Deuteronomy 16:18-20:20
You shall appoint judges and officers …, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
Deuteronomy 16:18-20
Justice. Now there is something close to God’s heart. He has indeed woven into all of us an innate sense of justice, and we all have a desire for justice (at least, justice for the other guy…). Time and again we see that the LORD is a God of justice. Time and again the LORD tells us to seek justice.
But what is justice? Simply put, justice is doing what is right, and it is setting right whatever is wrong. It is not just about punishment for bad behavior; it is about restoration of peace and order.
So where might we find justice?
Is justice inherent in democracy? Hardly. The clearest example of democracy — where the will of the majority is done — is a lynch mob. We all know that is not justice.
Is justice meted out in our “criminal justice system”? Perhaps sometimes. Certainly not always. We’ve all witnessed miscarriages of justice within our current system, miscarriages in both directions, where the innocent are wrongly punished and the guilty are wrongly acquitted. In addition, our system generally pays more attention to the criminal than to the victim and rarely pursues restitution; that is, we punish thieves with prison time, for example, but the stolen property might never be restored to its owner.
Is justice found in our civil courts? Again, sometimes, but not always. Millions of dollars for spilling one’s coffee can hardly be called justice, but neither can billions of dollars from pharmaceutical companies ever undo the devastation of the opioid epidemic.
What then? While we all can (and should) work for justice in and through our courts and other governmental systems, seeking justice is generally much closer to home. It is a matter of acting justly ourselves in all our dealings on a daily basis. It is working diligently for one’s employer. It is fairly compensating one’s employees. It is filing an honest tax return. It is properly disciplining one’s children. It is accepting responsibility for one’s failures. It is a word kindly spoken to the grocery check-out clerk. It is stopping to help change a flat tire. It is leaving a fair tip at a restaurant. It is loving your neighbor as yourself.