God’s Justice is Unlike Ours (I)
“For the sake of justice, why can’t we use violence?”
In recent years, Hong Kong has gone through dramatic political upheavals, the social fabric is being torn apart when people with different political opinions treat their rivalries as enemies. Consequently, the kind of sentiment voiced above began to surface in the society. Not all Christians are able to resist the temptation of violence with the truth of the Good News of peace, and the question about the use of force is often raised within local churches as well. In the eyes of many Christians, to uphold and mete out justice, to safeguard the good and counter evil, and to root out the strong and support the weak are the top priorities of the church’s social mission; some lay Christians even righteously propose to “bear arms against violence,” presuming that such a voluntary act of “giving up one’s life for justice” is Christ-like.
However, throughout the Bible we seek in vain for any support for the position that: “For the purpose of pursuing justice, lethal force can be used.” Not to mention that according to our grammar of faith, it is oxymoronic to say, “In order to do justice, we can use violence” because it is impossible to achieve true justice through unjust means; no matter how righteous our goal or intention may be, Christians cannot achieve justice by resorting to unjust means.
Indeed, as long as we take the teachings of the Bible seriously, we will discover that the justice of God is reflected in “sharing but not distribution, reconciliation but not retaliation.” This is very different from the distributive justice and retributive justice of suum cuique (to each what is due) championed in the secular society.
The justice that belongs to God
The most basic difference between biblical justice and social justice as pursued by the secular world is this: True “justice” must belong to the Triune God, which means that “justice” is personal and not a characteristic of an impersonal system or policy. In everyday language, we may say, “In order to satisfy what justice demands, this is what we should do,” but if “justice” is merely an abstract concept, a formal principle, or an ideal impossible to be fully realized, it actually will not “demand” us to do anything, and whatever we do, it will not be “satisfied.” The justice that Christians talk about must belong to God, the justice that comes from God. There is no such thing as an ordering principle of justice, which is above or outside of God, sovereign over the universe, able to safeguard the well-being of humanity, and keep the scores and maintain a balance of good and evil, so much so that even God must submit to it and act in concert with its operation. God is justice, but justice is not God. Any “justice” which purports to be self-evident or inherent in the way things are, apart from God, and independent of God’s economy of salvation or His ultimate will to reconcile the world to Him, is a counterfeit of true justice. True justice can only be achieved under God’s governance and within the Kingdom of God.
Thus, strictly speaking, the adjective “just” cannot be applied to describe an impersonal policy, a system, or a “society” that lacks a sense of common destiny or collective consciousness; only God Himself or a people called by God to be like Him is worthy to be called “just.” Justice is to be lived out by a community faithful to God in their daily lives, and cannot be “administered” from above, or through good governance by the powers that be.
Without careful consideration, Christians sometimes mistake secular “social justice” as an article of Christian faith. The most common example is that when we quote Micah 6:8, the mission of the church is reduced to “do justice, and to love kindness” and equated with social activism. Contrary to how this passage is commonly (mis)understood, the irony is this: The most important part of the passage is often intentionally or unintentionally omitted, to wit, “and to walk humbly with your God.” We cannot deliver justice by our own effort, we must first of all belong to God and keep Him as our companion; otherwise, when we regard ourselves as already possessing justice and act on God’s behalf, we easily only do what we think is right and become self-righteous. Both “justice” and “kindness” cannot be interpreted literally or commonsensically because in the Hebrew vocabulary of faith, they embody Yahweh’s divine attributes, the self-revelatory character of the God who saved the Israelites as recorded in their salvation history. The Israelites hold in their collective memory of Yahweh, the God of Israel, as the One who walked with them. Only within this historical and personal relationship can we correctly grasp what it means “to do justice and to love kindness,” which is actually God’s very specific demand from or what He expects of His chosen people. Correspondingly, doing justice and practicing kindness is the appropriate response of God’s covenanted people towards a faithful, just and loving Lord, and an active “response” in kind to the God who always acts first. Living in solidarity with neighbors is the concrete embodiment of faithfulness to the covenant of grace. Therefore, every time when Christians only “voice out” our demand for justice, making an empty call at a distance to those in power and demanding the secular society to implement our ideas of justice, yet without our setting the example of being just in order to call for others to achieve a higher righteousness, we look conspicuously hypocritical and self-righteous.
