I am getting ready (a minute here and a minute there) for leading a discussion at the evolving church conference in a few weeks. My subject will be “Justice at a distance.” Or how can we resist making justice into another church program. Actually this is an extension of my chapter on “Community in but not of Capitalism” in the Great Giveaway.
It is always easier to do justice at a distance. Normally evangelical churches do justice “down in the city” (because often we’re suburban churches) or far enough away that it does not come into direct contact with our lives. It’s a program. I don’t mean to demean these efforts. I’m just saying this is the way we do justice. Or we defer to the government, or to social agencies or parachurch organizations all of which we support in some overt monetary and prayerful way. Yet this too strangely keeps justice at a distance. And again justice is a program.
The battle we are in … is to recover a connection between the church and the poor, to bridge the distance, to see Christ’s justice as a way of life. To not allow the poor to be technologized or become a digital image splashed on a screen at a fundraiser, to not allow the poor to become a program that distances us, somehow we must seize opportunities to be with the poor, talk to the poor and have them be with us. For as much as these acts of mercy are truly needed, I believe it is only in the “physical” connection that speaking truth, showing love, spiritual and physical healing and real justice can take root in people’s lives. I hope to explain why in the posts to follow.
The kinds of things I hope to propose are so modest, so local and so basic that any church can do them. They are things that might seem all too obvious. We have done them in the past. We are so capable of doing them again. These kinds of acts are not going to threaten the whole structure of anyone’s life. But they may challenge how we live and open our hearts to the poor. These small acts may chase some more well off and “can’t be bothered” types from your church. But there is no need for great dramatics, no great programs that only a church of 2,500 could do. Rather I hope to propose some things that every small church could do with little or no money and just a little time, love and kindness and generosity. Yet I see these things being revolutionary if every evangelical church in N. America could make them part of our way of life.
Of course national politics has its place. Social agencies and para church groups are awesome. But in order to undercut the social fabric that under girds the evils, the sin and destruction of certain social structures, another socializing force must first exist to show the way. It must be face-to-face embodied presence of Christ that isn’t afraid to touch. It must be the Body of Christ inhabiting the world in His distinctive way of justice.
This approach to justice in the end asks that justice not be a program at our local church, but the virtue of a people that gather there, not something we do, but rather something we are.
Dostoevsky illustrates why justice cannot ultimately done at a distance in Brothers Karamazov (Part 2, Book 5 chapter 4 “Rebellion”) Here Dostoevsky has cynical Ivan wax eloquent to Alyosha about the plight of the poor and the suffering. He point blank says he has never been able to understand how it is possible to love one’s neighbors.
… and I mean precisely one’s neighbors, because I can conceive of the possibility of loving those far away. I read somewhere about a saint, John the Merciful, who, when a hungry, frozen beggar came to him and asked him to warm him, lay down with him, put his arms around him, and breathed into the man’s reeking mouth that was festering with the sores of some horrible disease. I’m convinced he did so in a state of frenzy, that it was a false gesture, that this act of love was dictated by some self-imposed penance. If I must love my fellow man, he had better hide himself, for no sooner do I see his face than there’s an end to my love for him.
A little later in the conversation Ivan says …
Beggars, particularly well-born beggars, should never show themselves in person, but should do their begging exclusively through newspaper advertisements. The idea of loving one’s neighbor is possible only as an abstraction: it may be conceivable to love one’s fellow man at a distance, but it is almost never possible to love him at close quarters. If life were like a theatre, the ballet where the beggars come out in silken rags and beg while they perform the graceful steps of a ballet, then I suppose we could enjoy looking at them. But even then, to enjoy looking at someone is still not the same as loving him.
This eloquent piece of cynicism reveals how far we fall short when we do justice at a distance. It is the struggle for all of us evangelicals whose first move has often been to do justice separate from the regular on going life of the church. When we pay others to do our justice, when we argue for policies that help people we never knew, when we send teams down to the urban landscape to help build homes for the poor we don’t really know, we are left untouched. And the gift is often impersonal and spatialized by the existing structures which overwhelm it. None of this denies the importance of these ways of doing mercy. It is just that they leave us separated from the poor. And many times these efforts don’t transform the structures because of this.
