last time we started out with the definition of justice we noticed several things about the concept to recap justice michipan in hebrew is about giving everyone his or her due whether that deal is reward or punishment it also means having a life of right relationships which is chitaka in hebrew we notice that many people especially socially and economically marginalized people tend to be treated unequally compared to those who are privileged so we learned that taking care of those marginalized people is considered to be just today we are going to discuss why we should do justice
why we should treat people with equity why it is important to live in right relationships why we should care about the poor yes we are now dealing with the question of motivation once we get a firm grasp of why we should do justice then we can tackle the question of how how we should do justice which we'll discuss next time why should we do justice there are many reasons to the justice there are many ways to motivate people to the justice first you could appeal to reason we present the facts and information we think people
need to know about how unjust our society is for example here are statistics about how unequal people are with regard to their worth when you look at the chart at the bottom in 2019 white families had an average net worth of 983 000 compared to 142 thousand dollars for uh black families and 100 165 000 for hispanic families that means white families are seven times more wealthy than black families and five times more wealthy than hispanic families is this fact enough to motivate people to fight for justice or like john lewis we can use hypothetical
reasoning come up with a brilliant concept of fail of ignorance and construct a hypothetical social construct argument that leads to the conclusion that we should treat people with equality but we all know that region is not enough no matter how sound your theory is no matter how accurate the facts are region alone cannot move your heart then we could think of another way to motivate people to the justice by appealing to emotion you tell a story about somebody who goes through many difficulties and hardships to make ends meet and she makes it through somehow but
then copy 19 brought everything into a halt and brought her back to where she was and then you say think about her situation your daughter could be in that situation someday there are many sad and sentimental stories and emotion seems more powerful than logic but people don't get motivated by emotion alone either if religion or emotion is not enough where can it draw on the moral and spiritual resources of a just life what would motivate us to do justice i think the answer lies in our personal relationship with god we do justice not just because
it makes sense not just because it's a common sense not just because it feels right but because god is just god is our father we are his children he cares about justice so do we biblical justice is rooted in the very character of god as our faith growth and as our relationship with christ defends we'll do justice as god does we act with mercy and compassion as god acts with mercy and compassion so let's talk to the bible to see how just a mercenary god is by the way here i make other references to bible
passages from chapter 5 of generous justice when we look at the bible we see that the concept of justice is not created by social contract nor is it based upon motor principles devised by human reason alone nor is it rooted in historical and material conditions as karl marx famously argues rather it is ingrained in the character of god as clear and redeemer the bible tells us that god is a god of justice and all his ways are just god as a father to the father is a defender of widows defends the rights of those who
have little power consider the following passages from deuteronomy chapter 10 verses 17 and 18. for the lord your god is god of god and lord of lords the great the mighty and the terrible god who is not partial and takes no bribe he executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner giving him food and clothing these verses are especially important because they contrast god of israel to other gods in the ancient world and virtually all the ancient cultures of the world as or on the side of the purple of the rich
helping them to get even more power but here god of israel takes his stand with those who are marginalized in society so from ancient times the god of israel stood out from the gods of all other religions to the side of the police why is that why does god of israel take the side of the power is why the bible say god is the defender of the poor but it never says god is the defender of the rich that is because injustice is not equally distributed as the philosopher nicholas what itself says socially and economically
marginalized people not only disproportionately vulnerable to injustice but usually disproportionately actual victims of injustice so our understanding of justice is based upon the very character of god rather than human creation with this in mind let us revisit the four theories of justice we discussed last time and take a look at why each of these theories falsehood of understanding justice in a holistic manner tim keller again did a great job of teaching us on this subject in his online article and i heavily rely on his work here first libertarianism as you recall for our libertarianism justice
is all about individual rights freedom and autonomy in order to protect this right libertarians advocate small government minimal taxes and free market right then we should ask ourselves is this idea biblical is a society governed and operated by libertarian justice aligned with biblical justice perhaps not there are at least three reasons first this view holds an extremely individualistic view of human society therefore it tends to downplay the law of social forces and structures that shape our lives they missed the point that sin is not only individual but also collective individual freedom alone cannot level the