Thus, biblical justice must be covenantal and also relational. We cannot use rational, moral or religious principles to deduce a priori the universal requirement of justice. “Justice,” whose content can be given only within the specific relationship between God and His covenanted people, is to be worked out historically by God, who takes the initiative to make a covenant and adheres to the covenant, as well as by the community that belongs to Him. To put justice into practice is not a kind of external legal requirement but the embodiment of a wholesome relationship of us with God, with others, and with the creation (Shalom). Those who truly “know” Yahweh will do justice, to love kindness and to walk with God; “doing justice, loving kindness” is to “know” Yahweh, the upshot of really knowing and correctly remembering the past, present, and future deeds of the Lord.
In comparison, secular justice is impersonal or even “sub-personal”. It resorts to a broad abstract principle: To each what is due. “Distributive justice” considers this question: What rights to welfare a person ought to enjoy? “Retributive justice” asks: What kind of punishment a man who does evil deserves? Of course, various political philosophies propose vastly different theories about how to measure or account for what one “deserves”. Nevertheless, they have a common concern, in the final analysis, the central issue is always procedural; even if what really concerns us is whether the substantial result is just, but these philosophies cannot help first focusing on devising a set of policies, regulations or systems to “execute” justice or to “guarantee” outcomes that will be (mostly or most nearly) just. Consequently, secular justice would regard the state or the government as the focus, and delivering justice would then be seen as the primary responsibility of those in power. In practical terms, accordingly “upholding justice” only means criticizing the government whenever its policy is found wanting, overseeing whether the regime is fair in distributing rewards and punishments, in assigning power and responsibility, and then enjoining the authorities to right the wrongs. When Christians forget that “doing justice” is tied to our identity as the people of God, we tend to believe that delivering justice is the sole responsibility and privilege of the state. The public ministry of the church will remain on the level of advocacy, “voicing out” our demands for justice, and we tend to deceive ourselves that making the appeals is almost as good as them being realized. So, it will be always easy for us to blame others for the injustice in society, when we see ourselves as the defender of justice. Yet we often lack the commitment to give up what we legitimately deserve for the benefit of others, or to forsake what we rightfully enjoy for the sake of others so that they may receive fair treatment.
Justice is not about distribution, but sharing
Secular distributive justice, generally called “social justice,” is concerned with how to distribute scarce public resources or benefits, including some basic material needs for subsistence and non-material rights, and to ensure what we get be proportional to either our efforts, needs or merits. Distributive justice will ultimately appeal to individual “rights,” namely the just claims on others. The enjoyment of “rights” could have been non-competitive, when what is required is not in short supply; but in reality, one person’s “rights” will generate corresponding “obligations” of others (especially the government) to safeguard their rights, which means that individual rights incur social costs. Besides, rights of an individual can compete with those of another, or individual rights may clash with the greater good of the collective, so that having the best of both worlds is often impossible, hence the enjoyment of “rights” become a distribution problem. Proposals of different principles of distributive justice originally purport to settle the competing claims of individual rights, but they more often than not end up reducing justice to a balance of power between vested interests groups. The distributive justice in the real world is a sabotage of true justice, stipulatively christening any outcome of the strong overpowering the weak as “justice.” Distributive justice should even be counted as a “ruse,” nominally helping the society to resolve conflicts and disputes, but actually it perpetuates, normalizes, even institutionalizes competition, conflict, and contradiction, unable to fix brokenness in human relationship or to reconcile people in dispute.
As such, distributive justice always demands some people to give up their interests and sacrifice for others, which is the same justice of Robin Hood, robbing the rich to benefit the poor. When Christians fight for this kind of justice, we think that, to speak for the poor is to ask those who are wealthy and powerful, namely the government and the enterprises, to give to the poor, but we forget that caring for the poor is actually the responsibility of the church. It is as though our social vision is the perfection of our social welfare system, such that there will no longer be any poor people in our society who need our help; in other words, we pray for a society in which the churches will not have to spare our own time, spend our money, and with our own kindness, to care for the poor face to face. If so, the just society that Christians imagine would be a world in which we no longer need to walk daily humbly with God in doing justice and loving kindness!
