Quotes About Justice

We recognized hierarchical or vertical accountability but almost no lateral accountability to one another—as Jesus hoped for the world when he prayed that we "all might be one" (John 17:21). A corporate reading of the Gospel gives hope and justice to history, but less control over individuals, which is probably why clergy who do the preaching don't like it too much and thus don't preach it too much.

God is the ultimate nonviolent one, so we dare not accept any theory of salvation that is based on violence, exclusion, social pressure, or moral coercion.

It's time for Christianity to rediscover the deeper biblical theme of restorative justice, which focuses on rehabilitation and reconciliation, not punishment.

Once a person recognizes that Jesus's mission (obvious in all four Gospels) was to heal people, not punish them, the dominant theories of retributive justice begin to lose their appeal and their authority.

Courthouses are good and necessary first half of life institutes. In the second half, you try instead to influence events, work for change, quietly persuade, change your own attitude, pray or forgive instead of taking things to court.

Just the existence of a single mentally challenged or mentally ill person should make us change any of our theories about the necessity of some kind of correct thinking as the definition of "salvation." Yet we have a history of excluding and torturing people who do not "think" right.

Jesus himself always went where the pain was. Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it now, and about its healing now.

The shadow self invariably presents itself as prudence, common sense, justice, or "I'm doing this for your own good," when it is really manifesting fear, control, manipulation, or even vengeance…. Invariably, when something upsets you, and you have a strong emotional reaction, out of proportion to the moment, your shadow self has just been exposed, so watch for any over-reactions or over-denials.

Two thousand years after Jesus lived here, Christians still have a hard time accepting his upside-down world, in which we are expected to work for justice on behalf of others but not to demand or expect it for ourselves (Matthew 5:6,10-12). This is one of the hardest challenges of Jesus' message. It demands an expanded heart and mind.

That as long as we keep God imprisoned in a retributive frame instead of a restorative frame, we really have no substantial good news;

Women stuff' is the hidden energy behind almost all the justice issues. The movement toward nonviolence and disarmament, the movements that deal with homelessness and refugee problems, with the raping of the earth and its resources, with sexual and physical abuse issues, with the idolatry of profit and the corporation, and with the rejection of the poor will not move beyond the present impasse until the underlying issues of power, prestige, and possessions are exposed for the lie that they are.

Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it now, and about its healing now. It is rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were "worthy"—as if any of us are.

I must be losing patience with my fellow humans, Miss Beryl went on. Anymore I'm all for executing people who are mean to children. I used to favor just cutting off their feet. Now I want to rid the world of them completely. If this keeps up I'll be voting Republican soon.

No. Simplicity and justice require that thought and deed not be carelessly elided.

Grace believed that those who could see their duty clearly were required by God to do the heavy lifting for the morally blind. Where

Why does a rich country like ours blame people who have nothing for its problems?

He'd imagined the world would be a better place when it was rid of Big Jim Sullivan, but it had remained pretty much the same place, with just one less person to blame things on.

This is crazy, he said. You don't just shoot people. Yes I do, Parker said.

They wouldn't let me live and I killed. Maybe it ain't fair to kill, and I reckon I really didn't want to kill.

How soon will someone speak the word the resentful millions will understand: the word to be, to act, to live?

If you think I'm telling tall tales, get chummy with some white cop who works in a Black Belt district and ask him for the lowdown. When

There isn't any Negro problem; there is only a white problem.

This Court should not sit to fix punishment for this boy; it should sit to ponder why there are not more like him! And there are, Your Honor. If it were not for the backwaters of religion, gambling and sex draining off their energies into channels harmful to them and profitable to us, more of them would be here today. Be assured!

Of all things, men do not like to feel that they are guilty of wrong, and if you make them feel guilt, they will try desperately to justify it on any grounds; but, failing that, and seeing no immediate solution that will set things right without too much cost to their lives and property, they will kill that which evoked in them, the condemning sense of guilt.