Day 15 - Stop judging unjustly

Photograph copyright © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

‘How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?’

Psalm 82:2

The images are from a coffin lid of a typical Ancient Egyptian burial array. It is in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and I am keenly interested in early religious developments. Whilst I was examining the coffin texts and images, another visitor said to me, “If these people has simply accepted that when we die, we rot and not invented all this afterlife rubbish, all humanity would be so much better off”.

Somewhat given to reasoned argumentation, I replied that without religion there would be no law and without law there would be no civilisation. I asked him how he thought that people would act if not restrained by law. You can imagine that the ensuing debate took some time, until I drew the man’s attention to the paramount image on the coffin. The small female figure, squatting and holding the symbol of eternal life. The deity called Ma’at. I was able to explain that the Ancient Egyptian civilization was so long lasting and so technically impressive because, beyond anything else, the whole system was dedicated to the concept that Ma’at represents – Justice. In essence, you only get to the after-world if your heart is lighter than Ma’at’s feather. This is all shown on this and many other funerary images.

Later, in a different conversation, the point that in our generations the law and Justice are often poorly related. Also that the law is not really underpinned by religion anymore. The rich and powerful rarely paying much more than lip-service to any religion and especially to Christianity.

That seems to be what the writer of this Psalm was driving at too. It is quite possible to have law that is tyrannical, and then God asks us to explain how long we will put up with that.

Very recently, within this topic area, I was asked how we can know what Justice really is because without that, we can’t challenge laws that uphold tyranny. I am well aware that philosophers have wrestled with this question for millennia. Unsurprisingly, Jesus didn’t have any difficulty in telling us what to look for to find Justice:

‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ - Matthew 22:36-39.

Being Jesus, he also tells us, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, how to know what love is. [Luke 10:25-37].

In summary, for thousands of years, human civilisation has flourished when, and only when, it is arranged to provide laws that support Justice. Human nature being what it is, the law is often peeled away from Justice because people fail to accept that God is Just. The upshot is that powerful people make laws that suit their own ambitions, and which separates law from Justice. One reason for that is that Justice is hard to define, even though we can feel it. Knowing how fickle humans are, Jesus made it really easy to understand. Every playground has children crying out “that’s not fair”, which means that something is being done that they feel to be unjust. So, Justice involves doing to others what you would have them do to you.

In our times, that is very distant from the law, which probably explains why so many people feel so hard-done-to.

Jesus makes it simple to understand how to please God. The problem for you and me is that it’s very hard to do. Jesus wants us to try though – then He takes up the slack.

John Cartwright