How Then Do We Become Just? – Three Brothers Talking

How then shall we live?

After all of our discussion about race, justice, history, sociology, economics, law, and politics, we have just one question left to ask: how then, shall we live?

In view of all of these things, in view of the issues, the hard truths, the false truths, etc., what are we to do?

I can not pretend to answer every question that may come to mind. Hopefully, though, I can explain a few things concretely, which can give us a nudge leading in the direction of the exhaustive solutions we all crave. Consider this article a meager attempt at a few case laws that teach us how to be good judges going forward.

The breakdown for most of our current attempts and popular strategies for justice occurs in this one question: How do we become just? Pointing out our preferred injustices of choice is a relatively easy task. Take your pick, there are plenty of biblical issues for us to tackle: abortion, criminal justice, taxation, unjust warfare, and more. After we establish something as an injustice, though, we are left with one all-important question: how do we fix it? Until we answer that question, we haven’t yet contributed much of value.

As complex as many topics can be, it is actually a more simple equation for figuring out what we should do than we might think. It doesn’t take doctorates and decades of research.

Scripturally identified problem + Scripturally applied solution = justice

All of our issues come from a breakdown of the x or y variable of this equation. Let’s frame a few issues in focus so that I can demonstrate the kind of thinking I believe the scriptures bind us too. The only kind of thinking that can bring us justice.

How do we become just? Scripturally Identified Problems

Injustice must be real injustice.

In order for us to have just, free, fair societies, we must properly identify injustice. In all of our zeal, we can easily start aiming at everything that looks unjust, and subsequently burn down the houses in an effort to kill spiders. Well intentions don’t make you just, nor do they make you helpful. There’s plenty of “well-intentioned” injustice in the history of the world. In the words of artist Sho Baraka, “They hammers with bad aim, they banging on everything.” If we are stuck using a hammer, or a flamethrower, we are going to do damage while trying to repair.

For our efforts toward justice to be just, they must start with accurate, clear, Biblical definitions of something being unjust. Not all that say to Him, “‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 7:21) Not all that is cried, “Unjust, unjust!” is unjust.

Labels matter.

Labels matter. Words matter. The reason we need to be careful with our words is not simply because God will judge every idle word that comes from our lips (Ecclesiastes 12:14), but because when we say the word injustice glibly, we are committing injustice.

Why? Because, when you say something is unjust, you are making a moral claim. You are not simply saying that something seems unfair, uncool, or un-preferable. You are saying something with moral consequence. Even more, you are saying that God hates something (Dueteronomy 26:16). That’s a weighty statement. Even more, you are (often) saying that the government ought to use its force to come into a situation and do something. These are not meaningless words; they should not just be thrown around as if anything we don’t like, or find unpalatable, is unjust.

Not all rectangles are squares.

By way of drilling into a specific topic, let’s talk about a pair of words that are not synonyms even though common parlance today may say otherwise: inequity and injustice. Regrettably, these words are used interchangeably such that whenever we see an inequity we suppose an injustice. On our TV screens and radio stations, or in our literature and classrooms, these words are not merely synonyms. They are almost complete tautology.

Inequity is a circumstance, not an action or a moral category. Inequity is a result. It is caused by other things (which can be moral or amoral). For example, I could be poor (on the lower end of wealth inequity) because someone stole all of my money. Conversely, I could be poor because I threw all of my money away. I could be poor because of some conglomerate of the two, plus a lot of random life circumstances in between.

So, in one sense, the inequity could be called “injustice,” when it’s caused by injustice. However, not all rectangles are squares. We have no right to call every inequity we see (for example, wealth) injustice. We only have a right to call an inequity an injustice when we can point to how it is caused by a scripturally defined injustice.

Understanding this principle alone would rectify many of our current misaimed and misapplied actions toward justice. It is easy for us to decry something as an injustice when we simply see an inequity (normally to our “tribe”) that we do not like. But we can’t settle for that, or else we aren’t really looking for justice, we are looking for power.

You don’t get to shoot the thief, even when he runs away.

Sometimes the bad guy gets away. This is not merely a statement about a brute fact of life, but a principle the Bible actually allows for.

If the thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood-guiltiness on his account. But if the sun has risen on him, there will be blood-guiltiness on his account. He shall surely make restitution; if he owns nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. If what he stole is actually found alive in his possession, whether an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall pay double.
Exodus 22:1-4

This passage says a great many things about law enforcement, but the problem is that most of us have been poorly trained to decipher it (even though it’s pretty plain). Even worse, many of us have been trained by years of “New Testament + The Psalms” teaching that we should actively ignore verses that come from these obscure books—the ones that make up over half of the scriptures God wrote and preserved for us.

