Do Justice

I am leading the discipline of Spiritual Justice for my spiritual formation class next week.  It is a week with many deadlines and yet I want to provide justice to the topic justice. A professor that I deeply respect for representing and living a just life offered this advice for the class, "Do justice!"  Do justice?  My puzzled look prompted him again to say, "do justice!  Don't talk about it.  Do it."  He helped articulate what should be so obvious.  We do enough talking and somehow this leads to feeling pacified as if we have done something.  I am great about drawing attention to what I feel about hot topics that are dividing the church, or challenging theological questions that often seem overly simplified to what is often the mystery, but doing--that is the hard part.  Yet it is the actions that lead to personal change, and it is our actions that help draw attention to justice.

Just this last week I clicked "like" after watching the viral Kony 2012 video and somehow felt good as if I had done something.  Sure, the video is well produced and is drawing attention to horrible injustice, but should I somehow find comfort that clicking "like" is doing something?  Not saying that we shouldn't draw attention, but instead I am offering that this is just the beginning.  Our faith that can move mountains does not do this by simply clicking like or talking about justice, but it is through faith that we should be led to doing.

So enough of talking and blogging about justice as I try to refocus on living justly.  To do justice is a verb, and living this out is where change happens.

Shalom!