Quotes About Justice

Lord, remind us that it is not always agitated uprisings and nonstop activity which lead to justice, but that change often comes through the quietcommitment of a small group of people. Help us raise our small body of people to set about quietly becoming the change we want to see in the world. Amen.

When we see the crucifixion as a legal transaction in which Jesus "paid the bill," we run the risk of cheapening the work of restoration at the heart of the cross. After

True fasting is not just depriving ourselves of privilege but als osharing sacrificially tob ring an end to the cycles of inequality, an end to creation's groaning and the groaning of hungry bellies.

I'm not ready to walk on water, but I'm also not ready to let the televangelists and prosperity preachers hijack the supernatural stuff from the rest of us. Imagine what would happen if the prayer movement and social justice movement converged, and we had Christians who prayed like they depend on God and lived like God depended on them?

The death penalty did not flourish in America in spite of Christians but because of us. So

truth is that much stands in the way of God's will for our world, beasts like what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the giant triplets of evil: racism, militarism, and materialism.

Church father Ignatius said that if our church is not marked by caring for the poor, the oppressed, and the hungry, then we are guilty of heresy.

So I am a radical in the truest sense of the word: an ordinary radical who wants to get at the root of what it means to love, and to get at the root of what has made such a mess of our world.

What do we do when the foolishness of the cross actually makes more sense than the wisdom of the sword?

On the wall of New Jerusalem is a sign that reads, "We cannot fully recover until we help the society that made us sick recover.

Violence is often the instrument of those who are impatient, those who lack imagination, those who cannot wait on justice or freedom or redemption.

Jesus never says to the poor, 'Come find the church,' but he says to those of us in the church, 'Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned,' Jesus in his disguises.

Limiting violence was a good place to start. Abolishing it is a good place to end.

God's love and justice are much more dynamic than many of our theologies allow for.

There are two ways to submit to authority, then. One is by obeying the good laws; the other is by openly suffering the consequences of disobeying the bad laws—that is

now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us by the Father through the crucified one. . . . [T]he more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers.3 (Arnold, 81)

I must say I am still passionately pro-life, I just have a much more holistic sense of what it means to be for life, knowing that life does not just begin at conception and end at birth, and that if I am going to discourage abortion, I had better be ready to adopt some babies and care for some mothers. I like to say that I am pro-life from the "womb to the tomb

W. E. B. DuBois, a co-founder of the NAACP, wrote, "Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the Republic shall justice and right triumph.

Second-century Bible scholar Origen of Alexandria wrote, "We do not arm ourselves against any nation; we do not learn the art of war; because, through Jesus Christ, we have become the children of peace.

In court, as the judge considered the sentence of the police officer, the woman spoke boldly: "He took my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give, and he needs to know what love and grace feel like—so I think he should have to come to visit my home in the slums, twice a month, and spend time with me, so that I can be a mother to him, so that I can embrace him, and he can know that my forgiveness is real." We

It is here that we see a Jesus who abhors both passivity and violence, who carves out a third way that is neither submission nor assault, neither fight nor flight. It is this third way, Wink writes, that teaches that "evil can be opposed without being mirrored . . . oppressors can be resisted without being emulated . . . enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed."7

Desmond Tutu, a South African bishop and leader in the movement to end apartheid, said, "I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, 'Now is that political or social?' He said, 'I feed you.' Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.

us stand up both to the demons that hide behind ungodly laws, and the false religion that props up injustice. Make us into a people who shine out your love so that the world might know another way is possible. Amen.

True generosity is measured not by how much we give away but by how much we have left, especially when we look at the needs of our neighbors. We have no right not to be charitable. The early Christians taught that charity is merely returning what we have stolen. In the seventeenth century, St. Vincent de Paul said that when he gives bread to the beggars, he gets on his knees and asks forgiveness from them.