Guest Post -- Social Justice

My daughter is a Social Work student, presently doing hert final placement before graduation, She has adegree in Linguistics. These are some thoughts she wrote about social justice, man's vs God's. Enjoy ..

“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream!” Amos 5:24.
Social justice on its own is a drug, which everyone around me wants and needs and thinks will fix everything wrong in the world. But social justice is insufficient to solve the problems of the world, a high ideal of universal tolerance and equality and peace. But – I don’t know how to say this – God’s social justice is enough. His mercy, His commands to feed the hungry and give to the poor, His ideal of an interdependent community – that is enough, because it is real. And bounded. Secular social justice has no lines, no absolutes, in a sense. If social justice can accept euthanasia, abortion, stem cell research and the like – all in the name of the progress of humanity – then there is no justice in it. For justice will not exploit the weakest and most vulnerable of all. Social justice is like a mighty flood that overpowers everything, levelling the rich and the poor alike. It ends in Marxism. But God’s social justice has boundaries, so it is a mighty river, flowing in the right paths so that it beings life, not destruction. ¬

God’s social justice is a strong thing. Righteousness is not weak, nor is grace shallow. Equality and dignity and compassion are right because we are all the fallen creations of the Holy God, not from a vague humanistic ideal. I read the Bible so clearly: worship God alone, and love one another. That was the heart-cry of the prophets. The two go hand in hand, but social workers don’t follow the first, and the church often fails to practice the second. God cares about the poor and the needy, and He hates the exploitation of the widow and the alien. His compassion burns as His holiness does; unquenched and unquenchable despite our words and systems and lack of action.

I am a social worker, just as I am a linguist. As a linguist, I probe deep, looking for the meaning beyond the label. And as a social worker, I reach broadly, accepting and helping all people as they are. And as a Christian, I am both. The cross intersects, and I reach both out and up. Grace received and grace given. Heart and mind working together for the glory of God. Integrity is wholeness. Wholeness of being and wholeness of purpose. Singlehearteness: the hallmark of the pilgrim.

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8.

Nicodemus

I have to preach on John 3:1-8 in a few weeks, so Nicodemus is on my mind at the moment ..

Nicodemus

In the night we know our blindness
Yet we have no light.

Moth-like we seek the little light that fits our comfort
And demand we do not burn:
A well-established theology should reinforce our bunkers.

All he wants is reassurance.
All he gets is God.
Can he build an institution to control the wind?

This life has its modicum of comfort,
Its easy ways, its power and prestige
Why make things messy with talk of something more?

To fit back inside the womb you must give up all your growing
Surrender acquisitions, be utterly alone,
Utterly dependent.
You must learn the way to go backwards,
To undo all your becoming,
And you cannot choose your name:
The old identity stripped away
In the rush of blood that heralds life.

And the teachers of Israel do not know this.
They have not become small in God.
Even earthly things are shut
They have never seen the way of the wind
They have no clue that it blows a new direction.
Above all else the temple must be tidy
The teaching orthodox,
The income stream reliable:
And God must do exactly what He always did.

Except He never did.

Like as a Lover

I have always believed (well, at least for the last 20+ years)that the Bible tells the story of the ultimate love affair .. the one between jesus and His bride -- us. He sought us through incredible tribulation, laid down His life so that we could be His, and the culmination of all history is the wedding between the Lamb and the Bride. Whatever that may mean, it speaks of love beyond our comprehension fulfilled in a way that will totally satisfy everything we were created to be. He is the lover who will never fail us or forsake us, to whom we can never say "You don't understand!" His compassion is infinite, and infinitely personal, He is faithful through the millennia to a bride who scarcely knows how to love Him, and has often been unfaithful, and He has already demonstrated that He loves us more than His own life. What can Mills and Boon offer compared to this?

Like as a lover, thinking on her own,
With heart joy-trembling and with shining face,
So should I likewise glow with wondering awe
When thinking on Your grace.

Nor all the writers of wild romances
Could dream of such a love as You've shown me:
Out of the ivory palaces to come,
And die on Calvary.

From all eternity You sought Your bride,
With love that counted death small price to pay
For Your own chosen one. With Your own blood
You washed my sins away.

Poor, sick and soiled, I lay there by the road;
Nor any passer-by took thought for me.
But you, the King, stooped down in wondrous love,
My sacrifice to be.

Spotless I'll stand, made whole and fair at last;
Yours, only Yours for all eternity:
Cleansed from unfaithfulness. I love You, Lord
Because You first loved me.

The Prodigal

At journey's end I falter. The long road
They name repentance is a weary climb
Out of the pigsty to my Father's house;
But He has waited for me all the time.

See, his arms stretched, but are they stretched for me?
Surely that tender smile upon His face
Is for another? No, I cannot go
And risk refusal of that yearned embrace.

But, while I stand, ashamed and hesitant,
He has come down to meet me where I am,
Leading me on the last steps to my home
Off'ring, for fatted calf, a slain lamb.

The Empty Tomb

This poem I wrote today. it has been rattling round in my head since my final lacture on Luke last week when our lecturer said that he had visited Israel, and found there was some dispute about the site of Jesus' tomb, but it was of no importance, since the whole point is that He isn't there!!

THE EMPTY TOMB

This is the nothingness
Which holds all hope in being.

The reversal is reversed
In the place of death’s destruction
Where being is restored.

The place is unmarked,
There is no lingering
He is not here.

The borrowed grave
Returned to the ordinary
And the kingdom is unshakable.

It is too easy
To make a parable
From this positive negation
And too hard
To dance its truth.

For here, reality
Burning with the joy that lights a billion stars
Rests on what is not there.

We too, find rest
Acknowledging our nothingness
And holding to the promise
That can never die.

Finished!!

Semester is over! I don't go back to college till the beginning of August, for what should be my final semester. last semester's subjects were Luke exegesis and Book of Revelation.my last essay went in yesterday: 2,500 words on the use of the OT in Revelation. Next semester will be Christology and Reformation History.
On break now till 9/7 (we Aussies write our dates with the day first, then the month) then away with my husband on holidays till 19/7 then another week and a half break till i go back. Hmm .. doesn't sound very long when you break it down like that...

The Gospels as Photography.

My daughter came up with an interesting analogy the other day: comparing the gospel writers and their "differences" to our family when we go out somewhere. My husband and I are both keen digital photographers, but notoriously "different" in our approaches: he takes the classic shots, knows all the technical stuff, I go for whatever beautiful or quirky thing catches my eye. When we've been on a holiday, say, you can look at our photos and there'll be enough common ground to figure out we've been to the same place, but we "took" many different things, and even when it was the same thing, we rarely saw it the same way. Isn't it the same with these four "portraits" of the life and ministry of Jesus? Each of them (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) have taken their set of snapshots (under the direction of the Holy Spirit, but that's a different issue)and present us with their unique slideshow. Certain principles hold true of family photographers, and I suspect they hold true of the Gospel writers too:
*The most important things, everybody will photograph
*Individuals have different ideas of what's important/beautiful
*we "frame" our shots differently
*we take them from different angles (apart from artistic considerations, no two of us are occupying the same bit of ground at the same time)
* we don't always take our photos at the same time

Any other thoughts?