No Justice without Righteousness

"We want Justice!"  "Give us our rights!" are the demands of people across the globe. There are forums on achieving it: riots to demand it: letters to the newspapers to plead for it and late night chat shows debating how to achieve it. All this is well and good except for one thing. What is that? As with a coin so with Justice. There are two sides to it.

The Greek word for justice is also the word for righteousness. Strange don't you think that people are not demanding righteousness or rioting for the right to do the right thing. If you tried to cut a coin in two and remove, as it were, the tail, the head would be debased, worthless. This is what happens when justice is demanded but the right to do the right thing is scorned.

Justice and righteousness  require the acceptance, assurance and application of some absolute standard. Without it what is justice for you may well be tyranny for me. I think such things are happening in the so called 'Arab Spring.' Without a framework for righteousness what I might see as unrighteous and harmful could be seen by others as beneficial and enjoyable.

To my mind we are witnessing an increasing clamor for justice, meaning I want what I think is my due, without a foundation of Absolutes. This justifies violence, lies, selfishness and destruction of property as a means to achieve so called justice. Righteousness without a basis on which it can stands becomes subjective and a person becomes his or her evaluator of what is right at any given moment.

No one has come up with a better foundation on which to define justice or righteousness than the Christian Bible. Since society as a whole has rejected its authority and its absolutes we face growing moral breakdown and increasing anger over injustices. But then one man's justice may simply be causing an injustice to another.

I think I'll will stick to standing on the Absolutes declared by the Lord God within the pages of our Bible. Hosea 10:12 said it well: 'Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.'

Ray (Standing on the Absolutes of Scripture) Hawkins