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February 1 - February 27, 2021
Private charity responds to the homeless, wounded, and dead bodies, but it does not of itself try to get at the reasons why they are there. Social justice tries to go up the river and change the reasons that create homeless, wounded, and dead bodies.2
Hence justice differs from private charity: Charity is about giving a hungry person some bread, while justice is about trying to change the system so that nobody has excess bread while some have none; charity is about treating your neighbors with respect, while justice is about trying to get at the deeper roots of racism; and charity is about helping specific victims of war, while justice is about trying to change the things in the world that ultimately lead to war.
Charity is appeased when some rich person gives money to the poor while justice asks why one person can be that rich when so many are poor.
Social justice has to do with changing the way the world is organized so as to make a level playing field for everyone.
one might define the practice of social justice as follows: To practice social justice is to examine, challenge, refuse as far as possible to participate in, and try to change those systems (economic, social, political, cultural, mythic, and religious) that unjustly penalize some even as they unjustly reward others.
The Book of Genesis makes four major, interpenetrating affirmations that provide the ultimate basis for social justice: It affirms that God made all people equal in dignity and rights; that the earth and everything in it belongs equally to everyone; that all human beings, equally, are co-responsible with God in helping to protect the dignity of everybody and everything; and that the physical earth itself has rights and needs to be respected in and of itself, and not just as a stage for human activity.
Thus, for the Jewish prophets, our standing with God depends upon where we stand with the poor and no private faith and piety, be they ever so pure and sincere, can soften that edict.
All people in this world have equal dignity and should enjoy equal rights in terms of respect, access to resources, and access to opportunity.
God intended the earth for all persons equally. Thus the riches of this world should flow equally and fairly to all people. All other rights, including the right to private property and the accumulation of riches that are fairly earned, must be subordinated to this more primary principle.
I've never attended a church that taught htis... That the whole world should have access to the riches of the world (this was the different Perpectives made for me...)
The right to private property and the accumulation of wealth is not an absolute one—but must be subordinated to the common good, namely, to the fact that the goods of the earth are intended equally for everyone.
No person, group of persons, or nation may have a surplus of goods if others lack the basic necessities. That is the present situation within our world, where some individuals and nations have excess while others lack the basic necessities. This is immoral, ...
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We are obliged, morally, to come to the aid of those in need. In giving such aid, we are not doing charity, but serving justice. Helping the poor is not an issue of personal virtue and generosity, but someth...
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6. The laws of supply and demand, free enterprise, unbridled competition, the profit motive, and private ownership of the means of production may not be seen as morally inviolate and must, when the common good, justice, demands it, be balanced by other principles. No one has the moral right to earn as much as he...
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Physical nature too has inherent rights, namely, rights that are intrinsic to itself and not simply given to it because of its relationship to humanity. The earth is not just a stage for human beings to play on. It too is a creature of God with its own rights, which humans may not violate.
This is not a given in the evangelical church...
The condemnation of injustice is part of the church’s essential ministry of preaching and is an essential aspect of the church’s prophetic role.
9. Movement toward the poor is a privileged route toward God and toward spiritual health. There can be no spiritual health, individually or communally, when there is no real involvement with the struggles of the poor. Conversely, riches, of any kind, are spiritually dangerous.
Not only is this not taught in any chruch I've been to, but if I were to teach this openly I'd be accused of socialism.
these teachings on justice—these moral principles that emphasize social rather than private morality—constellated within the teachings of the various churches.
Christian spirituality today “seeks wisdom, not in the clear and distinct ideas of what is claimed to be universal reason but what is in fact the thought of privileged men; rather, it honors the plurality and ambiguity of human consciousness, sensitive to the difference that difference makes according to one’s social location in gender, race, class, and culture.
six fallacies that too frequently permeate justice and peace groups.
“Proper ideology alone can ground this quest—I don’t need talk of God and Jesus. I don’t need to pray for peace, I only need to work for
our actions for justice themselves often mimic the very violence, injustice, hardness, and egoism they are trying to challenge.
All of our actions for peace must be rooted in the power of love and the power of truth and must be done for the purpose of making that power known and not for making ourselves known.
Our worst actions are those that seek to demonstrate our own righteousness, our purity, and our moral distance from the violence we are protesting.
Our anger, our infighting, and our lack of respect for others, is hardly evidence that the will to power has been overcome.
The most effective peacemakers are those who can understand the fears of others.
victory of God over the forces of death is already assured and our modest task in peacemaking is simply to live in a way that reveals that fact.
