Like any primal drive it can lead us to right
action or to wrong action. What is just is not simple, nor possible
to know in all circumstances. Indeed, even our basic urge to justice
does not reliably lead to just outcomes, for while it is that drive
that pushes us to vengeance, vengeance is rarely just.
Yet it also drives us to protect those who suffer
unjustly, to stand against persecution and scapegoating. It causes us
to wish to see credit given where it is due, and it drives us to let
others know that we appreciate their work, their actions, indeed that
we appreciate them as people.
We must cultivate a sense of justice that goes
beyond the primal drive, that allows us to take in the whole of the
circumstances of any matter. We must see justice as many-faceted, and
many-layered. We must temper it with wisdom, and uphold it only with
love. Yet we must also allow it to show us where love has taken us
too far, and recognise the times when what is wise is not necessarily
what is just.
Justice is one of the goals of the Divine, a
quality it drives us to bring into the world, but it is not the only
such goal. We must treasure justice and see through the easy answers
to the harder ones, the ones that are more right. We must let the
Divine teach us the true ways of justice. There is more to divine
correctness than justice, but without justice nothing can be correct
in the ways of the Divine.
Written July 2018
