Justice
What does love have to do with justice? Martin Luther King Jr. believed that love was dependent on just and mutual actions and accountability. He did not want to foster a shallow love that uses beautiful language and soothing images without walking the talk. Justice requires that we don’t find a short circuit to love. He spoke of a love that is concerned with our day-to-day treatment of each other. King’s love is dynamic, active and generates the motivation for justice. Love should always translate into actions that sustain just relationships among individuals, peoples and nations. The questions listed below seek to encourage reflection on the interrelated character of love and justice.
What does love have to do with justice? Martin Luther King Jr. believed that love was dependent on just and mutual actions and accountability. He did not want to foster a shallow love that uses beautiful language and soothing images without walking the talk. Justice requires that we don’t find a short circuit to love. He spoke of a love that is concerned with our day-to-day treatment of each other. King’s love is dynamic, active and generates the motivation for justice. Love should always translate into actions that sustain just relationships among individuals, peoples and nations. The questions listed below seek to encourage reflection on the interrelated character of love and justice.
- What are your definitions of justice? How do they fit with your concepts of love?
- Are love and justice ever at odds? Why? How might our understandings of love and justice be transformed so that they are not at odds with one another, but support and encourage the other? Discuss the scripture passage from Micah 6:8
- Read the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and Luke 6. Too often we read the Beatitudes as a prescription for individual spirituality, rather than on our day to day treatment of each other. Resist the temptation to spiritualize the beatitudes. What is Jesus saying about day to day living, about living justly?
- Discuss the following statement: To love fully, we must nurture just relationships
- Often our understandings of justice create an us/them mentality. How might love inform our ideas of justice.
- How do we confront centuries of injustice?
- What is one practical action you can take to address injustice?
- How do we sustain one another in our acts of love and justice when there are no guarantees that our actions will actually bring about justice? Is acting dependent upon succeeding? If our attempts at justice fail, what are strategies for lifting oneself out of despair, cynicism and complacency? How do we sustain an ethic of risking justice without guarantees? What does love have to do with this?
- What does the following quote by June Jordan have to do with justice?