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Psalm 85
In Plato’s Republic, the philosopher Socrates tells the story of the negotiations between the powerful Athenians and the weak Melians in the Peloponnesian War. The embittered Melians say angrily that “If we refused to submit to these negotiations, if we insisted on our rights and refused to submit to your rule, you’d only wage war with us, conquer us, and make us your slaves.” Shockingly, the Athenians agree. “We won’t insult your intelligence by telling you that we deserve to rule you because we are morally right and that you are morally wrong,” the Athenian negotiators tell the Melians. “You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only a question between equals in power, where the stronger do whatever they can and the weaker suffer whatever they must.”
Plato’s entire dialogue on Justice in The Republic is built upon this example. Thrasymachus argues with Socrates that “justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.” The stronger, he says, are the ones who form governments, and it is governments who make the laws and enforce them, ultimately to their own advantage. “The only reasonable conclusion,” he says, “is that everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is THE INTEREST OF THE STRONGER.”
The comedian Richard Pryor used to joke that “I went to the police station looking for justice and all I saw was JUST US.” Meaning the rich and powerful get justice and people like him end up in jail. He meant that Thrasymachus was right—justice represents the rich and the powerful at the cost of the poor and the powerless.
Even though Plato’s Republic is about Justice, it doesn’t do a great job defining it. But in the debate between Socrates and Thrasymachus, the terms of the debate are clearly defined: Is justice simply the will of the powerful imposed on the powerless, or is it a larger moral good, independent of human will or government, by which individuals and societies are judged?
At some level, this has always been the debate. Today, the debate takes much the same form. For instance, someone posted on Facebook recently: “Hunger is not an issue of charity. It is an issue of justice.” The assumption underlying that is that justice is a higher guiding moral principle than the will of governments; and that justice means fairness and equity for all regardless of wealth, legal, or economic status; and that basically all human beings have a basic right to enough food to eat. It’s kind of an argument from natural law, that it is the will of a just God that all people have enough to eat; and therefore if some don’t have enough, justice requires us to make sure they do have enough to eat.
But, says a straw man respondent, that’s not justice, but charity. Charity is going the extra mile, doing more than might be required for the good of common society. It’s charitable and kind to feed the needy and to take care of the unfortunate, and maybe that’s what Christians should be doing, but it’s not the proper responsibility of society as a whole to feed the hungry.
By the way, in this way of framing things, if you refuse to feed the hungry, you are either unjust or uncharitable, and who wants to be either? On the other hand, whether you say that feeding the hungry is an act of justice, or an act of charity, you’re still saying it’s the will of God, and it ought to be done.
If you study the ancient Western philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, you’re going to be stymied in finding a concise, workable definition of Justice. And this even though Aristotle holds that Justice is the greatest of the virtues, and it encompasses all the others! No, to find a workable, practical definition of Justice, you really have to go to the Bible. And that in itself should tell you that JUSTICE MATTERS TO GOD.
There are two Hebrew words for “Justice,” and often they seem at odds with one another. The first is “Mishpat,” which means, “even handed or retributive justice.” Mishpat is what we are looking for when, for instance, we’re watching “Law and Order,” and Stabler and Benson have the perp nailed down, he’s obviously guilty, and then the perp goes to court and gets what’s coming to him. That’s mishpat. It’s the kind of justice that you need to have a well-ordered society.
The other word for Justice in the Old Testament is “Tzedakah,” which means “Distributive justice.” Tzedek is the word that our psalm, Psalm 85, uses when it says that “justice and peace will kiss.” When we have distributive justice, there is peace; without it, there will be no peace.
“Distributive justice” means that Stabler and Benson have caught the perp, but he’s a rich guy, and he lawyers up, and he can get away with it! Whereas a poor person who can’t afford that good lawyer ends up going to jail, even if he’s innocent. We all know that’s unfair. It’s a violation of Tzedek, distributive justice. Distributive justice means everyone is treated fairly and everyone gets the same chance.
It also means that society is balanced in such a way that fairness is equally distributed regardless of distinction. When civil rights leaders in the sixties complained that whites and blacks were not treated equally under the law, they based their argument on the Biblical notion of Tzedakah, distributive justice, meaning that in God’s eyes a just society treats everyone fairly, regardless of racial, economic, or social differences. And they were right.
In fact, one of the most consistent complaints that God’s prophets, and Jesus himself make in Scripture is that justice is unfairly distributed. Over and over, the prophets point to injustice to the poor in the courts, to widows and to orphans, injustice and unfairness to the powerless to the advantage of the powerful. Their complaint is that old Thrasymachus is right—justice is the tool of the powerful over the powerless. But that Thrasymachus is also profoundly, dangerously wrong—because God is on the side of the poor and needy against an unjust system, and that societies who practice injustice of this sort will certainly suffer for it.
Tzedakah also applies to economics, and so yes, it means that there is no moral excuse for there to be hunger in a nation where there’s enough food to go around. It’s not simply charity, though charity is fine—it’s justice. Jesus himself teaches that this is a matter of justice. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, the nations are lined up before him—the NATIONS, meaning the societies that make and execute laws. And they are judged as sheep or goats, in or out of the Kingdom of God, based on whether they feed the hungry, visited the sick and imprisoned, clothed the naked—“for whatever you did or didn’t do for the least of these, you did or didn’t do for me,” says the Lord. He’s not calling the nations to charity, but to justice; and this is because the Biblical definition of justice is this: “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” The Golden Rule is not just the basis of Christian charity. It is the basis of Biblical justice. Treat others as you would like to be treated. That, according to Scripture, is true justice. It is what we each deserve. And it’s what we owe one another.
There are debates, and there will always be debates, about what Justice looks like in our society. In many ways, the United States and other democratic nations have lived into Plato’s vision for what a Republic looks like: it’s a place where there’s a social contract, a constitution upon which we’ve all agreed, and about which we continue to debate in a free society. But all societies, democratic or otherwise, face the same risk that we fall into the fallacy of Thrasymachus: that Justice becomes the tool of the strong to enforce their way over the weak. And there is no question to those of us in the Judeo-Christian tradition: God is not pleased when that happens. Not at all.
Aristotle teaches in his Nicomachean Ethics “that justice is often thought to be the greatest of virtues, ‘and neither evening nor morning star is so wonderful;’ and proverbially ‘in justice is every virtue comprehended.’ And it is a complete virtue in its fullest sense, because… he who possesses it can exercise his virtue not only in himself, but in his neighbor also; for many men can exercise virtue in their own affairs, but not in their relations to their neighbor…. Therefore justice, alone of all the virtues, is thought to be ‘another’s good’… because it does what is advantageous to another.”
The virtue of temperance is practiced because to be just means that you restrain your own selfish desires. The virtue of courage is practiced in justice because it is always braver to stand up for another than it is to stand up for oneself. In that sense, clearly, Justice comprehends every virtue.
Add to that that it tops God’s list, too, and it’s pretty clear where God’s people need to stand.