lifeasmission

No Justice, No Peace :: Know Justice, Know Peace

October 29, 2008

OK, I need to start getting some reflections on CCDA out there before they go cold.

This was the title of a workshop I attended.  The main theme of the conference was Shalom: Seeking the Peace of the city.  This workshop sought to explore the relationship between justice and shalom.

The main component of the presentation was about various stages at which people and communities address issues of injustice.  The stages move along a scale from, Acknowledgment, to Awareness, to Addressing, to Betterment, to Empowerment, to System Changing.  The presenters were most interested in addressing this final stage, System Changing.  I believe what they has in mind were things like lobbying, legislating, demonstrating, and other things of this sort to, for instance, help to change a court system which seems to treat a certain segment of people unjustly.

Combined with this powerful quote from the session,

It’s not that doing justice will help the church, it’s that we are not the church until we do justice.

I thought they made a compelling case for what makes for a meaningful witness in the world.  However, this sort of prophetic critique against the unjust systems of the world, only holds sway insofar as the church is fulfilling its primary calling of embodying the inbreaking of a new world order, the Kingdom of God.

It’s a crying shame that the inability of the church in the West to embrace a holistic sense of the gospel has led to the creation of churches (centers for individual spirituality) on the one hand and para-church organizations (Christian special interest groups) on the other.  I am of the mind that a missional ecclesiology helps to overcome this unfortunate divide, but that’s another post.

A few other noteable tidbits from the workshop…

If you are not failing regularly, it’s a sure sign that you are not doing much that requires great amounts of faith.

In the Bible, entire nations are destroyed because of their failure to act justly.

Charity offends nobody, but justice offends everybody.

Posted in: CCDA, church, conference, missional