On justice

righting wrongs

Here's our second post, which is a complement to the one on righteousness. Wright talks about two words that have to do with justice and righteousness in Hebrew, and the second of these is שָׁפַט (shapat), or various derivatives.

It can mean to act as a lawgiver; to act as a judge by arbitrating between parties in a dispute; to pronounce judgment by declaring who is guilty and who is innocent respectively; to execute judgment in carrying out the legal consequences of such a verdict. In the widest sense, it means ‘to put things right’, to intervene in a situation that is wrong, oppressive or out of control and to ‘fix’ it.¹

The main derivative noun is mishpat, referring to litigation, verdict, judgment, or legal ordinances. But it also refers to 'rights', such as the mishpat of the orphan and the widow - their rightful case and grievance against their oppressors and exploiters. In a broad sense, then, Wright claims that mishpat is "what needs to be done in a given situation if people and circumstances are to be restored to conformity with tsedaqah."

Righteousness is the right set of relations we are to have with one another, and Justice is setting things right when righteousness fails. In other words, it is rectifying justice, instead of primary justice.²

I think, just as having a bit of a mindset shift in the way we read 'righteousness' language through the Scriptures, especially our Old Testament Translations, is helpful and necessary; so too we need one for 'justice' language. Because so often I think we read 'justice' language through one of two lenses. If we've picked up a slightly progressive idea of justice, we read it all and only through a so-called social-justice lens, and if we have a conservative idea of justice, or read a KJV translation where you can't find 'justice', only 'judgment' all the way through, then we think only of justice as condemnation and punishment for wrongdoing. It doesn't help that the 'justice system' of Anglophone countries is also largely preoccupied with punishment meted out.

[As an aside, this is why I often think the book of judges should be called the Book of the Justicars. Not only does it sound cooler, but I think it nudges us towards understanding that the 'Judges' are ultimately "deliverers of justice, righting a world gone wrong", not merely people with wigs handing down sentences (though they do do some of that kind of judging too]

What if we, you and I, took a conceptual step back and asked this question: when something goes wrong, when an injustice is committed and one person wrongs another or the community at large, what will it look like to set things right? That's the question that rectifying justice is asking.

When rectifying justice takes place, we are asking a triple-question: what will it look like to set things right (i) for the victim, (ii) for the community, and (iii) for the perpetrator. I think I have a set of thoughts about this aspect of justice, but I am not convinced that they are particularly interesting. So, I want to change tacks a little.

Here's the question that I think troubles us. On the one hand, the New Testament very strongly teaches that our response to injustice and wrong-doing and persecution and suffering is (i) endure, (ii) do not repay, (iii) forgive, and (iv) entrust judgment to God. At the same time, we say, "what about justice? isn't the Bible 'pro-justice'?" and how on earth can we ever do rectifying justice if we're too busy getting trampled on as doormats.

This isn't a balancing act, I believe, but a paradox. It's not "50% mercy, 50% justice", it's the reality that the Bible runs hard in both directions simultaneously. It's why just before James 5:7-11 in which James tells us all about enduring and patiently waiting on the Lord, he has just spent 5:1-6 denouncing the rich for their wicked ways.

So then my question becomes how do you pursue rectifying justice in a way that is consistent with patient endurance and gracious forgiving love?

Two powerful examples spring to my mind, which I think show what that looks like in more recent times. The first is the US Civil Rights movement, and specifically Martin Luther King Jr.. He's exceptional and exemplary in many ways, but his deliberate choice to embrace a doctrine of non-violence founded in Christianity, and his believe that love and suffering would ultimately provide a moral and spiritual triumph over their enemies, shaped that movement in profound ways that people in general fail to realise. There was extreme pressure to abandon non-violence, just as today there are many, many people who say, "well, that worked then, but times are different now; non-violence is just pie in the sky stuff". I don't think so, and I think this is why MLK continues to be so inspiring. He made a resolute commitment that they would suffer in love, and triumph by winning over their opponents, even at the cost of their lives. It's that suffering love, that won justice.

My second example is Rachael Denhollander. She was abused by Larry Nassar, former doctor heavily employed and associated with USA Gymnastics. Denhollander was the first to publicly accuse him, and lead the way in bringing him to trial and sentencing. Denhollander's story is remarkable for many reasons, but it's relevance here is the combination of personal forgiveness, forgoing vengeance, the offer of grace, held not in tension with but in concert with the pursuit of judicial punishment. If you haven't watched it and are emotionally prepared for it, it's worth the time to listen to Denhollander's 40minute victim-survivor speech at Nassar's sentencing.

There's a paper by Jacob and Rachael Denhollander that grounds forgiveness and justice in the atonement, and that's worth it's own read. In it they make the case that an approach that combines justice and forgiveness can and is grounded in a classic penal substitionary model of the atonement.

To return at last then to mishpat and rectifying justice: we have only two basic options. Either we can pursue vengeance, extracting the cost of our hurts and harms out of our oppressors and enemies, creating a cycle of violence which has no end. Or we can surrender vengeance and choose love, to forgive from the heart and trust that God's redemptive work in Christ creates the possibility of forgiveness and justice, which will set things right for us, and for all. But the pursuit of justice without the heart of forgiveness will always go astray, because our hearts are not right to begin with.

Photo by Luke Zhang on Unsplash

1. Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. IVP Academic (2013)

2. I should register a dissenting opinion here. Goldingay treats this word group as about the exercise of authority, leadership and decision-making. He thus prefers the core idea of 'deciding', for or against.

Recognising that the victories of the civil rights movement were partial, and to America's shame many of them have been eroded and clawed back in the 50 years since