Justice in its deepest meaning involves making people whole, by keeping goodness and impartiality. In the book of James, it’s defined as the center of true religion. He says it’s the kind of “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” James 1:27
Justice flows from God’s heart and character. God seeks to make the object of his love complete. This is what motivates God throughout the Old and New Testaments in his judgments on injustice.
Written into the pages of Scripture is God giving us a personal responsibility when righting injustice. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 18thcentury philosopher, powerfully reminds all of us that to do nothing when we witness injustice is equivalent to participating in it. To see injustice and do nothing about that means to participate in it. Albert Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
Illustrations focused on injustice tend to be the big kind, but I’m often reminded of the time I drove by a lady attempting to change her tire in the pouring rain. She had placed her jack on her car fender, not on the frame. If she was to raise the jack, it would have destroyed her flimsy fender, but it wouldn’t have raised the car to allow her to change the tire at all. Now, it was raining, did I say that? Did I say that I had more important things to do than to get all wet and change her tire? But, for me not to stop and help her, but simply allow her to wreck her car, would have been an injustice.
Apply the principle to your context. Are there big or small things that are shouting out to you? “Do something!” After all, Proverbs 21:15 says, “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” (Published previously)