Skip to main content

If all your friends were jumping off bridges, would you jump, too?


Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit. (Exodus 23:2-3)
 

            There are calls for social justice ringing across the land. In some cases, some have claimed victory for justice as the result of a vote or a poll. If Fifty point five percent of the voting or commenting population say something is right, some say it must be right. Right, that is, unless they disagree with it, in which case the fifty point five percent are stupid. In some cases, some have claimed victory because the courts have declared something right or wrong. More often than not, the reason for the celebration is that supposedly justice has come to all those poor, oppressed people who are their raison d'etre (reason to exist.)
         On the 15th, I shared another verse about not showing preference for the poor. I thought it was the only verse. Today I was simply looking for verses about justice. and found this one. We need justice, desperately, but I'm not sure that social justice is the same as justice. When social justice exercises its bias in favor of the poor, it shows itself to be unjust just as much as a bias against the poor is unjust.
         The reason following the crowd, relying on courts or showing favoritism to the poor are all flawed ways of finding justice is because they are all moving targets. Public opinion changes. Legal opinions change now because they follow public opinions. Who is considered poor and oppressed changes with public opinion. What is right cannot be a matter of feelings or fairness because these, too, change.
           Just because "everyone else" is going mad over current events doesn't mean you have to, too. Remember what your mom said about your friends jumping off bridges?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more