A Journey to Justice

In the 1970s, while working in Japan, I received a call from Rev. Dr. In Ha Lee, who had been the main author of a new mission statement adopted by the Korean Christian Church in Japan. He asked if I would translate it from Korean into English so it could be shared with ecumenical partners. I accepted the task with some trepidation. As I worked on this thought – provoking, visionary statement my theology suffered a jolt.

You see, I had been brought up in the somewhat conservative atmosphere of Presbyterian churches on Cape Breton Island, N.S. My professors at Presbyterian College, Montreal, were not entirely successful in prying me loose from some of my tightly held conservative convictions, although they did help me to take a more faithful and critical approach to biblical interpretation. When I became a missionary in Japan, I was still firmly committed to the evangelistic task of the church and did not have much time for that secondary task called social justice.

But that mindset could not survive long in the midst of the discrimination and denial of human rights which Koreans in Japan were subjected to in every facet of their lives.

One night I went to a house gathering of our youth group and found everyone in grief and sorrow. One of our church youth who had defied all odds by gaining entrance to, and graduating from, a prestigious Japanese university, had taken his life. As a Korean, although born in Japan, he had no right of citizenship and was denied employment in any job for which his university degree qualified him. He ended up driving a dump truck. But he could not endure the endless, daily discrimination, so he hung himself.The young people looked at me and asked, “Moksanim (pastor), what good is the gospel if all it offers is life after death and does nothing to help us with this life, here and now?” I had no answer for them.

Shortly after, I found myself translating the KCCJ’s mission statement. It proclaimed a thoroughly biblical declaration of the need both for evangelism and for social justice as equal sides of one coin. It challenged me to take seriously those countless cries for justice that permeate both the Old and New Testaments, cries that I had either ignored or simply interpreted spiritually rather than physically and practically. That was a liberating experience because it opened my eyes to the breadth and fullness of the gospel. It also told me that I could no longer claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ without doing all I could to end the poverty, oppression, violence, racism and discrimination that are such a gaping wound in this world that God loves so much.

What I did not realize until later was that I became a better Presbyterian (or Reformed Christian) that day! I began to undertake my journey to justice more intentionally, and was delighted to discover that I had some wonderful companions along the road. John Calvin, for example. “For Calvin, justice is a condition of society; a society is just to the degree that people enjoy what God has for them, what is due them as the objects of God’s affection demonstrated in Jesus Christ,” Rev. Dr. Richard Topping stated in “An Uprising Against the Disorder of the World,” a paper delivered to the Presbytery of Westminster earlier this year. What a challenge that was to my narrow view of the Bible.

Karl Barth wrote: “Scripture tells us that, in the as yet unredeemed world in which the church also exists, the state has by divine appointment the task of providing for justice and peace.” The clear implication is that the state is to be resisted when it fails to provide justice, or when it enacts laws that go against the values of the kingdom (reign) of God.

H. Richard Niebuhr, as noted by Topping, highlighted the prophetic role of the church—to remind the government of its responsibility “to ensure justice, fair dealing, and the inclusion of all citizens, particularly those who get put to the margins. … It is the church’s job to help the state be the state … and to direct the attention of the government to its failure to perform its God – given duties.”

Perhaps these courageous declarations by giants of the Reformed faith will help Christians in Canada to shed our timidity and resist policies and legislation that place refugees in danger; that place profit before pollution; that elevate energy production above environment protection. Perhaps we will be more willing to witness, according to Topping, “to what is only around the corner by refusing to settle for injustice here and now.”

Topping, Reformed tradition professor at the Vancouver School of Theology, also alerted me to this delightful reminder of Barth’s about the proper activity of the church: “To clasp one’s hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”

The journey to justice leads over rocks and potholes; through checkpoints, red lights and detours demanded by those who want to keep the church “in its place” of pious introspection. But what the Lord requires of us—to do justice—must remain the ultimate lifestyle for the followers of Jesus. We have a long way to go but the Spirit is with us.