love is what most people might answer with when asked what’s most important. But that would be wrong. Justice ranks a step up on the way to whatever end our common adventure might reach. It does not take a rocket scientist or a philosopher to give justice precedence.
Clearly, love without justice is hardly love. Love without justice is the reality we live with today. Both love and justice are disfigured by the way things are. A divided world at loggerheads is not able to solve the problem. For love to win it must become universal, person to person.
Love of the highest sort includes everyone
Justice must come before love can win out
Unification, and becoming universal is what love is all about. This observation is practically unheard of in today’s world. It is not something that was once understood and then forgotten, but rather is an understanding that results from human evolution – moral evolution if you will.
Justice in its simplest terms is Fair Play, which means nobody gets hurt. Fair play is action that is not prey to corruption. Fair play depends on openness and honesty. Justice is making things right so they do not do wrong.
Justice as “the law”
Justice is also dealing with the aftermath of evil acts and expressions. Every evil act and expression tends to elicit a reaction.
Justice is the actual system in play to deal with what hurts and harms. It is also the abstract understanding that one way or another justice must be done.
Stephen Paddock, Las Vegas Suspect, Was a Gambler, a Cipher, a ‘Lone Wolf’ https://t.co/C4JES73taR
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) October 2, 2017
We need more justice always.
The energy of love, reconciliation, and unification can play a crucial role in helping justice along.
Jesus and justice
Had Jesus been a mere spokesman for love he might have survived. But he was the embodiment of justice and the prophetic mind. He was destined for death. Jesus's crimes were healing on the Sabbath and claiming tthat he was doing so with Abba's OK.
Jesus’s healing was not criminal or unjust but his forgiveness of enemies was. Only God could forgive (until he changed the rules). Love in Jesus became the servant of justice. In that sense, love is indeed superior in any ordering of terms. But this is the highest form of love which is nonviolent action to gain justice. Justice exists to be achieved. It is otherwise unnecessary.
Love evolves
The relation of love and justice is entirely the balance between good and evil in the world. But in today's world, love becomes a travesty when we believe it is of more importance than fairness. Love is an energy, but justice is a force, a condition, a step toward the completion of human destiny. We are the ones who are affected by our actions and expressions the spread of love and the power of justice.
We have come very far and our choice now is to create a world that moves past hurt and harm. This may never be complete. But it should be a universal goal. How to minimize the evil we do is the question we must answer, and until we solve it we await the triumph of love.
