With Liberty and Justice for All

Pursuing justice has always been incumbent on Christians,  but I think it carries a special bit of weight for those of us who live in twenty-first century America.  For we live in a democracy, and as members of a democracy that means that we are a part of creating and maintaining the system itself.  If we are to live justly we must be willing to participate in the politics of the day which shape how the system functions.  We must be willing to participate by voting, by serving on juries, by supporting candidates who reflect our understandings, by making our opinions known to our elected representatives, perhaps even by serving in some elective or appointive office.  We are to do whatever is in our power to make certain we have a system where there truly is justice for all.

But we are also called to bring justice into our everyday living as well.  Yes, we should be concerned about the issue of immigration on a grand scale, we should be as informed as possible about the legal options for addressing the problems it brings into life.  But we must also ask ourselves, how am I treating the immigrants—legal or undocumented—in my day to day life?  Am I paying a fair wage to the folks who mow my grass and trim my trees?  And I treating waiters and waitresses from other lands as human beings, and tipping them generously? 

Yes, we must be concerned about who gets appointed to the Supreme Court, we must remain informed about the laws that undergird the system and how they are made and interpreted.  And if such laws fail to be fair to all people, we must seek to have them changed.  But we must also guard against using the laws and courts to create unfair advantages for ourselves over the poor and underprivileged.

Yes, we must continue to wrestle with how healthcare is provided in this country and struggle to create an equitable system where all people have access to medical care and treatment.  But if we are employers, we need look at what we have made available for our own employees in terms of health coverage.

And the list goes on.  We are to be involved in justice at all levels of life.  The wider systemic levels, and in our personal comings and goings.  Justice should, indeed, be a way of life for each of us.