However, the repeated teaching “to do justice and to love mercy” in the Old Testament has very concrete and clear practical meaning, namely: taking care of the basic subsistence needs of the orphaned, the widowed, the old, the weak, the sick and the poor, even the sojourners and the outsiders. Because the Lord wills to protect those who are unable to fend for themselves and to save those who are helpless, it is not necessary for us to fight for any abstract justice, nor to reform and perfect the social system once and for all. The Bible never says that in order to assist the weak, we have to defeat the strong. In fact, what is so extraordinary about biblical justice lies in this: To assist the weak, we do not have to fight the strong! Of course, we often see in the Old Testament the prophets condemning the social inequality between the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, but in doing so they are performing their primary role to proclaim the Word of God to His people (including their rulers). This is contrary to the contemporary prophetic self-preoccupation of some Christians who imagine that they should speak to the secular power and leading the society to the direction they deem right. It is liable for Christians to forget that when the prophets denounced those who are wealthy but heartless and turning a blind eye to the poor, we are also being criticized.
It is because, in a capitalist society characterized by distortions of the nature and relationship of humans with other humans, as well as that of humans with other creatures, all of our accumulated wealth (that is “capital”) comes directly or indirectly from exploiting others and is not what we are entitled to or can claim credits for. Those churches whose congregations have moved upward socially and becoming predominantly middle class in composition and in mentality are themselves the beneficiary of the present unjust economic system. In a capitalist society, the rich becomes rich most often only at the expense of the poor; being wealthy but unwilling to share with others is thus definitely a sin. Therefore, those who are “fortunate” enough to have more should be more than willing to give and share with others; and that means, they should not feast on meat but feed the poor only with breadcrumb. That is the economic justice taught in the Bible.
The biblical justice of sharing far exceeds the secular distributive justice and the principle of “to each what is due” which is a matter of mere calculation. In a just society as envisioned in the Bible, wherever there is someone in destitution, everyone else has a duty to give a helping hand and cannot shift the responsibility to the government, the wealthy or others. It’s always irrelevant whether that person in need is “worthy” of being helped or not, nor is it our concern to diagnose the root cause of that person’s predicament, trying to figure out whether they eat the bitter fruit of his own making or is the victims of injustice. Many of Hebrew laws related to economic life in the Old Testament, including tithe, the left over in the wheat field during a harvest, fallow, the Jubilee year, tax concession, the release of slaves and return of land to its owner, etc., are meant to “regulate wealth in order to alleviate poverty.” They are not designed to redistribute wealth or to eradicate the disparity between the rich and the poor through public finances. These laws given to the Israelites, are meant to prevent any of their fellow clansmen, due to whatever cause, from falling into a situation where they cannot survive on their own and as a result trapped into a deeper crisis of being excluded from the daily life of the community. For it is well-known that the poor and the needy will likely suffer other forms of oppression as well, frequently fall victim to injustice and being mistreated, which means that their appearance will bring forth more social evils. So the biblical teachings on economic are meant to prevent some people from accumulating a scale of wealth, that brings them disproportionately overriding and dominating economic advantage over above the others. Therefore, from the biblical perspective, poverty is seen as not merely an “economic” problem, because it will affect the well-being of the community as a whole.
In the Old Testament, the litmus test of whether the Israelites obey their covenantal God’s will is not whether there are poor people in the society, but whatever the cause of poverty maybe, whether the poor receive assistance from others or are left defenseless. The people of God should be a community in which no one should be left to fend for themselves or suffer from social isolation, even including outsiders and sojourners. For the Israelites were themselves once slave-sojourners, they should remember God’s salvation of them from exile. Attending to the needs of others is the inexcusable responsibility of everyone in the whole community. What infuriates Yahweh most is not that there is inequality among His people but that they turn a blind eye to those amongst them who are in destitution and poverty. The whole Jewish tradition of Torah should not be compared with or interpreted as the written code of laws in modern sense. It is rather given to help the Israelites live out Yahweh’s “path of righteousness”, guiding them to lead a life of peace, righteousness and love in the fallen world. In so living, they should reveal the shalom that comes from God, a wholesome/perfect relationship with God, with other people and with other members of the creation, which was indeed the original purpose of God’s creation of humanity and the world. Thus one should conclude that a community cannot be made into a just people by means of legislation, regulation, administration, or by devising a perfect politico-economic system.
