The concept of justice is based on numerous fields, and many differing viewpoints and perspectives including the concepts of moral correctness based on ethics, rationality, law, religion, equity and fairness. It is the moderation or mean between selfishness and selflessness – between having more and having less than one’s fair share.
Plato’s definition of justice is that justice is the having and doing of what is one’s own. A just man is a man in just the right place, doing his best and giving the precise equivalent of what he has received. This applies both at the individual level and at the universal level.
Socrates argues that lovers of wisdom – philosophers, in one sense of the term – should rule because only they understand what is good, (moral). If one is ill, one goes to a medic rather than a farmer, because the medic is expert in the subject of health. Similarly, one should trust one’s government to an expert in the subject of the good, not to a mere politician who tries to gain power by giving people what they want, rather than what’s good. Socrates uses the parable of the ship to illustrate this point: the unjust government is like a ship in open ocean, crewed by a powerful but drunken captain (the common people), a group of untrustworthy advisors who try to manipulate the captain into giving them power over the ship’s course (the politicians), and a navigator (the philosopher) who is the only one who knows how to get the ship to port. For Socrates, the only way the ship will reach its destination – the good – is if the navigator takes charge.
But we must be wary of the current “social justice” snare. Many good people over many years have been beguiled by the Left’s use of the term “social justice.” This is because fair-minded folks rightly love justice and hate injustice. But “social justice”—or, at least, how it’s often used by liberal Leftists—isn’t necessarily justice.
The modern left’s “social justice” strives for absolute economic equality. It endeavors to reduce, if not erase, the gap between rich and poor by redistributing wealth. This is “justice” more akin to Marx and Lenin, not according to Moses or Jesus. It is a counterfeit of real justice, biblical justice. Modern notions of “social justice” are often wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The fundamental error of today’s “social justice” practitioners is their hostility to economic inequality, per se. “Social justice” theory fails to distinguish between economic disparities that result from unjust deeds and those that are part of the natural order of things.
We are different from each other. We are unequal in aptitude, talent, skill, work ethic, priorities, etc. Inevitably, these differences result in some individuals producing and earning far more wealth than others. To the extent that those in the “social justice” crowd obsess about eliminating economic inequality, they are at war with the nature of the Creator’s creation.
The Bible doesn’t condemn economic inequality. You can’t read Proverbs without seeing that some people are poor due to their own vices. There is nothing unjust about people reaping what they sow, whether wealth or poverty.
Jesus himself didn’t condemn economic inequality. He told his disciples, “ye have the poor always with you” (Matthew 26:11), and in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:24-30) he condemned the failure to productively use one’s God-given talents—whether many or few, exceptional or ordinary—by having a lord take money from the one who had the least and give it to him who had the most, thereby increasing economic inequality.
The Lord’s mission was to redeem us from sin, not to redistribute our property or impose an economic equality on us.
By all means, let us tackle persistent injustices. But let us be careful to abide by the biblical standard of impartiality and equal treatment by law, lest we create additional injustices.