At The Well, we’re spending the early part of this fall (and beyond) really calling our people to be moved with compassion for the poor and oppressed. Not only moved with compassion, but moved to action-after all, I believe from the model of Jesus we see that true compassion demands action for a response. So, we’ve been giving some tangible, practical ways of getting involved in some really awesome ministries.
Of course, one of the “dangers” (I hate even using that world when it comes to doing justice because why should justice be dangerous!) is that we forget about the Lordship of Christ in the midst of these actions. Unfortunately, it happens. And, unfortunately, some Christians use this possibility as a reason to not get involved in justice.
Along these lines, I was reading a blog post from The Other Journal today and the writer, Daniel Bell, was arguing that we the idea of disconnecting proclaiming Jesus from doing justice is just the problem. One is not more right than the other. He says that “Jesus is our justice” and then writes this,
“This means there can be no division between confessing Jesus and doing justice. We cannot pick Jesus or justice; we cannot give priority to one over the other. This is the case because Jesus and justice finally are not two things, only one. Jesus is our Justice. Therefore, Christians can only do justice rightly by proclaiming Jesus and we can only proclaim Jesus faithfully by doing justice. To proclaim the good news of Jesus is to do justice; to do justice is to proclaim Jesus. To do anything less is neither to confess Jesus nor do justice rightly.”
I am still reading the rest of the article but found this paragraph really interesteing and wanted to share.
Now I am off to a web design meeting…
Let me know what you think of the article.