Two Kinds of Justice

There are two kinds of justice in the Bible.*

Legal

Social

Legal justice is the letter of the law and is restrictive and punitive.

Social justice is the compassion of God, God’s justice to rebalance human relationships, with a special focus on lifting up those who have been put low by society.

We always need legal justice: no texting, for example, while driving, and stop when the light is red, and if you violate either law, you'll be fined, or worse!

Social justice is broader and deeper - it's about the maintenance of life based upon the Kingdom of God.

It's about caring.

Kindness.

Generosity.

Opening doors of opportunity and keeping things in balance.

The Bible has dozens of verses about strangers and aliens, widows and orphans - because they're the ones who are usually forgotten when social justice weakens, and often the ones who are hurt when legal justice is overly emphasized.

Jesus paid special attention to the “outsider,” and he paid quite a price for that. Those who were into "legal justice" (Pharisees) didn't like the way he showed love and acceptance to those who had been excluded because of disease, physical handicaps or ethnic and social status.

Legal justice is important, but it's of limited application.

Social justice is huge, and it has the widest kind of application - in terms of how we love God and love our neighbor.

People get angry, I think, when they focus too much on legal justice, trying to apply legal justice to situations that require social justice.

By way of example, in the South years ago, legal justice required people of color to sit in the back of the bus. When Rosa Parks was just too tired to walk to the back of the bus, she was arrested because of legal justice.

I think by now we all realize that legal justice – justice by the letter of the law – falls short. What was needed for Rosa Parks was social justice, a justice that sees life from a higher perspective.

Without social justice, legal justice becomes hard-hearted and small-minded. It’s social justice that transforms our hearts.

Social justice is where Jesus lives.

*Many thanks to my friend, Kathy Verbiest Baldock.

Column - The Good-bye Year - Los Angeles magazine

Column - The Good-bye Year - Los Angeles magazine

An excellent piece of writing, and the tale of our sorrows, as life unfolds.

I love the final note: "there is no closure," and who want it anyway. For love, there is no closure - only the ebb and flow of memories and that tears that rightly belong to life!

Puns for Educated Minds????

PUNS FOR EDUCATED MINDS

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

15. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

16. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran

17. A backward poet writes inverse.

18. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.