Race and Justice in Our Time

The ongoing debates over race relations always seems to generate a great more heat than light. It seems like we keep going over the same topics over and over again, the same memes get shared, the same voices are trotted out to demonstrate this point or that point.

It’s hard to know where to turn for helpful resources that are going to enrich understanding, remain faithful to biblical truth, and yet push us along toward a deeper desire for goodness. There is simply so much frustration because we keep having the same conversation after each public event that even the most careful handling of this issue is liable to offend some.

Feel free to scroll to the bottom if you’ve heard all this before. There are some resources that I’ve found helpful and appropriate to this time.

But I am encouraged. Despite the sinful excesses of the rioters, it feels like there is a different tone to the conversation this time. There are more people who are seeing—sometimes for the first time—that equality under the law does not always result in equal treatment under the law. We are also seeing people ask questions about how they have perpetuated injustice by simply not seeming to care enough to speak up when confronted with it.

Our action has to be more than a token meme here or there. It has to go beyond a week’s interest when it’s the topic about which the news is blaring. It has to be a steady emphasis on making things better in real and tangible ways.

And that is really the key. It’s not Tweeting or pumping out Facebook content that matters. It’s taking careful action to diminish the negative reality of ongoing racial discrimination. For some people, the first step is admitting that racism is still real and active in our communities. Our duty is to pursue justice in our lives as we live for Christ.

Justice as a Duty for the Godly

Micah 6:8 is a helpful verse as we think about our duty to live justly:

“He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”

Our God is a God of justice. It is the nature of God to be holy, righteous, and just. The Trinity is all those things and love at the same time. In this verse, which is known to many, Micah is simply summarizing what the Pentateuch already reveals: We are called to be a people who promote justice because we are called to be a people who look like the God of the universe. The pursuit of justice in the world around us is not a convenient add on to the faith, it’s the heart of what obedience looks like.

In Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O man, what is good,” refers to the testimony of God’s character that was already available to Micah and his audience. This line is pointing back to the Law and telling Israel--and also Christians as inheritors of the Hebrew Bible—that to live faithfully, we need to look at God’s character, which is partially revealed through the Law. And the Law is a call to live as agents of justice in the spheres that we have influence.

To be godly is to live justly. That is the refrain of the Law. Obedience to the law does not justify, but it does promote justice as we live out imperfectly the character of God.

Make no mistake, the Law reflects God’s character and obedience is due because of God’s character. To list a few examples, that refrain accompanies the Law in Leviticus 11:44, 11:45, 18:2, 18:4, 18:5, 18:6, 18:21; Numbers 3:41, 3:45, 10:10, 15:41. There are many more examples. Some of these laws relate to proper relationship with God through ceremonial sacrifices. Many of the laws relate to proper relationship to other humans by honoring parents, leaving gleanings for the poor, and not causing the blind to stumble. They all relate to living justly according to the character of God.

Justice, therefore, is not an extracurricular activity of Christianity, it is at the core of the Christian faith. When Jesus is asked which is the great commandment in the law in Matthew 22:34–40, he states:

 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (vv. 37-40)

Love God. Love neighbor. The first is greater, but the second is like it. To love you neighbor is, in a very real sense, to demonstrate your love for God. To love your neighbor is to love the image of God in your neighbor. To love your neighbor is to do justice toward your neighbor.

The Golden Rule and Justice

The so-called Golden Rule is a helpful but often misunderstood aspect of living justly. And, again, it is an instruction from God, in the words of Jesus himself, that points us back to the Old Testament for much of its content. Jesus says, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt 7:12)

Unfortunately, when I hear this passage cited it is often in the context of a call to leave others alone or simply not to intentionally make someone else’s life harder. When kids are being mean to each other we are tempted to say, “Do unto others.” By which we mean that they should stop being a pest and leave their sister be.

Non-interference with others is certainly part of the meaning of the Golden Rule, but it’s the easy half. The harder half is to actually do to others what we wish someone would do for us. There is an active call to go out of our way to do things that make someone’s life better. “Do unto others” has become such a cliché that we sometimes miss what is a really hard call to obedience, grounded in the Old Testament, which reveals God’s character. So we’re back to Micah sharing God’s word with us that we are to do justice and love kindness. This is an active pursuit of justice on another’s behalf rather than simply an avoidance of injustice as an abstinence of sin.

This is a whole-Bible issue and an all-of-faith-in-God issue, not a side issue that we should see as a secondary concern. Real justice, as God defines it, can never replace the gospel because it is a form of gospel proclamation to accompany our words. But the key here is that justice must be as God defines it.

But What is Justice?

The content of justice never changes and any claim about what is justice must be evaluated according to Scripture. This means that some things that masquerade as justice in our time are not truly just. In fact, simply because there is a statute on the books does not mean that the law is just. The nature of justice is oriented in the character of God, not in the context of our time.

