Exploring Justice

Given recent world events, and then throwing in the fact that just over a week ago, we celebrated the great Christian holy day of Easter, it seems like diving into the topic of justice may be very appropriate.  We've heard the word a lot over the past couple of days, and it seems to me that this situation just cries out for a good understanding of what justice really is and means.

We all get a sense that justice has been done when a person pays the consequences of their crime.  Yet, my experience has been that justice is not always that black and white, at least from our eyes.  True, from one person's perspective, it may seem relatively clear.  We see the guy steal a basket of groceries from the store, and justice would be that he is caught and has to pay whatever the appropriate penalty is.  However, if we look at this man's family and see that he has two children who suffer from severe disabilities that cost a lot, and we find out that he recently lost his job, suddenly our sense of justice turns a bit gray.  Yes, stealing was wrong, but we find that we temper that justice with compassion when we realize how bad his situation is.

This is the problem when we look at justice merely from our human point of view.  Extenuating circumstances almost always seem to change how we view "justice" being done in a particular situation.  What we see as strikingly wrong in one situation changes as we apply it to a different situation.  And so, from a human perspective, it becomes very difficult to truly define when justice has been served.

Over the rest of this week, I'll think out loud about how we tend to arrive at what seems to be "just" in our minds, and how we arrive at this kind of thinking.  Then, since I am a Christian, I will also take a look at some thing that God says about justice and how that also frames our thinking.  In the meantime, I would really like to find out how you derive your sense of what is just and what is not.  Feel free to comment and discuss, but please, keep any comments or discussion respectful.  Or else, I'll have to administer my own sense of justice as I oversee this blog!