Understanding Justice

Proverbs 28

It seems everyone has an opinion about how God ought to run the world... even those who don't believe in God. They will ague that if God were really all good, all knowing, and all powerful, then evil and suffering wouldn't exist. In other words, they assert that if they were God, then the world wouldn't contain evil or suffering... but of course they've never really been God so they have no idea what they are talking about.

I think this must have been the type of thing that Solomon was talking about when he said that "evil people do not understand justice." People have a cause... the environment, AIDS, health care, poverty, gay rights, abortion, etc. and choose to elevate that cause to the highest form of justice... and assume that God must feel the same way. The problem with this way of thinking is that when our hearts aren't pure, we can't possibly think God's thoughts. When we are filled with evil (pride, greed, sexual immorality, etc.) our sense of justice is skewed and we emphasize things that God doesn't emphasize and likewise we deemphasize things that God values.

If we want to understand justice, we must first seek after God... to obey his commands... to surrender our will to his will. If we will do that, then we can begin to understand his justice, but anything short of that must cause distortions in our attempt to view justice.