Justice, and only justice, shall I pursue. We find ourselves in a very judgmental society empowered by social media applied to our political pursuits. We awaken each day to find a new set of instructions to guide ourselves in dealing with the world being told we are to bring that guidance down into our everyday life with those around us. We apply uniformly across the board justice as best we can determine that is the same everywhere for all people all the time. What we discover is such a forced application fails us in finding true justice. Sure, we feel we are doing what is best by believing all things are equal, but we also recognize the world is not equal for all, anywhere, nor for all time. It is not surprising then when we feel the current world, while appearing to be seeking justice, fails to achieve the lofty goal we set before us.

Imagine for a moment if we reconsider the words given to us in Deuteronomy 16. It tells us to pursue justice, but it informs us of a specific way in which this can be done, and it means change from the way we are driven to do it today. We need some repentance, a turning back to the words that come to us across the millennia unchanged by our specific times and needs. We have raised our judges to global in application, which is very separated from the real times and needs of the people. Imagine for a moment if we set those near to us once more to be our leaders and judges; those people of our own ‘tribe.’

Christ sent his disciples out on the Great Commission with eyes that could see the people to whom they were sent. They were not given a set of rules to enforce upon the people they found; rather they were sent to see the people in their needs at that time and bring the good news to them with a vision of how that good news could change their lives. They had to make decisions and take actions that followed the words they taught in a way that healed the people in the moment, at that place, and in the eyes of the ones who looked back at them. That is specifically God’s way. As sent disciples of Christ, we are given the privilege to see what a global system of rules can never see. We are sent locally, see locally, and in that way, God’s way, we change the world one relationship at a time. We truly pursue justice and only justice.