Seeking Justice: The Goodness Of Creation
When we think about justice issues, we usually start with injustice, and for Christians we think of sin (and its consequences). This starting point isn’t entirely wrong because, after all, that’s the initial picture we see when we look around our world. However, if we’re to frame our consideration of justice issues appropriately, we must start from the goodness of creation, and discern the call of justice from the created order itself. The call for social justice from the goodness of creation is found in two touch stones; 1) the call for seeking justice starts with a world that is created personally and purposefully, and 2) the acknowledgement and defence of humanity as created in the Image of God.
Turning to Genesis chapter one, the first thing we learn is that God created the world. This has at least two implications; 1) the creation is distinct from the creator, not one in the same, and 2) the world was not the result of random chance. The world, then, has been created personally and purposefully. The world is created personally because it is created by a person (specifically, a community of persons). Personal creation is further emphasised in the creation of humanity. With the rest of creation God speaks and it becomes, but with humanity God gets his hands dirty. And the world is created purposefully in that God has intentions for his creation. From his declarative ‘Let there be’ to psalm 19 and Ephesians 3 that speak of God’s creation existing to glorify God, God’s creation is made with purpose, and for the ultimate purpose of glorifying his name. Purposeful creation by God means that creation is infused with meaning and value, and that personally (as humans) we are responsible since we are accountable to a person. Understanding creation around these two points prevents us from either dismissing creation, or deifying creation. Ancient near eastern accounts of creation saw the world as a derivative, an afterthought from primordial soup, which leads to dismissing creation as it has no meaning purpose, nor is it infused with value.
In contrast, modern secular accounts of creation that see the created order as an accident or purely as a case of random chance will lead to deifying creation. This is because the world is all that there is, and so if there is to be any meaning it is for us to infuse that meaning into the world. We are most certainly not responsible to a personal creator-being, and thus need not appeal to such a being for how we should understand the framing of the world. These contrasts help to get a grasp of the significance of a personal and purposeful creation. We cannot dismiss creation since God has created it with purpose and has infused meaning and value into the created order. Likewise we cannot deify creation because there is a personal divine being that created the world (and who is distinct from creation).
The call for seeking justice is closely tied to our beginnings. When we begin with asking the question ‘what is the purpose of God’s good creation?’ we’ll be in a much better position to interact with our world and engage in a way that honours that purpose. Likewise with a personal creation, asking ourselves who created this world, and how is He distinct from the creation enables us to consider the responsibility we have to the creator in the seeking out of justice.
Looking deeper into creation, we find the second touch stone for the call to seeking justice from the goodness of creation; humanity as created in the image of God. In Genesis 1:27 we read ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’ This is what separates humanity from the rest of creation and endows all of humanity with a natural holiness (sacredness). The image of God in humanity means that humanity reflects and represents God in the created order. Humanity reflects God in the shared attributes (communicable attributes) between humanity and God; we can love, show compassion, execute justice, know, and exercise wisdom (all of which are attributes that God himself exhibits). And humanity represent God in the created order because man was delegated dominion and authority over the rest of creation (to rule it, keep it, nurture it, and tend to it). This understanding of humanity means that humanity has intrinsic value and is worthy of dignity and respect; so when we speak of seeking justice we are talking about affirming the dignity of every human being.
No one has done a better job in showing me this than Harvie Conn. In his book, Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace, he recounts his experience of being a missionary in South Korea. Coming from a white middle-class evangelical context in America, Conn goes to South Korea to do missions in the red-light district. He goes there with the understanding that the prostitutes were sinners who needed to repent of their sin, and that is exactly what he intended to preach to them. Conn had suffered from the Calvinist hangover on total depravity; the presumption that all there is to humanity is sin. This became evident when as he preached to these women, not only did he see little to no fruit but also his own misguided conceptions. His problem was not that he viewed these women as sinners, but that he viewed them only as sinners. These women were also image bearers of God. Therefore, they were not just sinners, they could also be sinned against. In light of this truth, Conn began to see the systems in their community that trampled on their dignity as the imago Dei. They did not enter into prostitution because they esteemed promiscuity, but they were trapped into a system where their economic and social vulnerability was exploited. Men who wanted nothing but sexual gratification were ready to deny these women the right to carry their dignity and respect that God had endowed them with.
This story is a powerful narrative that captures the implications of a thorough rooting of the call to seeking justice in the goodness of creation. Seeing humanity as created in the image of God means that in our seeking of justice, we are firstly seeking to honour, respect, protect, defend, and reverence the image of God in all human beings. If we stray from this, any attempt to seek justice will lead to injustice itself, because we will be rejecting the natural holiness that God has bestowed on his crown of creation; humanity.
