And Justice for All.
Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian
July 4, 2023
And Justice for All.
On this American Independence Day it would be good again to see ourselves clear to “justice for all.”
I wrote this piece below in my journal on May 27, launched from reading some Ezekiel. That being said, what I say here in conclusion about being “back down to earth” applies to our attention to what is happening to our neighbors, fellow citizens marginalized and immigrants ostracized. And then, too, this week, the nation of Israel and its incursion into the West Bank out of “self-defense.”
“Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is not just!’ O house of Israel, are my ways not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?” (Ezekiel 18)
There are two levels of injustice that are being spoken of here. One is eternal and one temporal. One is speculative (the eternal) and the other actual (the temporal). The people push back at God for giving punishment (death) to those who have done rightly but turn to a bad behavior as well as God giving a break to those who have done badly but turn to good. The people (of Israel) want good to count for something! If they don’t get divine welfare for their good, it’s unjust! But in it all, then, they turn away from the actual harm done, which, according to God, is the real issue at hand.
God dismisses the objections of the people of Israel as self-righteous and self-centered and self-serving nonsense (literally, no attention to the “senses,” the real lives, hurts and hopes, of others).
The sole concern of God is justice done in actual and earthly relationships. When, instead, attention goes to what will become of us, our destiny, our eternal life, the game is lost. If we cannot trust God to care for our destiny, willy-nilly and come what may, then we have lost God. God rejects our eternal speculations and brings us back down to earth. To trust God is not to become less involved or leave street level injustices to some kind of divine intervention. To trust God is to leave all self-concern about how we are being treated by God up to God’s prerogative, end of story, and to be launched into the justice that God cares about and thus calls us to care about: how is our neighbor doing.
God says to us regarding how we are doing in relation to God and how God treats us: “Mind your own business!” God says this not out of self-protection or a selfish privacy, but for our own good and the good of the earth. Our business is the justice done to each other and to the elements of earth.
So: with liberty and justice for all.
May the “American Experiment” of a democratic republic continue, with all its flaws, to be about justice for all.
