NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

So this is why we can’t have nice things.

Whenever I hear words to this effect, the context is the same.   Something has been broken.  And the one who didn’t do it but knows who did has something to say about it.  To the one who did it.  In no uncertain terms.   As if to say “don’t ask me for nice things ever again if you’re going to just turn around and break them after I buy them for you.”

This feels to me similar to our context as people of today’s world.   We’re not at peace, we’re at war.   The world feels broken.   Our own nation feels broken.   We know who did the breaking, and we have plenty to say about it all.

Or at least I do.

So this is why we can’t have peace.

Everyone wants it.   But none of us can have it.

Why not?

No justice, no peace. Someone broke it so we can't have nice things.

The trouble is such a conversation doesn’t lead to any real change.   No message accepted.   No lesson learned.  

No learning, no justice.

So what is there to learn about justice?   Or injustice?   The kind of injustice that causes itself to perpetuate in a chronic and vicious cycle? One war after another after another. Instead of nice things.

Sometimes learning happens best through metaphor.  And as I consider something that might work in a case like justice vs. injustice and peace vs. war, I’m thinking of how our bodies have an immune system that protects against any invasive foreign object.    We know what goes right with such a system, don’t we?   But don’t we also know what can go wrong with such a system?  

Ever hear of auto-immune disease?

When the immune system itself gets infected, inflamed, stressed or sick in any way, it can mistake an invasive foreign object for one of its own.  It fails to notice that “them” is really “us.”    And this hyper-immune system then begins attacking its own body.  

I think of how religion itself seeks to support justice and reject injustice as if it is some invasive foreign object.  All is fine until the religion itself gets sick and can’t accurately discern between itself and a foreign object.   It assumes a foreign object, a “them” is invading and becoming a threat.   Only there is no “them.”   There is only an “us.”   Where humanity is concerned, what we call “enemy” and “them” is really “neighbor” and “us.”   Then when an attack is waged against the other, who gets hurt?   We do.   We’re really attacking ourselves and killing “us” the way an auto-immune disease attacks ourselves and kills “us.”   

Returning from that metaphor, justice has a way of mistaking itself for something else.   Then when an attack is waged against injustice, who gets hurt?   Justice does.   Justice is really upon attacking “them” also killing “us” because it was “us” all along.   There was no “them.”   There was no “other” and there was no “enemy.”   There is only “us.”  Humanity.   Ourselves.  Justice ends up attacking itself.   And war against any assumed “other” ends up killing “us” in the process.  

War by humans against other humans is the ultimate auto-immune disease.   Attacking ourselves as if “we” were some foreign object from outside that didn’t belong here.

Perhaps this is why Jesus of Nazareth commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  To love our enemy.   True justice is when we do unto others as “we” would have them do unto us.   Because "we are all we” .......all “us.”   The other and the them is an imaginary enemy, an imaginary foreign object we think we’re attacking when really we are attacking what?  Ourselves!  

When justice  (doing unto others “as” we would have them do unto us, or loving our neighbor “as” self)  attacks itself we then and only then get injustice.   It’s much the same as when a physical organism attacks its own organ.  After awhile there is no organ.  After awhile there is no justice.  And when there is no justice, there will be no peace.

It is said facetiously that when one is a hammer, everything else looks like a nail.   And perhaps in similar fashion, when one is a human, everyone else looks like a them or an other.   A foreign object to be defended against or somehow resisted.   We go from having a healthy immune system to now a sick auto-immune system.   We go from seeing everything else as a them or an other or a proverbial “foreign object” to be defended against to now seeing everyone else as a them or an other or some foreign object to cast out.  

Everything else is not everyone else.  

Justice is what happens when we are all part of “everyone” and there is no more “them” or “neighbor” or “enemy” for we are one.  We are all “us.”   Attacking justice causes injustice.  Injustice causes war.  War causes death.  

No justice, no peace.

Know justice, know peace.

We really can have nice things afterall.