How is the Christian to Think about Justice?

The Rev. Clint Wilson, ’13

How is the Christian to think about justice? Especially when we know the achievement of such an end runs through the heart of our own brokenness as well? Throughout the epistles of the New Testament, there is an interpretive difficulty in understanding justice and how it is fleshed out. Indeed, common hermeneutical debates, especially in Pauline studies, revolve around the difference between justice, on the one hand, and righteousness, on the other. The debate is not helped by the fact that the Hebrew concept of shalom often overlaps semantically in meaning with righteousness and justice as understood in the New Testament.   

Yet, despite our confusion around justice--and our own complicity in injustice--the would-be follower of Christ is beckoned unto a vocation of justice. Wendell Berry understands this well: 

The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable. . . . It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter into the human economy. It was thus possible for traditional cultures to conceive that “to work is to pray.” (The Idea of a Local Economy, p. 258)

And it is precisely in this place of prayer where we are most clearly tuned into the vocation of justice. The Psalmist says nothing less: 

For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.

But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,

until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. (Ps. 73:16-17)

It is fundamentally in the place of prayer—not the board room, nor the war room—where we rightly perceive God’s justice.  When the Psalmist looked to the end of the wicked, he was comforted. He was comforted because he had confidence in the God who would “put the world to rights,” as the British are wont to say. 

But the Psalmist was also put in his place, which is to say, he was humbled to the point of having mercy toward his enemies because he knew their end and also saw his own end…without God’s mercy.  

In 1949, C.S. Lewis spoke to this inextricable link between justice and mercy when he wrote:

Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice: transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety (God In The Dock, p. 294).

Therefore, like the Psalmist, let us be encouraged and press onward as people who trust deeply in God’s justice but are moved to mercy in the present . . . yes, even toward our enemies.

The Rev. Clint Wilson, ‘13, serves as Rector of St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Prior to his present role, Fr. Clint served Episcopal parishes in Nashville, Tennessee, and Denton, Texas, alongside various diocesan and ecumenical roles. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the American Friends of the Anglican Centre in Rome. Fr. Clint is married to Theresa and they love spending time outdoors with their son and dog.