But justice is worked out in the context of our time. So our task is “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” in the time that we have been given. We may choose to explore questions of justice in the future or the past. That may help us understand our time better, but we must always be clear that our call is to live justly in our time and to resist the injustices of our time.

The nature of justice does not change, but our context does shape what issues are significant for our time. Because context is always changing, some will accuse those pursuing justice of innovation. We will not find an exact parallel to our social questions. Racial disparities in mass incarceration, excessive force by rogue police are issues peculiar to our day. Racial bias may not have been a primary concern in more ethnically homogeneous settings.

In our age racial reconciliation and the pursuit of racial justice—the healing of decades of injustice—should be a priority in our personal lives and our communities.

What Does Justice Look Like Now?

The world is so rife with sin that it is impossible for us to bring about the kingdom of God through human effort. The good news is that God never commands us to do that. He’s going to do the heavy lifting, but he does, as we’ve seen, ask us to love our neighbor by pursuing godly character according to his word.

So, we’re called to be fair in our business dealings with others and to work for a more just marketplace. As Proverbs 20:10 notes, “Unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the Lord.” Justice is fair dealing, but it also means working toward reforms in the economy that due to their very structure disadvantage particular groups. In some cases, this could be by working to reform excessive licensure requirements for certain professions. For example, many states require more than a thousand hours of training to cut someone’s hair. There may certainly be some health and safety training needed, but the excessive burden puts up a barrier to the poor for a reliable career path.

This example is painless because most of us aren’t barbers worried about excessive competition, so changing those statutes doesn’t negatively impact us. But it could make a big difference to someone on the bottom of the economic ladder in our society.

The key is to begin to notice that there is a problem. Then to pursue justice through righteous means.

Race and Justice

It is the noticing part that often comes the hardest in questions of race.

Many people who are not in the majority consistently fail to notice the pervasive bias against minorities. Some people have invested a great deal of time in the past few weeks presenting the narrative that there is no pervasive bias against minorities. I once believed that myself.

But then I began to look around and see things that I had never seen before. They were always there, but I’d never noticed. Here are a few examples:

To a person, every African American I have asked about it has had an excessively negative interaction with a police officer at some point. One sedate-looking African American with a PhD with salt and pepper hair had an officer draw his gun on him before he even got to the door of his truck. There was no apparent reason.

Multiple upper-middle class African Americans have told me about being asked by police why they were running when they were in an affluent neighborhood (even their own), as if heart disease might not be enough of a reason. The real implication was that they weren’t where they were supposed to be.

None of these were fatal, and most of them were simply escalated interest, as with the question while jogging. But the simple fact is that this is an alien experience to most whites, but a common (not to say universal) one for African Americans. Most of these experiences do not show up in statistics on policing, because either the result was a traffic ticket or an awkward discussion. But the experiences are real.

There is a greater general suspicion toward people of color in retail establishments. We might expect a heightened level of concern with kids in trench coats with big pockets wandering through the music store. But when someone goes in dressed like a soccer mom with dark skin, there is little reason to suspect them of shoplifting any more than a woman with a lighter complexion. And yet, the anecdotal evidence, which will never show up as a “fact that doesn’t care about feelings” on someone’s report, builds with every person that I’ve talked to.

It’s easy to miss the real problem because people can pull out stats that lethal force has been used more often on a numerical basis and roughly equally on a percentage basis on whites than on blacks. Let’s accept that statistic as true, but also accept that some of the most important facts aren’t measured in the available data. The regular indignities of heightened surveillance don’t show up in anyone’s data. We all become data-driven when it suits our purposes and supports our narrative. But the reality, as we argue when the reported data runs against our viewpoint, is that statistics don’t tell the whole story.

The first step in working toward justice is recognizing there is injustice. In the case of race in the United States, that means stepping into someone else’s shoes, taking their concerns seriously, and listening when they explain the problem. That isn’t humiliation or subjugation, it’s just common courtesy. In the past few weeks I’ve seen some exaggeration, but a lot more honest, sorrowful explanation. It isn’t all a hoax and we should be able to see that.

Conclusion

There is a whole lot of work to do beyond recognizing there is a problem. I’m not the expert on the issue and each of us should have a different response depending on where we live, what our responsibilities are, and what opportunities we have. Our duty is to work out justice in our situation right here and right now without trying to figure out how it should have been done or could be better facilitated by another group over there.

I’m going to include several videos below that were produced by people I know well and trust.

---

This discuss is between my former pastor, Anthony Rhone and my former colleague Heath Thomas, and it is on the topic of justice. In particular justice in our context of a racialized United States.

My former pastor, Anthony Rhone, preached on the important question of who is our neighbor directly in response to the protests and riots after George Floyd’s murder. He is an excellent, biblical preacher and this is a good example of his preaching on an important topic.

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary hosted a helpful panel discussion for pastors on shepherding a church through a racially tense time. I found this conversation gracious and practical.

Another important conversation at my alma mater about the ethics of racial injustice.