How social justice looks (and it’s not a cause)
“Day is dying in the west.” Tonight, I grabbed my phone, and my family and I headed off into the sunset. In the coming dusk, we passed lush, green crops of corn and gently-rolling soybean fields. Already, a low-lying mist was ribboning over the fields.
We talked as we drove, stopping to take pictures and drink in the view, feeling the Presence in our midst.
In my country tonight, a suffocating, low-hanging fog of fear and oppression has come creeping. Cries for justice, for retribution, for reparations fill the air. People march in the cities, shouting with fists upraised, and the word on the street is “social justice.”
I am but one, small mother in America. The thought of taking on a cause, even one that sounds so reasonable and necessary, is overwhelming. How can one person ever do enough, please the mob, satiate the elites? Keep the pop in popular culture? It can feel like I’m not enough, not ‘woke,’ not with it.
“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Millennia ago, a seeker asked the most important question. And the Teacher, He gave him the answer.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And this–love your neighbor as yourself.”
In simple words, Jesus gives us the key to true social justice. For if I devote my life to loving my God with all that I am, have, or ever hope to be, and if I love other people with all of my energy, then I am the epitome of social justice. It is not, first, what I do. It is what I am.
When I work for a cause, then the cause can become king. It can take the place of the only King worthy of my praise and my love. And that’s when all manner of ills can creep in, and my flank is exposed.
Love God. Love people. This is what I know to do. This is all that I’m required to do. What a wondrous relief and hopeful lens. I wanted to share it with you.
For the love of God,
Rhonda in the World
PC: Pexels