Grace and Justice

Grace and justice are the biblical keys to complete reconciliation.

Racial or ethnic reconciliation is now approaching center stage in some areas of the America church.  This is a good, though long overdue, move.  The question now is: How deep does the reconciliation process go?  And what would full and complete biblical reconciliation look like?

Reconciliation can and probably should begin at the personal level.  Biblical reconciliation forgives enemies and builds new friendships.  This is the level of most ethnic reconciliation today.  What are the next steps?

Organizationally, leadership and power must be shared with ethnic leaders.

For Euro Americans, the next step is acts of justice---concrete action to rebuild the lives and communities among the poor and oppressed.  We must move from personal relationships to social justice.  Ethnic groups are rightly suspicious of personal reconciliation efforts that do not begin with or move on to acts of Jubilee justice.  Jubilee justice, kingdom of God justice, is needed to heal the enormous damage of centuries of oppression.  Remember that biblically oppression means means to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill persons created in the image of God often causing a personal or social PTSD or PTSS.  As Isaiah chapter one says, the church is to stop oppression and do justice.

For American ethnics the next step, according to Spencer Perkins, is grace---grace to forgive the oppressor.  From the human standpoint, inward bitterness or outward hate is a natural response to oppression.  It is best if the grace of forgiveness is offered in response to the oppressor's confession and repentance.  But sometimes grace may need to be offered even if there is no repentance.

The oil of grace lubricates the path of love.  Or grace is the highest expression of love.  To keep the process of reconciliation moving, generous grace must come from both parties.

Grace alone can take us halfway along the road of reconciliation.  Justice alone can take us halfway also.  But both grace and justice are needed for full biblical reconciliation.

So far in this essay, I have been talking about Christians---Christian principles to be lived out primarily within the church.  Can we expect the larger society, even governments, to apply the concepts of grace and justice as principles of governance?  Is this expecting too much of secular governments?  What should a government do in response to the violence of a civil war or to the violence of systematic and brutal oppression?  Is there any way out of the violence cycle?

Some governments are trying amnesty programs to stop the cycle of violence?  The word amnesty is related to amnesia; amnesty comes from a Greek word meaning "a forgetting, a general pardon, especially for political offenses."  Amnesty, then, is a political act of grace---pardon and forgiveness.  The political act of amnesty is taken not only to stop the cycle of violence, but also to establish the grounds for some degree of social healing, restoration and reconciliation.

Periodically, in the Philippines, violence over land, who owned the land in a largely agricultural society, and the need for just land reform.  The poor peasant farmers asserted that the rich and powerful, often with the aid of the government, the military, and sometimes the U.S. government, were illegally taking control over more and more land.  This left millions of peasant either landless or farming marginal land.  In frustration, the peasants took up arms to regain their land.  The government, however, called the peasants rebels, terrorists, enemies of the state, and tried to crush them militarily.

For 20 years, roughly 1975-1995, the civil war raged.  Thousands died, millions of dollars wasted, and life in civilian society was disrupted.  Then General Ramos was elected president; previously he was a general who led the efforts to crush the rebels.  As president, Ramos decided that for the good of society the cycle of violence had to be stopped.  The government declared an amnesty for those involved in the civil war; peace negotiations were initiated with the goal of bringing about reconciliation.  Some of the imprisoned rebel leaders were freed, then given money to use to go back to rebuild their communities.  Some land reform, an act of justice, has begun, but so far it has been too limited.

If, in the future, full and comprehensive land reform does take place, such as happened in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan after World War II, then this act of justice would reduce the tensions and conflict between the rich and poor.  The grace step of amnesty has opened the door to reconciliation and peace, but it must be followed by acts of justice to complete the reconciliation process and produce a measure of shalom in society.  Economically, acts of justice are much cheaper than wars of violence, so an enlightened society ought to choose grace and justice.

Black South Africans faced a difficult moral choice when they took over the government in the early 1990s.  What were they going to do about the violence and oppression conducted against them by past Afrikaner governments?  Should they hold trials and punish the oppressors to the fullest extent?

The new government led by Mandela did not take the punishment approach to justice.  Instead they decided on a grace approach and declared amnesty for the oppressors if they would come forward and confess the truth about their past actions.  In 1994, the South African government passed a bill establishing a Commission on Truth and Reconciliation: "This commission linked together amnesty, truth telling, and a goal of reconciliation as key features of one process."

Here we have two governments, the Philippine and South African, which to solve enormous social problems, attempted to operate upon the highest of Christian principles---GRACE.