After watching the Kony 2012/Invisible Children events that have unfolded over the last few weeks, I can not help but get the feeling that we are missing something in our quest for justice.
I get the same feeling as I listen to the advocates of many of the social justice initiatives that exist in our present culture. Advocates for gay rights, gender equality, the impoverished, the friendless, the oppressed, the forgotten.
I am not subject to oppression on a daily basis, so I must be careful to note that I am not belittling anyone’s efforts on behalf of any of the aforementioned groups. But I am concerned that in the majority of cases, we are merely treating the symptoms of injustice, not the root cause.
Protests and boycotts and parades and awareness campaigns have value and can be effective in changing practices and patterns of behavior. But as a follower of Jesus, I am less concerned about changing behaviors and more concerned about changing hearts. Without sufficient heart change, I may treat you in a way that simulates justice, while continuing to degrade and dehumanize you internally.
No one does anything without prior motivation. In order to influence others toward justice, we must give them sufficient cause. In order to effect lasting justice, we must exact lasting internal change.
This article by J. R. Daniel Kirk recently sparked my imagination. He writes:
‘One ongoing puzzle in reading the OT, early Jewish literature, and the NT, has to do with what it means to be human; or, what it means to be God’s elect people.
One thing that I have been working out over the past couple of years is the thesis that humanity, as depicted in biblical and early Jewish traditions, occupies a higher place in the cosmic hierarchy than angels.
This means that people can share God’s sovereignty over the earth, and at times even receive worship, because of the role God has given to humanity: it is God’s image and likeness, ruling the world for God.’
What if Jesus meant it when he said that whatever we do for the least of these we do for Him? Not in a symbolic or sentimental way, but literally? What if our depravity is only a veil, masking the fact that we are all glorious beings who have been imprinted with the image of God?
Could such a thought provoke us to justice, regardless of the characteristics and actions of the other person?
Just imagine. Joseph Kony and Jason Russell and Rick Santorum and Dan Savage and Pope Benedict XVI and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and you and me. Bearers of the image of God.
Are we willing to deal with that truth? Are we willing to do justice not because the oppressed have rights, but because they have the image of God stamped upon their very being? And are we willing to do the same for the oppressor?
Justice for the sake of justice itself is not enough to change my relationship with you. Justice for the sake of the image of God in you might be.
Closer than the Shore 