Currently I co-pastor a multi-racial inner city congregation whose mission is “to seek the joy and justice of the city out of love for Christ.” We started a tutoring program that now serves over 200 at-risk kids. We initiated an affordable housing ministry that seeks to combat the gentrification process that drives up housing and rental values for long term residents of our community. My co-pastor is African American, and our congregation is engaged in a year-long study on white privilege and its effects on minorities in our society. In others words, “justice” is central to our congregation’s mission.
For this reason, I was alarmed when I heard many cries of “injustice” after the recent vote at General Assembly affirmed the traditional definition of marriage between a man and a woman. One person on the GA220 twitter feed declared just after the results of the vote were known, “We will continue work for justice despite setbacks!” This comment and others like it raises important questions: What is justice? Have we really defaced justice by affirming marriage between a man and a woman?
In our secular society, justice is most frequently understood as the defense of individual rights. The most just action is that which respects the freedom and rights of each individual to live as he or she chooses. Conversely, injustice is when anyone’s right to make decisions for their own self-actualization is denied. By this understanding the post-vote deluge of lamenting tweets makes sense – our vote to not affirm same sex marriage is to deny the right of individuals to marry whomever they choose.
Certainly the language of rights is a biblical concept and is a part of the meaning of justice, as grounded in the concept of the imago dei. However, biblical justice is far more than upholding individual rights. According to the Bible, many of the things that we have the “right” to do may not actually be good for us or for the human community. For example, I may have the right to buy a large home that I cannot afford in a segregated neighborhood, but on various levels this decision would not be good for me or for others. This is why when it comes to defining justice, the Bible uses the language of “rights” far less than it uses words like Shalom, which means “universal flourishing.” And the one who gets to define what makes for a flourishing human community is God. So according to Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff, pursuing justice for the Christian involves seeking “the right ordering of creation,” an ordering that is aligned with God’s gracious rule and will for God’s creatures. Rights are ordered under the normative rule of God.
As one who seeks to lead God’s people in the way of justice, I am under the responsibility not only to protect individual rights, but to do so while considering which parts of God’s good intentions for creation are broken and marred, and with all God’s people seek to restore God’s good purposes for creation. We know those divine intentions through the Holy Scriptures. When it comes to poverty, we see God calling us to the right ordering of creation in which the poor are fed (Ezek. 22:29). When it comes to ethnicity, we see God calling us to the right ordering of creation, in which all ethnicities all welcomed into the new community by grace (Eph. 2:13). When it comes to gender, we see God calling us to the right ordering of creation, in which both men and women are made in God’s image and called to God’s work and ministry (Gal. 3:28).
The same principle of justice applies to sexuality. God’s intention for full, intimate sharing of human sexual affection is expressed within the context of marriage between a man and a woman. This is not simply a tradition of hundreds of generations past. It’s what God has made known through the Scriptures. In that light, true justice is to seek God’s right ordering of creation for human sexuality, even when that vision for sexuality rubs against the grain of what the broader society demands and of what specific individuals desire. Of course we are to protect the civil rights of every member our society, including those with whom we disagree. But when it comes to the church, we are called to graciously witness to God’s intentions for human sexuality as God so reveals it.
I understand that you may challenge my application of biblical revelation to the present context. You may disagree with me about human sexuality altogether. But please, don’t accuse me of injustice. It is easy and frankly sloppy to use the term “injustice” to bludgeon one’s opponents, or as a kind of a trump card for one’s cause. Instead, let’s recognize the ways we are operating with different conceptions of justice. Let’s try to ferret out the ways we have imported an alien or incomplete definition of justice into the theological parlance of the church. And rather than hurling such derogatory accusations, let’s continue to search the Scriptures for God’s intentions for creation, including human sexuality. This is among the holy works of justice.
Rev. Corey Widmer is co-pastor of East End Fellowship in Richmond, VA, and also Associate Pastor of Third Presbyterian Church, Richmond. He can be contacted at coreyjwidmer@gmail.com, or you can follow him at @coreywidmer