All of these other efforts should not be discarded. They should just be built upon the foundation of the church as a living embodiment of God’s justice taking shape in the world. I hope to make three posts about three urges we must resist if we would see justice take shape in/around the local neighborhood church.
1.THE URGE TO SEPARATE PERSONAL FROM SOCIAL SALVATION
2. THE URGE TO MAKE JUSTICE ABOUT INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
3. THE URGE TO MAKE JUSTICE ABOUT POLITICS
Any helpful comments?
PS Did you see the news piece about the suburbs now having more people in poverty than the city, they’re just harder to find? whoah …
(sorry to everyone for wiping out the comments from this post when I retitled it)
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Thanks for this post Dave. I was just over reading on Ben Witherington’s blog and he said this…
“By contrast with that spirit, what I see today is waves and waves of cynicism and bitterness, only slightly masked and medicated by music and drugs and other forms of ‘entertainment’. It seems our country has become far more narcissistic than ever, and part of that self-centeredness is manifested in bitterness.”
If you read the whole post, I think it becomes more clear why “justice” is so much better when it is “out there”…I find others my age so self-consumed, so busy with themselves and with what they aren’t getting, what they deserve, etc. that there is literally no room for this theology to play itself out in their lives. What pours out of us is a need to feed this self-justifying, all consuming, focus on self. This only leaves room for an occasional justice done other places, short-term, build a house, give $20 to a poor child in Africa. None of these things are bad or wrong or out of place as Christians, but they certainly are easier to digest than the laying down of self, the laying down of the “wait…I am not getting what I deserve” mentality to take time to call someone, to pray with them, to work with them and to invest. This is a topic near to my heart and I look forwared to your future posts.
Thanks for this post Dave. I was just over reading on Ben Witherington’s blog and he said this…
“By contrast with that spirit, what I see today is waves and waves of cynicism and bitterness, only slightly masked and medicated by music and drugs and other forms of ‘entertainment’. It seems our country has become far more narcissistic than ever, and part of that self-centeredness is manifested in bitterness.”
If you read the whole post, I think it becomes more clear why “justice” is so much better when it is “out there”…I find others my age so self-consumed, so busy with themselves and with what they aren’t getting, what they deserve, etc. that there is literally no room for this theology to play itself out in their lives. What pours out of us is a need to feed this self-justifying, all consuming, focus on self. This only leaves room for an occasional justice done other places, short-term, build a house, give $20 to a poor child in Africa. None of these things are bad or wrong or out of place as Christians, but they certainly are easier to digest than the laying down of self, the laying down of the “wait…I am not getting what I deserve” mentality to take time to call someone, to pray with them, to work with them and to invest. This is a topic near to my heart and I look forwared to your future posts.
I wonder about your “urges”. Should churches resist this and let politics play the justice card, and rights card? What if you’re a Christian who in a multicultural, pluralist world, like me, who sees hope precisely in politics and rights? This, I take it, to be the argument of Charles Taylor, and somewhat of Alasdair MacIntyre. I suppose I struggle with any understanding of justice that doesn’t have something to say about the political, as if the local could somehow be removed from it. (And what counts as “local” anyways?)
Quick note about the your Post Script: while there is truth to this shift of poverty to suburbia, what the article fails to grapple with is the rootedness of poverty/injustice issues to urban centres. It also speaks to the nature of suburbia and its failing ideals. Just a few thoughts. Great post!
Jean Vanier somewhere wrote that the poor are the salvation of the church. They call us back to simplicity, away from our self-centeredness, away from lifestyles of addictive consumption. If we are really blessed, eventually we realize that WE are the poor and in that place, as Jesus says, we are blessed.
David,
This post seems to be close to the heart of what I consider to be “missional friendship.” The two books that have shaped my own vision of this are Liz Carmichael’s susbtantive book, “Friendship: Interpreting Christian Love” and Paul Wadell’s “Becoming Friends.” They both bring the Christian love and justice together in a model of Christian friendship.
