The Justice Conference will be held in Melbourne for the second time this week. DAVID ADAMS talks to its US founder, Ken Wytsma, about what it means for Christians to live life through the “lens” of Biblical justice…
Christians need to move beyond simply “supporting a cause” to a deeper, more engaged sense of what Biblical justice means in today’s world, according to Ken Wytsma, the American founder of a growing international series of events known as The Justice Conference.
“It’s a real task in the age of social media to move people away from kind of self-branding, if you will, by slapping a cause on their persona…and to move them to a deeper, more fuller engagement,” he says.
Ken Wytsma, founder of The Justice Conference
“[J]ustice is the lens by which we come to understand topics like say marriage or money or power and influence and so that really changes it.”
– Ken Wytsma
Speaking to Sight from the US ahead of this week’s Justice Conference in Melbourne – the second time the city has hosted the event, Mr Wytsma said it was a Biblical imperative that we become just, not just throw our support behind a particular a social justice issue.
“I can’t care about sex trafficking in South-East Asia and not care about what’s happening with black or brown bodies in America and some of the different forms of brutality or discrimination that’s happening there,” says the 43-year-old who is based in Bend, central Oregon, where he serves as lead pastor of Antioch Church and president of Kilns College, a graduate school of theology and mission.
“And I can’t care about feeding the poor in Africa…if I don’t have some sort of compassion as well for those that are falling behind in the economy in the States or have no form of workers rights because they might be undocumented…So we have to begin to realise it’s becoming all of those things and that can be a bit overwhelming at first but it’s actually a corrective to, I think, the hyper-heroic vibe of grabbing onto a cause and treating it like we’re going to fix it – a kind of type A, saviour mentality, [which says] I’m going to go in there and be the change in that thing and fix it – which can be destructive in its own right.”
This year will be the second that the Justice Conference has been held in Melbourne. Starting in the US in 2010, this year, as well as being held in Australia and the US, it’s also being held in a several other countries including Brazil, South Africa and The Netherlands as well as, for the first time, New Zealand.
Mr Wytsma, who is also the author of several books including the justice-themed Pursuing Justice: The Call To Live & Die For Bigger Things, says the idea for the conference, which evolved out of partnership between his church and World Relief, came out of a strong belief that justice is more than how people position it in their minds as “just a good thing” and wanting to bring people together to talk about that.
He defines justice as “simply another way of saying sacrificial love, of shalom – which is peace, or flourishing, mercy, compassion, fairness, equity, equality – or a more philosophical way would be saying justice is what ought to be.” And while people in the Western world often associate the word with punishment or judgment in the law and order sense, he adds that, “if you think about it, punitive justice doesn’t even make sense if it’s not fixing something”.
“Disciplining your children doesn’t make any sense, it’s just sadistic or masochistic, if there’s nothing that you’re trying to bring back into a state of order. So sending people to prison or having them pay their debt to society, so to speak, is only valuable if it’s aimed at restoring things back to the way they ought to be. So that sense of primary justice is kind of a lost sense but it’s what we’re really trying to recover with the conversation on Biblical justice.”
Mr Wytsma says while justice was “touchy word” in some evangelical Christian circles 10 years ago – “there’s boards that used to meet on whether they could partner with us because The Justice Conference was called The Justice Conference and that was a tricky word”, it has since gained wider acceptance.
“Most churches, most non-profits are very quick to recognise that justice is a good thing, that it belongs in our conversation in the church as Christians. So I think we’ve seen a real movement and I would say the justice conversation is a fast-moving conversation; it evolves quickly.”
– Ken Wytsma
“I don’t find that, I don’t see that anywhere anymore…” he says. “Most churches, most non-profits are very quick to recognise that justice is a good thing, that it belongs in our conversation in the church as Christians. So I think we’ve seen a real movement and I would say the justice conversation is a fast-moving conversation; it evolves quickly.”
Mr Wytsma says its reflects a growing recognition that justice isn’t just a topic that should end up on a sermon roster each year but should be seen, rather, as a way of seeing the world: “[J]ustice is the lens by which we come to understand topics like say marriage or money or power and influence and so that really changes it.”
And it comes at a cost. “There’s a sense in which we’re supposed to give our lives away and the crazy faith part is that God’s going to somehow meet us in that and provide for our needs,” he says. “And so justice, I think, is another way of saying that. We like to talk about righteousness because it feels a lot easier…I can talk about my righteousness with God without really thinking about a cost; it’s hard to talk about my pursuit of justice in this world without thinking of a cost, right?…Eugene [Cho, another US pastor and speaker at the upcoming Melbourne conference] says it best; he says ‘We all love justice until there’s a cost’. I don’t think you can sum it up better than that.”
Our creativity – the subject of Mr Wytsma’s latest book, Create vs. Copy: Embrace Change. Ignite Creativity. Break Through with Imagination (he’s just completed another manuscript on racial equality which will be out next year) – also plays an important part in ushering Biblical justice into a broken world.
“God is working out the reconciliation of all things and He’s given us that ministry as well – we’re the hands and feet of Jesus, we’re the body of Christ, meaning the incarnation of Jesus’ life and ministry continues through us even today,” Mr Wytsma says. “So the reconciliation of all things is kind of an end. And so when we think of how we go about doing that, creativity is one of the tools or devices or human traits that we use as we try to accomplish reconciliation.”
This could be the creativity used in starting a non-profit organisation to tackle global poverty, the creativity employed by a peace-maker bringing together two communities at odds, the creativity needed to raise children to be empathetic and to live at peace with everyone.
“One of the theological traits of creativity is that it’s not for its own sake. We get lost in this idea that art or creativity is all experiential – it’s how it makes me feel; and did I enjoy that and was I able to express myself? And all those things are certainly part of the conversation around creativity but God gave us our human creativity for more than just our experience or our ability to express ourselves. He’s also given it to us to be a part in being unified with Him and co-labouring alongside Him in the establishment and in the enjoyment of a good world. So there’s a real strong and deep and rich connection between creativity and justice.”
“[T]here’s a real strong and deep and rich connection between creativity and justice.”
– Ken Wytsma
Mr Wytsma’s hope is that people at the conference will walk away with a “bigger idea” of what Biblical justice is all about.
“My hope is that God would meet people there and when they’re broken over some of these things or they’re enlightened or they’re equipped or encouraged – whatever that might be – that the Holy Spirit might move them to wherever God has opened a lane for them to run in. But I do think there’s a healthy aspect to the conference in that, no matter what, people will walk away with a bigger idea of Biblical justice, not just a cause-driven or compassion-driven approach, that will cause them to rethink some of the ways their life is framed up.”
The Justice Conference will be held in Melbourne from 21st to 22nd October.
