Jesus and Justice pt. 3: What Do We Do?

My Jesus following convinces me of two things related to justice:

• Justice is an inevitable implication of the gospel. The gospel (good news) is the full story of Jesus, how He perfectly reveals God and is king of all things. For those who put place their faith in this gospel there is an inevitable call to be people of justice.

• Justice is a way of life for the church. The church is a community gathered around Jesus who together want to be with, learn from and become like Jesus. Justice in central to the kingdom Jesus embodied and taught. Consequently, justice becomes a way of life, not compartmentalized program, for the church.

Okay, so you may be on board. Perhaps you are right there with me in the critical role justice plays in the church. We are then faced with a daunting question: What should I do about it? I'm overwhelmed by all of the pressing needs and injustice of our world...where do I start? It's easy for our initial zeal to collapse into feeling paralyzed and guilty.

I'd like to offer an extremely simple framework that I constantly fall back on when I struggle with these feelings. It's a framework about calling. Calling can be such a "christianese" term. At the core calling is about determining how I ought to leverage my gifts, skills, abilities and passions in the world. This framework can be applied to many contexts but I find the realm of justice to be a good one:

• I'm not called to do everything

• I'm not called to do nothing

• I'm called to do something

Pretty mind-blowing hugh?! Sometimes the best stuff is simple.

Depending on our orientation our default mode when being impassioned for justice can look different.

Some of us jump into hero mode. Our identity is oriented around what we are doing for God. This posture is alive and well among a younger activist generation eager to engage social justice. Within this paradigm doing enough is impossible. There is always another justice issue to give money to or get involved in. With this mindset we will feel overwhelmed and burn out very quickly. A savior complex is lurking in the background too. Worse yet, our identity is rooted in how much we are doing for God. As Skye Jethani describes in his book With, the failure of this line of thinking is that it "puts God's mission above God himself". Our identity shouldn't be placed in impressive things we accomplish for God no matter how good the endeavor may be. Using the apostle Paul's metaphor we are a body part, not the whole body. And the head is Christ.

It's also easy to enter complacency mode. Like the Priest and the Levite in Jesus' good Samaritan parable, we've got too many other important (even spiritual) things to do. Reasons to justify a disengagement with justice are easy to come by. Life is busy. The kids act like drunk midgets leaving us exhausted. We've got to find margin in our lives for good self-care. When excuses come flooding in like the tide we must remember that we are called to do something. Justice is an inevitable sign of authentic faith in Jesus. We don't do justice to be saved but we are people of justice because we are saved (side note: salvation is best understood as being restored to our true humanity in Christ, not about simply going to heaven when we die).

There is a third way, a path that avoids the unsustainable pace of doing everything and the complacency and selfishness of doing nothing. Instead, we consider what one thing God might be calling us to do. We ask ourselves some of the following questions: What's breaking my heart as I look around my community? What are the needs? Who is falling through the cracks of society? What often frustrates and discourages me and how can I be part of the change I want to see? Notice I haven't highlighted a question that is often at the top of people's list of calling questions: what do I find life-giving? It's my contention that often our framework of calling is too self-centered. Even our justice endeavors can become self-serving and overly romanticized. Yes, partnering with God is a joy. Doing justice is good for us. But it's also a responsibility that at times feels difficult, discouraging and self-sacrificial. We need to hold this delicate balance of joy and responsibility so that we get our eyes off our naval and develop a healthy expectation.

What has walking this third way looked like for me? I'll offer one recent example...

My wife and I have been consistently frustrated and discouraged observing how many white Christians in America have responded to the immigration issue. Instead of obeying the plethora of commands in the bible to exemplify God's hospitality towards the foreigner and to care for the pain and suffering of the world, we have seen segments of the church in self-preservation mode. Fear-based narratives that permeate our socio-political landscape have hijacked discipleship to Jesus. Our hearts were breaking. Our spirits were frustrated. We decided we had to be part of the change we wanted to see. Instead of hunkering down in cynicism and judgement we knew our energies would be better used for the Kingdom by welcoming an immigrant into our home. We didn't have a lot space but we had a warm, safe and loving home.

We reached out to a few organizations in our area that were already doing good work to care for refugees and asylum seekers. We got connected to an upper 20s Ugandan mother and her one year old son. They were asylum seekers. We were broken by their story and amazed by their resilience and hope. We had the privilege of housing them for several months until she was able to find a job. They remain family to us. We are their cheerleaders. Whatever we can do to ensure their flourishing is what we feel God has called us to. Too many times we have offered excuses. We have learned that a life of justice includes significant sacrifices. But it's the best way to be human.

We couldn't do everything. Doing nothing wasn't an option. We had to do something. This was our something.

We are excited for the journey ahead. Who knows what the next something will be.