Blogging through "Generous Justice" II

Blogging through Generous Justice II

As I told you in my last post, the next subtitle in P.K.’s introduction to Generous Justice is Justice and the Bible. Under this subtitle he says that the book is written for the kind of person who views “doing justice” with suspicion.

Again we run into this difference in defining justice. P. K. apparently defines justice as “community service”, and “helping people in need”. I define “doing justice” as doing all that I agree to do, i.e., “keeping my word”, and “not violating my neighbor’s right to life, liberty, and property”. This is the same way that I “do honesty”. I do honesty by telling the truth.

P.K. portrays the suspicion that many orthodox Christians have about doing justice as being caused by an unfortunate and inaccurate association of the “social gospel” movement with loss of sound doctrine.

He then points out correctly that the person enabled by the Spirit to believe the gospel of Christ will live out justice and compassion for the poor.

P.K. winds up this subtitle with this statement, “the Biblical gospel of Jesus necessarily and powerfully leads to a passion for justice in the world. A concern for justice in all aspects of life is neither an artificial add-on nor a contradiction to the message of the Bible.”

Yet again the above statement is an obvious truth which all Christians should be able to agree on. The problem is that what P.K. calls justice is not justice but rather compassion, or love, or mercy.

What is the problem if P.K. wants to call compassion justice? The problem is that the two words represent different concepts, and if we confuse the two words it is too easy to also confuse the concepts. If we confuse the concepts we will not add anything to each one but diminish them both.

blogging through "Generous Justice" I

P.K. has chosen to write his own introduction to "Generous Justice". He begins by quoting Jesus' words in Luke 4 where we find Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth having read from Isaiah 42: 1-7 and proclaiming himself as the fulfillment of that scripture.

P.K. then brings to our attention that elsewhere in this chapter of Isaiah the "Servant of the Lord" is described as bringing justice to the gentiles, and not resting till He has established justice on the earth.

For some reason Jesus did not include the justice- related verses in His reading, but P.K. assumes that because those verses refer to the same Servant of the Lord  that we can assume that they also apply to His first coming, and thus to His body; the church.,

 Eschatological assumptions aside, I heartily agree with his application that a person who has experienced God's grace in Christ will greatly desire to seek justice on the earth.

The rest of the introduction is divided up under subtitles. The first is Who is this book for?
Here P.K. recounts that there has been of late an increase in the number of young people who are motivated to volunteer in community service which he calls social justice, but their motivation is not connected with the gospel and is often thwarted by materialism.

I realize now that P.K.'s understanding of what justice is differs radically from my own, so maybe I need to take back my earlier agreement. I thought that he meant that a person who has experienced God's grace in Christ, partaking of the new and better covenant, with the law written on their heart, will have a reverent love for the Author of that law, and will seek to apply it's principles in love to God and neighbor, " Love works no ill toward one's neighbor".

Of course the ultimate question here is not, what do I think? P.K. and I are both convinced that God cares much about "justice". We differ on what "justice is.

What does God say "justice" is?

The next subtitle is Justice and the Bible