I’d rather have justice as a program than no justice at all. And sometimes the only way we can conceive of doing justice is through a program (or structure) that connects human beings, regardless of their socio-economic status.
knsheppard … I hope to address your question in the 3rd of three posts to follow in next couple weeks …
tom … I guess I’d be interested to know whether you see my argument … that justice as defined by the Scriptures is not possible “at a distance” … although certainly works of mercy would be … Justice on a wide scale… isn possible if connected through embodfied justice that defines it … but a “structure” built on a concept disengaged from life … will be subsumed by the power dicourses… DF
Hey Mr. Fitch…I’m a friend of your nephews Tim and Steve at Fremont Alliance. Ever since Steve showed me your site it seems like you’ve really been able to verbalize a lot of the feelings that I feel unable to express in most Christian circles since we can be so unwilling to reevaluate the way we do things. So I find it so encouraging to know that there are some divergent opinions out there. Sometimes I feel that doing justice as a program allows us to feel like we’re doing what we need to do for the poor without actually having to get out there and do the work ourselves. It’s kind of our way of doing our duties that we learn about in the Sheep and the Goats passage in Matthew without actually having to brush shoulders with the “least of these.” So thanks again for sharing your thoughts, you’re obviously brilliant so I hope God continues to use your gifts in fantastic ways.
Thanks for this David. A needed topic. I started this response to the last post, but me being a slow thinker, your new post got here before I did. Consider it in response to both.
These comments have their source in a little used translation (the New English Bible) of James 3:18, which states ‘True justice is the harvest reaped by peacemakers from seeds sown in the spirit of peace.’ (Most translations use the word goodness or righteousness in place of justice, though the C.E.V. also speaks in terms of justice: ‘When peacemakers plant seeds of peace, they will harvest justice.’)
Regarding avoiding the works righteousness distortion of justice, or having justice become a program without us truly connecting to those we seek justice for – perhaps a partial key is to see justice as a product of Kingdom living, and not as the process of attaining the Kingdom. So justice becomes the end, Kingdom living the means – a means that is so precious, demanding and costly (the pearl is the Cross) that all we can focus on is the means and trust the end to God, and so the burden becomes light. This paradigm allows our focus to shift to the relational (How would Christ have me relate now, at this moment, in this situation, with this person, so that I can partner with him in a redeeming act for this person, bring his peace to this person?), and away from trying to find our purpose and meaning in ‘tried and true’ programs and formulae that we are conditioned to expect God will respect and respond to; away from trusting in the programs as being the effective, correct, and essential route to justice, (and therefore indispensible and unassailable), and towards trusting in the Lord of the harvest of the seeds we plant.
Justice as process is needed in our fallen world, but being borne in earthen vessels it will create its own distortions and injustices, and will never equal justice that is achieved as the natural fruit of Kingdom living. I am convinced that when we as a society truly learn to love our neighbours as ourselves, that indeed justice as harvest will be exist, and justice as process will no longer be needed.
We know the place justice has in the heart of God, and we also know that those who seek his justice are endeared to him. In the beatitudes, it is the peacemakers whom God calls his children.
David,
I just think there’s room for more pragmatic expressions of justice to be explored. If your post was seeking to define best practice within the Christian community, then I agree with you that the embodiment of justice is certainly something we aspire to, however imperfectly. Nevertheless, involvement in programs that seek to do justice (or bring justice) may be a surprisingly effective way to awaken an inner impulse for justice in someone who has not given much thought to the kind of justice you so eloquently commend in your post.
Tom … I think I agree with you … but I might choose to label those “programs” something other than Christian justice. I might call them “mercy” which is just as important and central part of the life in Christ. I hope to show here in the later posts .. why I think justice as defined in the old testament and new … simply doesn’t make sense outside of a Body politic.
Blessings ..
David, thanks for bringing me along. I honestly believe that your understanding of justice is far more nuanced and developed than my own. With that in mind, I look forward to your upcoming posts. I have much to learn.