Sunday, March 22, 2020

Day 26 Lenten Meditation: Justice




The dictionary defines justice as "the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness:to uphold the justice of a cause." (Dictionary.com, 2020). We can break a discussion of justice down into procedural justice, that is the justice of laws and courts, and social justice, the justice dealt with in society and in philosophy and religion (Beyond Intractability, 2020). For this essay, I'm going to focus on social justice.

Social justice is, de facto, the justice of the "other". The majority are comfortable, or at least stable in their well-being. Those who need to be brought into equity are the minority. 

In this day, "social justice" is seen as the realm of liberals who agitate for better conditions for those in poverty, those who have escaped brutal conditions in their former countries, those whose differences have marked them as "other". Perhaps this is because philosophy and religion, to a large part, are failing at their job. 

Religion used to be the force for feeding the poor and caring for the afflicted in hospital; to some extent it still is. But that care often came with strings attached, failing the "other" by rejecting its needs, and that is not social justice. 

It is only social justice if it can be granted to the downtrodden, the sick, the needy who are truly the other, who are not like us. Those who are not practicing social justice need only look to our religious books to see the exhortation to social justice.


References:

Beyond Intractability. (2020). Types of justice. Available: https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/types_of_justice [March 22, 2020]

Dictionary.com (2020). Justice. Available: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/justice [March 22, 2020].

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