{"id":5151,"date":"2019-07-23T15:59:55","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T20:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/?p=5151"},"modified":"2019-07-23T15:59:56","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T20:59:56","slug":"justice-for-all-every-sphere-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/2019\/07\/23\/justice-for-all-every-sphere-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice for All: Every Sphere of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Justice is a biblical mandate, a command from Scripture, an imperative from the LORD, a prophetically proclaimed expectation for God\u2019s people.<\/p>\n

In the Bible, the issue of making justice available is a centuries old, repeated request from the LORD to God\u2019s people. \u00a0The need for justice is echoed by prophets repeatedly and proclaimed as a \u201cweightier\u201d matter by Jesus. To read more about this \u201cweightier\u201d matter, read part one of this article series at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What is justice?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A first issue we need to understand is that readers of *this* article [published in 2019 by a largely United States-based congregation] have historically-framed and life-long-enculturated Western (& American) ways of discerning justice. \u00a0What the \u201caverage American\u201d understands as \u201cjustice\u201d is discerned differently when compared to the weightier matters found in the Bible\u2019s total social-&-community understanding of justice.<\/p>\n

In Western culture and in America, our governance for life includes separate and clear \u201cdivisions\u201d of power and authority. \u00a0Not only do we have separate \u201cbranches\u201d of government, within the \u201cjustice\u201d branch we have diverse categories including: law enforcement personnel (e.g., the Sheriff or police); the court personnel (e.g., attorneys, judges, bailiffs, and more.) \u00a0Clearly, these persons are involved in the *modern practice* of our American cultural discernment of the concept of \u201cjustice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scripture does not have these \u201cbranches\u201d of government nor does Scripture contain these specific cultural \u201cofficers\u201d within this branch. \u00a0Said differently, Jesus and biblical prophets were not proclaiming *this* kind of justice.<\/p>\n

The limits of space in this article do not permit a full explanation, though, in short, while justice for Israel certainly did include judgment for \u201cwrong-doers\u201d and \u201cpunishment\u201d for poor decisions, this limited conception is a very small portion of what the Bible really means when it conceives of Justice.<\/p>\n

Biblical justice was understood to include daily life habits engaged by all members of society, not just for some who had \u201cspecial offices.\u201d \u00a0Biblical justice was about making matters right, fair, and equitable in daily matters for every community member *more so* than it was about correcting the wrongs of only some community members. \u00a0Biblical justice was and is the equitable distribution of God\u2019s total-life resources such that harmonious relationships of mutual flourishing might enable all of God\u2019s people to prosper in every sphere of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me try to characterize this for us.<\/p>\n