That is why for both the Israelites and the churches, “charity” should not be an optional benevolence or a favour dispensing to the less fortunate only when we have left over after satisfying all our needs and wants. Caring for the poor is not a matter of heartfelt sympathy or overflowing love, or selfless voluntary offering, but a demand on a people called to be righteous. Generosity is the embodiment of God’s justice. From the Old Testament to the New Testament, biblical economic teachings from beginning to end are about sharing, not distribution. The Bible has not furnished us with a blueprint to (re)design a distribution system that guarantees fairness and equity. Surprisingly, biblical economic ethics has suggested no scheme at all to deal with systematic injustice or structural evil, nor targeted the causes or sources of poverty either. Instead, biblical teachings are mostly palliative measures, not permanent cure. Where there are poor people, there is a need for “justice” (that is “sharing”). What is most intriguing is that the Bible seems to assume that there will always be poor people with us and the true justice which belongs to the Kingdom of God is eschatological; yet the church, the community of God’s people, is called by God to live out such a eschatological style of life of the Kingdom of Heaven right here, right now, though not fully. The strategy for God to deal with injustice is not to mobilize His people to battle with this sinful world of injustice but to call into existence an alternative community which gladly share with others all that we have received from the Lord.
“Sharing everything with one another” (Acts 2:44-47) or “equality” (2 Cor 8:14-15) as practiced by the early church is not the prototype of communism. It is merely a way to ensure that members in the community will not become helpless because of poverty. The Bible does not support private property rights, but it also does not advocate overthrowing the economic system by force. Instead, “sharing” is the means by which both to expose the truth about the fallen world and meanwhile to point towards the consummation of salvation.
On the one hand, we have to admit that all that we now have and enjoy is the gracious gift from others, otherwise they must come from plunder or exploitation. Nothing we now “possess” is what we deserve to have “rightfully”. As such, it means that, we can only enjoy the wealth that we should not have with gratitude, in repentance and indebtedness. Moreover, we ought to be able to share generously what we have with others, once realizing that our possessions are not “our own” to begin with, but are either received from others or freely from God. “Sharing” effectively out-does the demand on equivalence in exchange and commerce of the secular world and fundamentally undoes the source of all evils, to wit, private property rights: when I voluntarily let go of what I regarded as “my own” and unconditionally give them away to someone else who does not “deserve” them, what I “deserved” to have becomes what someone now “owns”.
On the other hand, “sharing” also reveals the original intent of creation: as creatures, our existence ought to be interdependent and never self-sufficient and self-existent; the reality of our life as creatures is that we should and can rely on God, other people and other creatures. What we call “sin” is manifested in “isolation”: either pushing others away and refusing to let others depends on me, or asserting autonomy and refusing to let myself depend on others. “Sin” is to insist that everyone takes care only of oneself, each having their own share, each having what is due, nothing more, nothing less. But the Gospel liberates Christians from the bondage of sin so that we can now feel at ease to trust the goodness of God and all the gifts of God’s creation, and even joyfully receive the grace from others, without feeling ashamed. In practicing mutual sharing, we better learn how to support, help and serve one another in God’s grace. Between brothers and sisters we do not default, the only thing we owe to each other is love (cf. Rom 13:8); even the sin committed by others is originally what I “should not” and cannot shoulder for them, but now it has become what I “should” share (Gal 6:2). (To be continued…)
Further reading: Chris Marshall, Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible’s Teachings on Justice (New York: Good Books, 2005).
* This article is rewritten by the author from his speaking notes for Spiritual Formation Day (January 17, 2017).
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Preview for next issue of “Faculty Sharing”
“God’s Justice is Unlike Ours (II)” will be published in the November issue of the seminary’s English Newsletter when Dr. Huen will continue with his thesis “justice is not distribution, but sharing” and further expound the idea that “justice is not retribution, but reconciliation” as he elaborates the nature of biblical justice.