Ken Wytsma

Justice is the state that exists when there is equity, balance, and harmony in relationships and in society. Injustice is the state that exists when unjust people do violence to peace and shalom and create inequity, imbalance, and dissonance.

Creativity alone, for those who follow God, isn't sufficient. Not even ongoing creativity. Our creativity, like God's, must be aimed at something good. We need redemptive creativity - creativity that aims not just for success, but freedom; and not just for ourselves, but for others and for the good of creation as a whole.

Our lives are bound up with the lives of others. Our joy is bound up with the joy of others.

Learning to change the world is rarely easy or convenient--it can be complex, costly, and messy.

Justice doesn't have a finish line, and neither does education. We never reach a point where we cannot learn, where ceasing to learn would make us, or the world, better. It takes perseverance to walk the road of justice, and we cannot know where or when--or if--it will end for us.

Education is a means, not an end. We don't enroll in formal education ad nauseam as a way of escaping life. Rather, we educate ourselves in order to become equipped to respond wisely to God's calling.

The kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom. It beckons us to gamble all, to trust radically, to come and die so that we might live--to give our lives away. Giving life away is a paradox. It's losing so we can win. It's giving so we can receive. It's risking for security. It's faith. The kingdom of God means living that tension.

. . . we are all giving our lives away--the only question is, to what? We spend ourselves on television, money, power, sex, leisure, adventure, and fame. They are a bad investment. If we look for life by spending ourselves here, we look in vain.

At the end of the day--of almost any day, regardless of what we have done or left undone--apathy tells us that it's perfectly acceptable to live with illusions of our own justice.

Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum qtd. in Halter)

A subtle reason for apathy is that justice rarely has much to do with our lives. Unless we've personally been victims of injustice, we can take for granted that life is generally fair.

Apathy is sustainable only as long as injustice doesn't harm us--and we don't care that it's harming others. Apathy lasts only until injustice knocks on our door, and we're forced to look into its eyes.

Injustice is a cold, unrelenting reality. It can be tempting for us to use our comfort to ignore injustice or rationalize it away. But God would have us join His work.

We may not choose apathy, but when we choose anything other than love and empathetic justice, we get apathy by default.