Justice

So as we’re evaluating our first several weeks on campus, one piece of what’s gone “wrong” is that we’ve talked about justice.  It wasn’t scheduled.  It sort of just happened. 

 

Speakers ended up tying in issues of justice when we asked them to speak on hope.  Students have plugged opportunities to get involved in making a difference in a justice-sort-of-way.  Just about every week we’ve touched on issues of justice. 

 

What happens when you start to talk to southern, churched, eighteen-year-olds about issues of justice (and multi-ethnicity) is that they push back.  Or leave.  These are largely culturally and theologically conservative students who have never had anyone in a church-setting talk about these issues.  And so it sounds like a politically-correct liberal campus agenda.    

 

So I’ve definitely been thinking about how much I wish we’d done things differently.

 

But then my read-through-the-Bible-in-4-years plan started me reading in Amos this week.  Holy crap, God’s ticked about issues of injustice.  Friday I talked it over with four of my junior guys who are core leaders in the chapter.  They were all for us being who we are—multi-ethnic worship, doing the justice thing, even as they figure out what it all means.  Then this morning at church we talked about the desire for justice as a “point of contact” and part of what it means for us to be image-bearers.

 

We’ve definitely made mistakes these first weeks.  Our large groups have been too intense.  Our greatest strength (community) is the greatest felt need of your average first-weeks freshmen.  We should have led more strongly with that.  And there’s important questions about how you actually shepherd people into God’s heart for issues that they’ve never seen or heard addressed before.  We haven’t exactly invited new students in, more like beat them over the head.

 

But it’s been good to be reminded of the centrality of justice (and multi-ethnicity as a part of that) in the gospel story.  And it’s been encouraging to have students who are willing to make sacrifices (even have smaller small groups!) to live out our values. 

 

The Lord is good to remind me of what’s important when I’m willing to listen .