Like Jesus, they do not turn the crowd against anyone, innocent or guilty. Rather they gently touch that part of the conscience that is still soft and inviolate, where truth still rings true and where peace is still a tender longing.
We must be careful, particularly in trying to create justice and peace, not to confuse the Christian story of redemption with the myth of redemptive violence. We must try to bring about justice and peace as Jesus did, recognizing that the God whom Jesus called “Father” beats up no one.
The way this young man lies in our world, silent and helpless, is the way God lies in our world. To hear what God is saying we must learn to hear what this young boy is saying. This is an extremely useful image in helping us understand God’s power and it manifests itself in our world. God’s power is in the world like that young boy. It does not overpower anyone or anything. It lies muted, at the deep moral and spiritual base of things. It does not overpower with muscle, or attractiveness, or brilliance, or grace, as does the speed and muscle of an Olympic athlete, the physical beauty of a
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To sustain ourselves, as Christians, in the struggle for justice and peace, it can be helpful to remember Wallis’ words. The struggle for justice and peace is not ultimately about winning or losing but about fidelity.
The gospel of Jesus makes the nonnegotiable demand that we work for justice and peace in the world, but does not demand that we win.
We do not know how things will turn out in the end, but we do know what the gospel tells us, namely, that we ourselves must be loving, charitable, understanding, compassionate, forgiving, and morally integral within our own private lives.
We will not always know what political strategy is best, but do know that God cares about all victims, that Jesus stands in the midst of brokenness, and that we are being faithful to the gospel when we stand there too.
In the struggle for justice and peace our true weapons, as Christians, are not ideology and guns, but lit candles, hope, personal integrity, charity, and prayer.
the truly plural us. Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different than the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.
A mature sexuality is when a person looks at what he or she has helped create, swells in a delight that breaks the prison of his or her selfishness, and feels as God feels when God looks at creation.
A healthy sexuality is the single most powerful vehicle there is to lead us to selflessness and joy, just as unhealthy sexuality helps constellate selfishness and unhappiness as does nothing else.
Toward a Christian Understanding of Sexuality 1. Sexuality as an Awareness of Having Been Cut Off
We wake up in the world and in every cell of our being we ache, consciously and unconsciously, sensing that we are incomplete, unwhole, lonely, cut off, a little piece of something that was once part of a whole.
becomes very important that we make a critical distinction between sexuality and genitality. Sex and having sex are not simply identifiable.
it thinks of sex only as having sex. That is a tragic reduction. Sex is a wide energy and we are healthily sexual when we have love, community, communion, family, friendship, affection, creativity, joy, delight, humor, and self-transcendence in our lives.
genitality should never be denigrated and seen as something that is not spiritual or important, it should not be asked, all by itself, to be responsible for community, friendship, family, and delight within our lives.
For the ancient Greeks, eros was a reality with six interpenetrating dimensions: It referred, at one and the same time, to ludens (love’s playfulness, teasing, and humor); erotic attraction (sexual attractiveness and the desire to have sex); mania (obsessiveness, falling in love, romance); pragma (sensible arrangement in view of family life, home, and community); philia (friendship); and agape (altruism, selflessness, sacrifice).
How then might a Christian define sexuality? Sexuality is a beautiful, good, extremely powerful, sacred energy, given us by God and experienced in every cell of our being as an irrepressible urge to overcome our incompleteness, to move toward unity and consummation with that which is beyond us.
Sexuality is not simply about finding a lover or even finding a friend. It is about overcoming separateness by giving life and blessing it. Thus, in its maturity, sexuality is about giving oneself over to community, friendship, family, service, creativity, humor, delight, and martyrdom so that, with God, we can help bring life into the world.
In this life, even though our sexuality has us geared up for universal embrace, we only have two options that are life-giving: Either we embrace the many through the one (by sleeping with one person within a monogamous marriage) or we embrace the one through the many (by sleeping with no one, in celibacy). Both of these are ways that will eventually open our sexuality up so as to embrace everyone.
must stop expecting that somewhere, sometime, in some place, we will meet just the right person, the right situation, or the right combination of circumstances so that we can be completely happy.
We are not gods and parts of us will always remain untouched, inconsummate, bursting with secrets kept silent for far too long.
To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God.
Knowledge alone cannot save us. When St. Augustine coined that phrase nearly seventeen hundred years ago he meant it as a principle of truth,
