Justice not charity

The Revd John Reardon OBE, a former Moderator of General Assembly and former General Secretary of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland (now Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, spoke to CforL Advocates in October 2002. Here are some extracts from his address:

“The Bible is very clear – we are to strive for justice. What does the Lord require? Asked Micah the prophet – and the answer was unequivocal – it began “To do justice”. God is described throughout the Old Testament as a God of Justice, and in passage after passage the prophet called upon the people to mirror God in their behaviour.

The God of justice will transform the suffering of his people. What is more later in Isaiah, in Chapter 58 we hear the challenge to God’s people – don’t fiddle around with the fasting about which you make such a show, but which changes nothing,

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to under the throngs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break very yoke?”

Such action for justice includes charity: sharing your bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into your house covering the naked. But it is more than the sanitised charity of those who put their hands in their pockets for odd change, with the never an inkling that their whole society needs to change. What the bible speaks about is life-change not small change. People don’t get angry with benefactors – they don’t feel threatened by those who give of their abundance – they get fearful and angry when their own security is challenged.

Governments all round the world have no problem with charitable handouts. In fact they welcome and encourage them. After all charity helps to fend off real movement for change. What gets under the skin of those in power is the demand for justice – for in so many places in the world power is wielded by oppressors – those who have little regard for their own people and whose only concern is to hold on to power because power means wealth and privilege and luxury. People get fearful and angry when their own security is challenged.

Jesus didn’t soft talk that congregation in the Nazareth synagogue – he spoke about good news to the poor, release for the captives, freedom for the oppressed and healing for the sick. All these things were denied the poor by the indifference of those who were comfortable. That’s why the people were made angry and threatened to drive him off the cliff, as Luke so vividly puts it. So we are not just in the business of putting sticking plaster on the wounds of the wounded, or even of putting food parcels into the laps of the hungry. We are in the business of working for a fairer world:

• a world where the rules of trade honour the producers of primary products as well as the processors and the wholesalers.
• a world where the human rights of the poorest and most vulnerable are protected and honoured.
• a world where the burdens of debt are lifted from the poor so that they do not forever live under its curse.
• a world where everyone has access to clean water and medical care, because the priorities of society are changing in favour of people not profits.

We believe in a world where charity exists between neighbours, while we all pursue and maintain justice on the basis for the good neighbourliness between peoples and nations the world over.

That’s what Commitment for Life is all about.