I was listening to a well known pastor give a talk on missional leadership today. At one point he began remarking that in the church we often talk about social justice when we should be calling it ministries of mercy or something like that. There was much that I disagreed with in his little aside but essentially he was saying that we need to be more careful with our language. His point was something to the effect of “justice” is what Jesus got for our sake and “mercy” is what we get from God. Therefore, we should practice acts of mercy not justice.
I think as followers of Jesus we need to practice both, but that we should be able to distinguish between them. In my mind social justice is when we act to make right the systems that enable and support oppression in any form. Mercy is when we act to relieve the symptoms of oppression (that comes from without or within).
This pastor used the example of a homeless man who is an alcoholic and hungry. He said that if this man lets alcohol destroy his life and doesn’t try to get a job then justice is to let him rot away on the streets (not his exact words). Mercy in his mind was to give this guy a hot meal, some clean clothes, and a place to sleep. He doesn’t deserve it but neither do we. I think this is a typical way of thinking about the problem of homelessness (or any number of social problems we see) in this country. It assumes that everything we see is a product of choices, good or bad. “If I have a nice home it is because I’ve made good choices and if someone else is homeless you can probably trace it back to bad choices.” Those of us who don’t really experience any form of oppression tend to overlook the way our society is structured that leaves some with such a feeling of desperation that they make bad choices.
I don’t believe that justice is to just let this guy get what he “deserves”. I’m trying to look beyond the obvious (alcoholism, inability to get/hold a job) and see if there are any systems that are not right/just that keep him in this vicious cycle. So social justice would be to act to correct the laws that aim to keep the homeless population out of our sight so that businesses can thrive and everyone else can pretend they don’t exist. But this takes a longer time then I would like and in the meantime, out of gratitude for how God has treated me, I should practice mercy by taking care of his immediate needs, etc…
In the end, I think this pastor was on to something though he missed the boat in some ways. We are lazy with our language in this culture and if we’re not careful, words like justice and mercy will lose their meaning (i.e. grace, love, awesome, good). But regarding this example, let’s be a people that would stand for both justice and mercy where appropriate. Let’s let our hearts be angered by the things that anger the heart of God and be moved to make systems right and treat people with the mercy that we’ve been shown. Come Lord Jesus!