playing field for those who have been marginalized by unjust social systems for such a long time second libertarianism has limited understanding of freedom itself biblical freedom is not freedom from what you don't want but freedom to what you do want we have freedom to love and freedom to justice lastly more fundamentally the libertarian view of self-concept is unbiblical as it says that you own yourself but the idea of self-position does not align with biblical understanding of the serve we belong to god not to ourselves and so does everything we own now let's turn to our
liberalism we noticed that last time liberalism differs from libertarianism in that liberalism promotes fairness and for all people including those who are marginalized in that sense liberalism is grounded in christianity nevertheless liberalism share other secular views of justice as they assume there is no moral absolute on which to base justice and it's difficult to reconcile so many contested issues all of which are based upon individual rights another drawback that comes with liberalism is that reason alone is not sufficient enough for your society recall the royals theory of justice comes from a thought experiment in which
we imagine a society where we do not know whether we would be rich or poor or whether you are born in a rich family or for family rules argue that faced with this uncertainty people would choose the world that provided the best position for the least advantaged if you don't know where you will fall you will want the worst possibility to be as acceptable as possible since it is least likely that you will be those who are poor you'll probably prefer this imagined society but this is still motivated by rational self-interest and there's no discussion
on why people would choose that society they simply do not have vocabulary to discuss moral absolute authority what about utilitarianism recall that utilitarianism values everyone's happiness equally but ironically there is no agency in this idea this view does not honor individuals as having dignity what is good or bad and what is right and wrong is merely a matter of collections of subjective opinions it does not offer a balanced understanding of justice unlike the bible lastly post modern justice the postmodern account of justice has some truth in it as it recognizes the injustice is partially caused
by unjust social structures and systems hyper is not coherent with the biblical understanding of human beings the post-modern view of justice follows karl who saw human beings as inherently good so any social problem like crime poverty violence is understood to be caused by society outside of individuals in other words it is instilled in us by external social forces but we know from the bible that it is the individual who has sinned as romans chapter 3 verse 23 says for all have sinned and foreshare of the glory of god you should be clear about this injustice
is not only caused by structural inequality but also by individual acts for example in the u.s there is a so-called poverty area where the poverty rate is 20 percent or more research shows that one quarter of u.s residents live in poverty areas how can we deal with poverty in the inner city and restore a poor community there should be a need for social reform and policy change but people living in the power areas also need a meaning in life character development moral principles and healthy relationships post-modern justice however tends to neglect those individual components of
justice and rely too much on external factors the real transformation of an impoverished community requires a rich multi-dimensional understanding of human flourishing one more drawback of past modern justice is that it makes reconciliation between dominant groups and marginalized groups difficult the post-modern view assumes that social groups are assigned higher or lower moral values depending on their power you are either a member of an oppressed group fighting for justice or a dominant group who will need to defend their rights under this situation it's difficult for them to find a common ground and work together to solve
a problem with forgiveness and peace as a result those who hold the view of post-modern justice raise their voice out of anger frustration and hatred and use all kinds of means to silence those who oppose their views we see this is happening a lot on social media platforms this reminds us that all injustice and evil we see in the world is happening not just at the natural level but on the spiritual level when dealing with injustice we should keep in mind that we wrestle with evil forces as ephesians chapter 6 verse 12 says for our
struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms overall secular theories of justice unfortunately do not recognize the spiritual aspect of injustice because they exclude supernatural interventions from their explanations of injustice what they do instead is to resort to reason or emotion and come up with the idea of social contract or social construction just is not simply a product of a social construct or social consensus or such a construction it is a divine attribute to recap only biblical justice addresses all the concerns of justice found across
the fragmented alternative views each secular theory of justice addresses some of the biblical justice but none addresses them all biblical justice contradicts each of the alternate views neither by dismissing them nor by compromising with them biblical justice is significantly more well-rounded and well-balanced it's based upon god's character [Music] while the other theories are based upon human creation in addition biblical justice is more comprehensive in its analysis of the human condition recognizing injustice caused by a more complex set of factors individual social spiritual than any other theory addresses then how should we do justice let's figure
it out next time you
