Justice Belongs Only to the Just

Hi guys,

I'm Kristen and I'm a senior at JBU double majoring in Spanish and Political Science. I live off campus, but I should be around for orientation, so don't hesitate to ask about anything. Trust me, it can't possibly be as bad as my first week and I still go here, so no worries. Anyway...

Since we're supposed to post a picture, I though I'd show you guys a picture of what a typical neighborhood looks like in South Africa courtesy of my trip there freshmen year. This is the house of some missionary friends in a suburb of Capetown.

" The Judge does not make the Law. It is the People that make the Law. Therefore, if a Law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the Law, that is justice, even if it is not just. It is the duty of a Judge to do justice, but it is only the People that can be just." -p 191

Throughout the book, the idea of justice in relation to race is discussed. Each race has its own place in the social hierarchy - English speaking whites, Afrikaans speaking whites, colored people, then blacks who speak Sesotho, Zulu, Xhosa, etc. As the quote above states, it is the people who truly determine justice. How are we to determine who is truly just? To us, it seems abhorrent that races should be ranked in a hierarchy of privilege, but to South Africans, especially whites, it seemed as natural as breathing. The blacks were less educated and more prone to crime, hence their lower status. Yet, Arthur Jarvis, the white activist that Kumalo's son shot, argued that the blacks are only that way because the whites have denied them the opportunity to be anything else.

This raises many questions. Who is right - Jarvis or his father? Can we judge the white South Africans for their treatment of the black South Africans when they felt they were treating them justly and treated even other whites, such as the Afrikaners, badly? I haven't read far enough to see how Absalom's trial ends, but if it does turn out that he is more severely punished for killing a white man, even accidentally, than he would be if he killed a black man, does that make the judgment unjust or just the people? In short, why are we as Christians so certain that racial disparities in the justice system are wrong and what can we do to rectify these problems in our own justice system? Let me know what you think.