More on justification and justice, spirituality and justice, freedom and justice, love and justice, grace and justice.
The abolitionists were strong on freedom but weak on justice. How? Few freed slaves were provided with their own plot of land which Jubilee justice required. So most freed slaves were homeless, foodless, and landless as soon as they crossed the slave plantation property line. As a result, they died like flies from starvation and disease. One historian estimates that nearly a million freed slaves died. More freedom and death than freedom and justice.
Ethnocentrism and oppression run rampant while far too often the church sits on the sidelines, comfortably religious, practicing a spirituality without justice.
The poor in spirit, those broken in spirit, those so badly traumatized by oppression that they are in a spirit of despair are only blessed in the presence of kingdom of God justice. See Matthew and Luke's Sermon on the Mount. In the absence of kingdom justice, "Blessed are the poor" is only a pious platitude.
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