistics or stories from stage might. I frequently see this with folks in our community who show up to serve at Orlando Children’s Church - they perhaps understand the vague concept of these kids’ lives, but to actually play with them, talk with them, lead them through a Bible study, it is like a lightbulb going off.
Honing in on the two or three causes that God may place on our heart helps us know where to devote our energy. Often you have been given a heart of compassion for people who have experienced something as you have. It may also be that your personality and skill set are better suited to some causes than others. Most importantly, blessing our limitations means being sensitive to the season we find ourselves in. We may have small children that require a lot of attention, or we are between jobs. These limitations should not be points of guilt any more than they are excuses to disconnect from what God is doing around us. Sometimes I dream about a faith community filled with people who clearly know what their individual passions are, and become the rallying cry to others still searching. Such diversity would be a thing of beauty to behold.
Take a moment to pause and pray. What are 2-3 causes in the world you care deeply about?
Why do they break your heart?
If we care about God’s justice, we will reprioritize our time and resources to show it. To become more generous is to become more like God. Stewardship of the gifts God has given us should be aspirational, not based on complacent comfort. Again, our limitations are a reason, not an excuse, and they change from season-to-season in life. In essence, we sacrifice our time and wealth to emulate our sacrificial God - this is an act of faith that moves us beyond ourselves and the nagging self-preservational ego that keeps us from becoming more like Jesus.
Our finances are the most boring and most effective way we can contribute to justice initiatives. I looked up some statistics to get a feel for where we as Americans and Christians are when it comes to generosity:
The average annual household giving by generation:
The Silent Generation (Born 1925-1945): $1,367
Baby Boomers (Born 1946-1964): $1,212
Generation Z (Born 1997-2012): $785
Generation X (Born 1965-1980): $732
Millennials (Born 1981-1996): $481
Specifically Christians:
Average giving by adults at US Protestant churches is about $17 a week ($884/year)
3-5% of churchgoers tithe; regular attendees are more generous than sporadic attendees
U.S. Christians collectively make $5.2 trillion annually — nearly half the world’s total Christian income
These numbers are rather convicting. Rather than seeing them as a point of shame that may or may not be warranted, however, I am excited by the possibility of what would happen if the Church woke up and began in earnest to invest in God’s justice coming to the earth through our finances.
What I would like to propose below is not a hard principle to follow, but a template that may help each of us grow in generosity. I have written this out in greater detail here, but this is a way I like to think about shaping my finances:
Tithe: God encourages us to give our “first fruits” as sacrificial worship. Tithe is a principle of “first fruits”, meaning we give the first tenth of our income to God and God’s church as an act of worship before we consider where the remaining 90% goes. In fact, giving in this way changes our attitude to the remainder, because we are acknowledging that all we have comes from God, and not merely our human effort.
Recurring Generosity: We go beyond giving to our local church to also support causes we are passionate about in bringing justice to the earth. It is a relief to know there are good people out there tackling issues of justice with integrity and efficiency. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel as a community when it comes to serving the poor, unhoused, enslaved, and so on. Giving above-and-beyond our tithe enables us to empower those who are addressing the crises that break our hearts. If the goal for tithe is 10%, perhaps 2-3% of our income could go to supporting charities that are doing the good work.
Spontaneous Generosity: We should set aside a portion of our income for when the unexpected happens. We don’t want to be caught off-guard when tragedy strikes. If we set aside a spontaneous fund, we can be the first to respond so people get the help they need in the moment. There are always opportunities to sew generously if we have our eyes open.
Take another moment to pause and pray. Who are the people out there doing the sustainable justice work that meets your passions? How could you begin to support their work through your finances?
I want to end with a quote that gives me great solace and courage in a mad world. Alexander Solzhenitsyn grew up in Russia in the early part of the twentieth century. While raised Orthodox, he became an atheist during the Communist Revolution and joined the Red Army, fighting in World War II. Solzhenitsyn was later sent to a gulag, or concentration camp, in Siberia by Stalin for conversations he held in secret with other soldiers who had become disillusioned by the regime. It was there that he rediscovered his Orthodox faith and gave his life back to Christ. His writings in the second half of the century were instrumental in uncovering the brutality of the Soviet Union, deeply motivated by his devout faith. He wrote this:
“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, et it even triumph. But not through me.”
I don’t want to give myself to despair. I don’t want to contribute to the dehumanization of my neighbor. I have a sneaking suspicion you do not either. May we discern the passions God has placed on our hearts, and may be bless our limitations to know what we can do in some small way to keep the darkness at bay. Amen.