When we think about justice, often guilt starts settling over us like a dense fog. We see unfairness and injustice, and we know what we don’t do. So we feel guilty.
It is easy to see the victims of injustice as “those” people who have a need. We have a resource. We believe that if we use our resource to meet their need, our guilt will be removed. This means we have a need too—the need to not feel guilty. Are our efforts toward justice really about loving others, or are they about alleviating our guilt? Or perhaps we are both using each other to have our own needs met.
In truth, justice isn’t about guilt. Guilt is too easy. Justice is about God and what we believe about him. If we are going to move away from guilt-driven efforts, we must root our hearts and our imaginations in the deeply significant theology at the heart of the gospel. There is a question that we have to wrestle to the ground: How are we to see the “other”?
When Bruce started working with homeless people on Saturdays, he learned all kinds of theology lessons. Here was a population that most people pass by with little thought or notice, but Bruce was compelled to show up each Saturday at 3:00 p.m. and serve them meals, since most aid programs were shut down on Saturdays.
Bruce quickly learned that the people he was serving were really amazing. He recognized his story by listening to theirs. He heard stories of sin and redemption and lives in need of grace. Through these homeless people, Bruce came to see that before the cross all humanity stands on a level playing field.
The only way a person comes to God is by the atoning work of Jesus Christ—from the highly religious to the deeply screwed up. Before the cross there is no chasm between those with a need and those with a resource. There is no differentiation between “us” and “them.” Before the cross there is only “we.” And “we” all come to Jesus the same way: confessing we are sinners in need of a Savior.
The right way to see the “other” is as ourselves. “We” are “them,” and “they” are “us.” Serving the least of these means standing in solidarity with, rather than above, suffering people. In doing so we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.
One day Bruce told me about his time with the homeless.
Before the cross there is no chasm between those with a need and those with a resource. There is no differentiation between “us” and “them.” Before the cross there is only “we.”
“I am the one being blessed by them,” he said, his eyes moist. “They are the most amazing people I know. I am so humbled that God would let me be with them.”
Bruce wasn’t blessed because his service among the homeless was alleviating his guilt. And his service wasn’t being driven from a desire to fix “them.” He was blessed because through the homeless he came to see the reality of the gospel—”they” are “we.” We all need God’s grace, and before him we stand as one humanity—fallen and desperate.
Rick McKinley is pastor of the Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon, and the co-creator of the Advent Conspiracy.
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