What I’m trying to get us to realize is that when we stand on the foundation of Tota Scriptura (all of scripture), we have a great foundation to begin applying our way to a just society. We need all of scripture, and we need all of the Gospel, and the wisdom applying them to our culture today.

For example, in the case of a thief, the scriptures state that if he breaks in at night, such that you have no way to know if he means to harm you, or merely take your stuff, then you are permitted to use force to defend yourself and your family (“there will be no blood-guiltiness…”).

However, if you know that the robber is only a robber—interested in things and not people—then you have no claim to end that person’s life, even if they are evading arrest or punishment. Unless the criminal starts threatening people’s lives you don’t get to end his life just to get him to stop. Theft doesn’t warrant the death penalty. That’s why God said, “tooth for tooth,” and not “death for oxen.” (Leviticus 24). Lethal force is justified by scripture when the person demonstrates that they are intent on physical harm to others, not merely taking their stuff or running away.

(An addendum is needed here: Not every situation is cut and dry. Sometimes you can’t tell if the “sun has risen,” or not. Sometimes it’s one person’s word against another. This principle doesn’t remove us from ever having muddy, confusing situations in law and judicial systems. Instead, it gives you fair parameters to take to a fair court system. This is yet another reason that we need to insist on a court system filled with men and women who refuse partiality and bribes (Exodus 23:6-9). There is no silver bullet to remove all possibility of error in a justice system—until we reach glory. However, we can try to uphold God’s rules as best we can. I would argue that that seems like the smartest thing to do.)

Further, the thief is forced to pay restitution to the individual they harmed, not the state in general. If that person has no way of repaying their debt to the individual, then they are to be held legally accountable to repaying the person they harmed as they earn money—until their debt is repaid. If someone steals from you and is found still possessing it, then they are responsible not only to give it back to you, but to repay it double for the harm they caused—again, to the person harmed, not the public at large.

Are you talking about using the… Old Testament?

What I’m proposing may sound radical, hair-brained, or unusual, but I promise I am trying to hold to a very old and very orthodox Christian position:

To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.
Westminster Confession of Faith — 19.4

To them also he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any now by virtue of that institution; their general equity only being of modern use.
London Baptist Confession of 1689 — 19.4

The Christian tradition, especially the reformed tradition, has long held that the laws, court cases, case law, and civic construction God gave to Israel was not merely a bunch of arbitrary ideas that are without wisdom or use for us today. Rather, they were given to the “body politic” as practical ways of working out, civilly, God’s perfect character and justice (which had been revealed in His moral law). In one sense, then, they are not binding for us today: we are not required to ensure that everyone has a parapet on their roofs. In another sense, though, we learn in those laws just principles that God demonstrated through those various laws—what is and is not just for the civil realm.

Ultimately, then, it doesn’t matter if we have a monarchy, a democracy, a republic; what does make any of those valid or invalid is how well they reflect the design God has demonstrated to us through the scriptures as it pertains to governance.

This means, however, we must really, really, really know the scriptures—all of them in concert with each other. If we only pick out one verse here or there, we can proof-text our way to unjust, overbearing, unproductive civic action—thinking the whole time that we are doing the right thing. We use the hammer to hit the screws, and the flamethrowers to dust the cobwebs.

The scriptures, when all taken together, when we shake down those old, dusty laws to reveal what is underneath, give us the platform to stand on for mankind to flourish.

This may seem radical, and if you consider this crazy, I would respectfully ask you where else you think we ought to go for answering questions about just governments? At the very least you must grant that the Bible is a good place to start—Old Testament warts and all. I’m trying to push us away from proof-texting vague biblical ideas and towards specific, grounded scriptural application.

What do the confessions mean by “general equity?”

Essentially, and this is a reductive definition, the judicial/civil laws of the Old Testament lean into one of the other two camps: moral or ceremonial. As far as the judicial law serves the ceremonial law, it has been fulfilled by Christ Jesus. Conversely, as far as that judicial law plainly serves the moral law of God, there is remaining application of the judicial law for us to use today. We see some examples of this happening in scripture, itself.

The Apostle Paul twice quotes Dueteronomy 25:4 about muzzling an ox and applies its general equity to a Pastor receiving their wages (1 Cor. 9:9 and 1 Tim. 5:18). He also uses the equity about witnesses in a courtroom as he talks about charges against elders (Duet. 19:15, 1 Timothy 5:19). It’s possible then, some might say logical, to conclude that even the weird, old laws about oxen, goats, millstones, and cities of refuge can teach us a thing or two about what God thinks is just and upright. We just have to do the work.

Obviously, application of these texts is not as simple as obedience such as a verse that says, “Thou shalt not lie.” However, if we are willing to do the work of deep reading, careful study, purposeful application, all through the lens of the revelation of the New Testament, then we are best equipped to set foot into the public square with solutions that make lasting difference.