JUSTICE
I’ve been evicted. It’s been a long time coming – my house is falling down, tattered and torn around me. But it’s finally happened. I’ve got to find a new home; I’m scared, but I’m also excited.
The thing is, for most of my life my home has been a cocoon. It’s been warm, comfortable and familiar. It’s been stocked with my favourite possessions and stacked with my favourite people. It’s been my world. But I’ve been forced to leave by a friend, called Pastor Kaseka.
Pastor Kaseka lives in Zambia. He has four children; two by birth and two more that he and his wife took into their home after the children’s parents died. His family shares the little they have with those around them. I say little; they are insanely rich – rich in love and kindness, compassion and humility. And, as always, with great wealth comes great power. Kaseka had the power to evict me from my cocoon.
Justice can be an abstract word. But it has the power to transform the world as we know it. At Tearfund, we believe justice is when people are treated fairly, with respect, and where each person has the opportunity to become who God created them to be. It’s God’s vision of a different world becoming reality. People no longer oppressed or marginalised or excluded, people no longer living in poverty, suffering social or economic injustice. Justice does not only change a person’s physical world; it affects their spiritual life. Justice lifts up and empowers; it releases and transforms.
But today justice is overwhelmingly not reality. Injustice is alive and kicking hard. Let’s fast-forward ten years. Injustice will still exist. Justice will still envision. So, what will look different about our youth work? Answer: everything.
If we scoot back ten years, justice was barely on the youth work agenda. Most of us working with young people occasionally did some fundraising to help people in poverty. We might have prayed for conflict zones. But justice as an integral part of our faith was hidden, lying latent, waiting for a wake up call. And then it came.
Jubilee 2000 and the Drop the Debt campaign galvanised the UK church to act for justice in a way that transformed our perspective and unleashed our passion. It was obvious: when Jesus said ‘love your neighbour’ He didn’t just mean people we run into every day, he meant those we never see whose lives are tied to ours through the intricate complexities of a wide-webbed-world. During Make Poverty History in 2005, young people up and down the country campaigned for change, many in Jesus’ name. We are now working with the justice generation. But still, everything must change. And it’s all about the cocoons.
Cocoons isolate. Whether individuals, churches or communities, in middle-class comfort or with lives on the margins, all of us build cocoons that limit our vision and disconnect us from the reality of the world. We may have embraced justice, but we’ve done it from within our cocoons. It’s time to struggle out. It’s time to get connected.
Imagine a vast network of local churches around the world standing up together and saying ‘enough is enough’. Imagine the ears of our churches in the global north attuned to the voices of those in the global south; imagine the power of listening to those cries for justice and joining them in a united call for change. Imagine releasing our resources so that local churches everywhere were empowered to transform their communities.
Imagine this: young people leading worship in places of injustice, because that’s where they best glimpse a vision of Jesus’ holy recreation; young people praying with people in poverty, calling out to God for the world in all its brokenness, with blinkers off and arms outstretched. Imagine young people reading the Bible in places of power, narrating the living Word and calling people to join in its redemptive story of justice. Imagine young people preaching the gospel with their actions and their words, courageously calling people everywhere to join God’s mission to recreate this world and to find their lives transformed as they do. And imagine an entire generation known by their kindness, humility and their unreserved, sacrificial, selfless, saving love. Imagine a generation who don’t just talk and sing and get excited about justice; imagine a generation who live and breathe justice because otherwise they suffocate.
This is our vision for youth work. That we become cocoon-breakers who release young people to love and serve the world as it really is. The ‘big picture’ for justice is to help young people see ‘the big picture!’ The world is broken but together we can work miracles, if we connect – poor people, rich people, and a God who made everyone equal. The idea of justice is invigorating. But invigorating ideas don’t change the world. Love changes the world. And love is personal.