May 10, 2021
Justice: Something swift of slow? (And few housekeeping notes)
A few housekeeping notes: If you’re noticing yet another new format for Post Script, that’s because this IS a new format. I experimented (briefly) with another email service and didn’t find its quirks outweighed its benefits. But rather than going back to Mailchimp, which continues to increase its fees, I opted for this free email service from Substack.
I’m grateful you’re here. In the future, I may consider offering paid subscriptions to Post Script for people interested to receive bonus content. However, for those simply interested to receive these weekly letters, I will continue to offer them for free.
I listened recently to an interesting conversation on cancel culture hosted by NYTimes columnist Ezra Klein. Both of his guests had been victims of mob justice: one, a progressive; another, a conservative. One had lost a job; another had lost a following. Both understood how swiftly the tide of public opinion can change.
One interesting insight I took from this conversation was the idea that when we speak of accountability in the culture, we’re largely speaking of punishment. When we demand public officials be held accountable, often what we really mean is, “They must suffer for their sins.”
We’re given to think that this is what justice looks like in the kingdom of God: swift, unrelenting, merciless. People do wrong things—and God holds them accountable.
To be clear: there is reason the judgment of evil is cause for rejoicing. “Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth,” (Psalm 96:12, 13).
At the same time, I can’t get over the pure offense of the gospel, at whose very heart is God not counting our sins against us. God took undeserved blame. Hanging from the cross, beaten and bruised and wrongly accused, Jesus did not shake his fist at the heavens and rail, “Make them pay!” No, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The mystery of the cross is: God has suffered injustice, and it is our salvation.
I’m often confounded how to hold in tension the idea that God is just and also merciful. If he is just, doesn’t that mean he is swift to punish? But if he is merciful, wouldn’t that mean his justice is slow, even that it might hardly look like justice? (See Jonah’s miserable complaint about just this point, Jonah 4:1-3.)
As I look at sweeping social problems like racial injustice, this becomes especially fraught. Slowness has too often signalled the unwillingness to act on behalf of the oppressed. It is easy to caution slowness when you’re not the one suffering the abuse.
A verse from the Psalms has helped me in my own bewilderment for situations where both justice and mercy are needed: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. Unfailing love and truth walk before you as attendants,” (Psalm 89:14). Here’s what we know to be true from the Bible. First of all, justice is not a woke cause. Justice is God’s heartbeat. And here’s what’s also true: God is enacting the cause of justice with unfailing love and truth. His justice does not act with the cruel vengeance of cancel culture.
When we find ourselves wondering whether to pray for swift or slow justice, maybe we can simply cast ourselves upon God whose rule is founded in righteousness and justice, unfailing love and truth. We can pray for the counterculture of God’s kingdom coming, his will being done on earth as it is heaven.
That will look like emphatically opposing all forms of evil—and stubbornly believing, as Bryan Stevenson has written in his powerful book, Just Mercy, that “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”