Pathways

1. Pathways to Justice

2. Principles of Justice • Justice is living right and making life right with others… it is life-giving • Injustice is like cancer. If it is not contained – it spreads. • If it is not treated – it kills the human spirit

3. Justice Declares

4. Justice Declares… • Injustice is inhumane – justice is a human right… the right of every person created in the image of God. • __________________ • “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life” Nelson Mandela

5. Justice Declares… • Life for too many people on planet earth ought not to be the way it is. ____________________ • “The contemporary age is not short of terrible and nasty happenings, but the persistence of extensive hunger in a world of unprecedented prosperity is surely one of the worst. What makes this widespread hunger even more of a tragedy is the way we have come to accept and tolerate it as an integral part of the modern world, as if it is a tragedy that is essentially unpreventable.” Amartya Sen (Nobel Prize in Economics)

6. Justice Declares… • God’s justice mandate commands global citizenship where people with more champion people with less. • _____________________ • “Although the majority of the world is improving economically, income disparities are still enormous: 2% of the world’s richest people own more than 50% of the world’s wealth, while the poorest 50% own 1%. And the income of the 225 richest people in the world is equal to that of the poorest 2.7 billion, 40% of the world.” • 2007 State of the Future, The Millennium Project World Federation of UN Associations

7. Justice Declares… • God pursues justice. We serve God by advocating with others… particularly the poor and vulnerable. • __________________ • “But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house, God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives, God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war, God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.” Bono of U2

8. Justice Asserts

9. Justice Asserts… • Injustice has both individual and social dimensions. Every social issue has a human face. Personal injustice is often the consequence of structural injustice. • _________________ • “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch, you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. • Jr.

10. Justice Asserts… • Whatever the political ideology ruling in a society, the pursuit of justice protects and empowers the vulnerable. • _______________________ • The principles of justice are not owned by any race or creed. Neither is the practice of pursuing justice the exclusive right of any nation or culture. The virtue of justice transcends all political ideologies. It is when people in positions of power are empowering the poor and vulnerable that they are fulfilling their mandate to govern.

11. Justice Asserts… • Some justice is better than no justice… more justice is better than less justice… true justice is marked by sustainable justice. • _____________________ • “God’s good earth is scarred. Too many people die preventable deaths. Too few people share in the abundance of creation.  • There is too much vulnerability. • There is too little opportunity.  • There is too much in the hands of too few. • There is too little in the stomachs of too many. •   There is too much injustice. • There is too little justice—for all.” • International Social Justice Commission Seeking Justice Together

12. Justice Asserts… • As a moral framework for decision making, justice is like light in darkness – where the practice of justice conquers injustice. • ______________________ • The pursuit of justice is a guidance system – a “GPS” -- for exploring what is right and what is wrong.

13. Justice Requires

14. Justice Requires… • Discerning what is wrong and caring enough to do something about it. • ____________________ • In the beginning the earth is formless – a dark empty mass. God hovers over the darkness before acting to bring light and life into creation. God still hovers and hopes that the darkness of injustice will be overwhelmed with the light of a more just world. God still longs for people who are strong and others who are weak to grace their days and nights with acts of kindness and deeds of mercy that bring hope and the promise of life. • Commissioner Christine MacMillan, Director • The Salvation Army • International Social Justice Commission

15. Justice Requires… • Overcoming the injustices of inequity and exclusion with the justice of equal access and fairness for all. • ____________________ • Injustice gains the upper hand when the HIV/AIDS pandemic is blamed solely on sexual practices. For newborn babies who do not receive medical intervention, when death can be postponed with drugs and it is not, when young girls and wives are coerced by aggressive male behaviour, when political leaders put money in their own pockets instead of caring for orphans -- HIV/AIDS is a justice issue.

16. Justice Requires… • Surrendering privileges for the greater benefit of the common good. • _____________________ • The aspiration of the common good seeks to distribute the benefits of public life for the well being of the total society. Progress toward the common good happens when taxes are proportionately collected from the rich and poor and disproportionately shared with those who have greater needs. Practicing the golden rule to “do to others as you would have them to do you” can lead to the common good. The global challenge is for rich nations to express generous measures of “common good” for the sake of achieving greater “global good.” • James E. Read

17. Justice Requires… • Advocating together to fashion a more just world. Effective ADVOCACY: • Addresses issues of injustice • Designsstrategies to alter systems • Values vulnerable people as agents of change • Offers expertise to implement objectives • Convinces power structures to alter policies • Accesses like-minded people to join the cause • Changes policies, practices and perceptions • Yearns for justice that leads to sustainability • Don Posterski

18. Justice Requires… . • Means and methods that are just… protocols and practices that are principled _____________________ • As for our methods, we seek to sensitize, rather than to stigmatize; to exhort, rather than to exasperate; to counsel, rather than to coerce; to pastor, rather than to patronize; to collaborate, rather than to confront; to engage, rather than to embarrass; and to affirm, rather than to affront. • General Shaw Clifton The Salvation Army

19. Justice Requires… . • Imagining a global world that doesn’t yet exist. • Imaginative visions for justice can come true… “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” (Martin Luther King Jr.) I have a dream that every person on earth will have access to safe water… that the right of primary education will be available to all… that fair trade will lead to fair wages… that sexual exploitation of children will not be tolerated anywhere in the world. • I have a dream that… • I have a dream that…

20. Principles of Justice • When justice prevails… • Children learn and play, • Mothers and fathers work, lead and love, • Families build houses and live in them, • People sing and dance, • Creation and nations thrive, • And -- God smiles…

21. Pathways to Justice