Bring Justice

This week as arguments are being heard for the Impeachment of former President Donald Trump, we are forced to recognize a difficult truth. Justice can be hard to come by. Regardless of your feelings on the current impeachment trial I can promise you one thing; For me, Justice will not be “served”. This is because of the way I understand justice. I am only one voice amongst many, but I firmly believe no matter the outcome, justice as I understand it will not prevail.

Justice will not prevail because we are not seeking justice. We are not seeking justice because we find ourselves seeking the quickest way to move on. We are more interested in moving away from the hurt than actually dealing with it. We have been acting this way politically and socially since the 1990’s and we are now seeing the fruit of that labor thirty years on. The reason justice will not be served here is the reason justice is truly not served in most courtrooms.

American Justice Has no Restorative Component.

If we desire to have biblical justice, there must be a restorative component. What we begin to misunderstand here in America is that restoration does not mean punishment of the guilty but restoration of the innocent. In biblical terms, the righteousness of God and the justice of God both dictate that the innocent must be restored. This is a reparative process that has nothing to do with the offender or the actual crime. For justice to truly prevail, those who have been offended, abused or hurt must be restored into who or what they were before the incident occurred. This process could take a lifetime or in some cases generations.

Because of this, the court systems of nations simply cannot give what we are looking for. All that the justice system can do is punish the guilty. But the deeper work of restoration and reparation falls not on the Justice system but the people of a nation. Therefore, the impeachment will not give justice. The impeachment’s purpose is to find innocence or guilt, not reparation and restoration. Federal justice simply cannot give us what we desire.

How Do We Find True Justice?

While the court system can punish the guilty, it falls on the people of the nation to restore and repair the wronged individual. True justice occurs when we learn from the guilty, repair the relationship and build safeguards so that it never happens again. It is this part of justice where America doesn’t seem to get it right. If either side of the argument of impeachment simply walks away when the verdict is written, justice will never occur.

Justice will only occur when we understand the issue and then act to rectify the issue. Cute words, catchy tweets, or even convictions will never bring peace. Peace will come when the reparative nature of justice is honored, and we move beyond words into actions of restoration. You could literally say, No Justice, No Peace.