Many people are unclear regarding what is charity and what is justice. In fact, the boundary isn’t always black and white. There are gray areas. But generally, charity provides immediate aid for suffering, while justice works to end the underlying causes.
Here’s a biblical example often used to explain the idea of biblical justice, right relationshps or making things right. Moses didn’t ask Pharaoh to give the Israelites better working conditions, shorter hours and health care. Instead, Moses asked to end their entire economic system of slavery. He asked for justice. “Let my people go!” Moses’ request was to end the underlying system of slavery that caused the suffering.
A good example for us today is hunger. Donating food to the food shelf or volunteering at Feed My Starving Children is charity. We could donate food forever and there would still be hunger in the world because the root causes of hunger wouldn’t have been eliminated. On the other hand, Justice is working with organizations like Mary’s Pence or Bread for the World to end the underlying causes of hunger.
We need both and we each need to do both. Charity provides immediate results. This alleviates immediate suffering while motivating us to continue to work for justice, the changing of laws and systems. Justice takes longer and requires the coordinated efforts of many. It can be discouraging because we don’t see immediate results – but it is even more necessary for ending suffering and bringing peace to the world.
Becoming truly human requires real freedom. Stated another way, as long as we are held captive by that which prevents us from choosing in our own best interests (i.e. working for the good of all) we are not truly free.
Justice begins with education. The bible is replete with examples of people escaping injustice in the dominant culture. Exodus and the Exile are two well known examples of stories that work as metaphors for our own spiritual journey to freedom, but also serve as models for real world oppression.
Jesus too, freed people from physical and spiritual oppression or afflictions. But he also told many parables about how the world could be different, more just, about the in-breaking of the reign of God or the Kingdom (e.g. Matt 8:18-23, 20:1-16, 22:2-14 ). These parables helped others to become empowered to escape the actual oppression of families, tribes and the dominant culture of his time.
Scripture scholar Marcus Borg explained this idea of the bible as a collection of stories about justice and freedom in a talk he gave in April 2011, at Westminster Forum entitled “Speaking Christian.”
We cannot be truly free until we are no longer held captive by unjust ideas, patterns and practices of our dominant culture.
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“If you want peace, work for justice” Pope Paul VI.
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