Live / A Life of Justice
Entering into Justice work is overwhelming for most people. I say most people because I don’t want to generalize, but I haven’t met anyone yet who has stepped into injustice with their lives and hasn’t felt the overwhelming nature of it all at some point.
Justice work is big, like a web the issues are many and often connected.
Justice work is hard, because it deals with people. No two people are the same which means there isn’t a one-size-fits all solution when it comes to solving issues of injustice.
This makes justice work complicated. There are many layers to injustice and often years and decades of unjust ideas or thought patterns have become normalized and make up the foundation of our own systems, organizations, social clubs and religious institutions.
Entering into justice work is a long game. You can’t “fix” issues of injustice with a food or clothing drive. People can’t be re-programmed like a computer. Decades of social norms that are rooted in injustice and privilege aren’t changed by passing a law or creating a new initiative. Not that these things aren’t important, they are. Each of them. But on their own they aren’t the answer. One-time acts of justice push back for a moment but will never change the direction anymore than one small pebble changes the flow of a river.
Justice is defined as "a concern for justice, peace, and genuine respect for people". Well when you put it that way, it seems less complicated, doesn’t it? But concern for justice, peace and having a genuine respect for people; people you don’t understand, people who are unlike you, people who make you feel uncomfortable, that may be simply stated but is anything but simple when lived out.
Because choosing to live out justice, peace and genuine respect for people takes individual, internal work that giving some canned goods doesn’t require. Treating all human beings with the equal worth and dignity they all have, no matter what situation they were born into, takes each of us looking long and hard at the situation we were born into and how that has shaped how we look at others; how we look at those who are different from us.
The questions that lead us from overwhelm to action are always - what can we do and where do we start? But before visible action can take place, unseen internal work must have already begun. If you are ready to move from justice overwhelm to doing justice with your life, this is where we start - looking at ourselves.
1. Check your motives.
When you look at the issues of injustice, and your desire to do something, what is your motivation? Why do you want to enter into that space? Is it because you feel guilt or shame? Does the issue make you uncomfortable and does that in turn make you want to do something so that you can check it off your list and move on with your life? If you answer even a hesitant ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you may want to enter into some self-reflection and prayer. Ask God to change the motives of your heart, take some time to listen to the stories of injustice around you, lament and look at how you can begin to adjust your life to do justice for the long haul, not just a one-time action to check it off your list.
2 . Check your prejudice and platform.
We are all born with equal worth and dignity as humans but we are not all born into equal situations. There are platforms in the world and depending on the platform you are born onto you are going to encounter different challenges in life. To justify our platform we learn to use prejudice. We do this because we don’t want to feel guilty for the privilege, or lack thereof, that we have. We don’t want our privilege or platform to be our fault so we pretend that it doesn’t exist. We can’t choose the platform we are born into but we also can’t ignore it’s existence. To ignore platforms and the prejudices that come with them is ignorant. Take a look at all that you have been given (or not) in your life. Acknowledge where you have taken for granted things that others simply do not have, recognize the prejudice that has come with your platform, repent of quick judgements, ungratefulness and assuming that everyone has the same opportunities as you when they don’t.
3. Start to Listen
I have seen over and over the defensiveness that comes when individuals learn about injustice and the part they have played. If when you hear about injustice your first reaction is to be defensive, that is a sure sign that there is something in your heart that needs to be checked. To care for peace and genuine respect for people is to listen to the stories of the people who experienced the injustice. Not listen to interject the truth as you see it, but listen to understand the truth as they experienced it.
In anti-trafficking work, once people learn about the horrors of trafficking, sex trafficking mainly, they instantly want to be activated. When well-meaning individuals enter a space where they haven’t done the work, I mentioned above, they can often do more harm than good when it comes to issues of injustice. Some people would say that the only people that can enter the anti-trafficking space with credibility are survivors themselves. Whereas survivors can speak from a place that others can’t and shouldn’t, we can’t leave the work entirely to this group of people. Others say that experience and education are what qualifies you to do this work, and again these things are very valuable and necessary, but I don’t believe not having experience or education pertaining to a certain justice issue disqualifies you from entering that space. I do however believe that if you haven’t begun to do the internal work that brings humility, self-awareness and understanding about the issue you are entering you could show up in a way that you never intended; hurtful.
We have all experienced injustice, maybe not at the same levels, but this world isn’t fair. People have prejudice and at some point or another you will be on the wrong end of misguided judgement. In my life, the most injustice I have personally experienced has been in church settings. There are a lot of ways that church people justify the injustice they perpetuate, but none of the reasons make the injustice that has been perpetuated acceptable or right.
The thing with injustice is, if you are the dominant culture and you haven’t experienced the injustice that the minority culture is bringing to the surface it is easy to brush it off like it doesn’t exist. This is the first mistake we make. Just because you haven’t experienced something in a certain way doesn’t mean it isn’t happening or hasn’t happened.
If we want to be people who “do justice”, if we want to conquer the feelings of overwhelm and adjust our lives to be a part of long-term, sustainable justice work of living out “justice, peace and genuine respect for people” we have to start by looking inward and checking ourselves.
