As an African American I often think about justice, and what that means to me. I think about what it means to my children. I think about how it affects my Caucasian wife, and how she deals with justice for her and her family? What is God's justice? What is Biblical justice? what does it mean for us?
As a kid I remember breaking something at a store, or taking some candy out of the dish without asking. Maybe it was doing poorly on a test. The common denominator in all of these situations is that it had negative consequences, there was a punishment involved. That is the justice I always knew. This is called Retributive justice(a system of criminal justice based on the punishment of offenders rather than on rehabilitation).
I recently heard a sermon at my church, Arise Church, where I also serve on the Elder team; The lead pastor, Jacob Prahlow, was speaking on this question: Is God just? He
spoke about Biblical Justice and concluded with "God is just, and His followers should seek His justice." As I was listening thinking through the idea of God's justice, he began laying out that Biblical justice is a process and how it is public, not just private. Then he began speaking on Restorative justice. He spoke about forgiveness, building relationships, and choosing reconciliation over punishment. Paul puts it this way: All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5.18-19)
I got home that day and started to wrestle through this. I began to ask myself what should I be more concerned with, Retributive justice or Restorative Justice? I went back and forth, then I realized I needed some guidance, so I began to ask some of my friends this question and I got a lot of helpful feed back. I had to begin with the why. Why was I was asking the question. What was making it such a battle in my heart? Because I live in fear. I live in misunderstanding. I live in a world where I see people of color being mistreated and killed based off the race and the stereotypes that come with the color of their skin. As an African-American I want retributive justice. I want it exactly as its defined. I want the Criminal Justice System to invoke justice on offenders of all kinds, but specifically in the form of racism and social injustices, and the crimes that are committed in response to them. Talking to my buddy he brought up a good point. He told me "I think it's ok to be angry its ok to want this, but what do you identify as? Do you identify as a black man with kids that are black or would be identified as black? Yes, that would make you angry. You would want that kind of justice, but we identify as followers of Christ, set apart and made in His likeness" I'm called to take the narrow path and to think more about God's heart than my own. I'm called to restore. I am called to forgive. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. God sent His Son to restore all of us including me. Even though I'm the biggest offender. I don't deserve grace and I certainly don't deserve His forgiveness. I deserve to be punished, I deserve the consequences of MY actions every second, minute, hour, day, week, month, and year. I continue to offend God, and yet, he continues to restore me.
That's the point, to be more like Christ, right? Make disciples? God does use retributive justice as well, but that's just it. When we see that in the Bible it is mostly from God or God's ordained governments. That is up to God. Not us. It's not our choice. At the end of the road we will all come before God and He, and He alone, will give us our final judgment.
We can get offended, be wronged, cursed at, hurt by love ones, cheated at work, and it is understandable and even okay to be angered by that, but that's when we have to go back. We have to remember we are called to walk the narrow path. It's not easy, in fact it's really really hard. But if God is just, then as His followers we should seek His justice.
So what does that mean for me, for my wife, and for my children? It means we are in the business of restoration. We control what we can, we grow the kingdom, and make disciples. We don't worry about the judgment of others because we ourselves deserve that same judgment.
The Bible Project has so many resources, here is one on Justice.