This post is from Charles Kiker, a retired minister (and founding member of Friends of Justice) living in Tulia, Texas.

There’s an excellent article in the current (December 1) issue of The Christian Century, in their occasional “How my mind has changed” series. Nicholas Wolterstorff writes on “The Way to Justice.” Wolterstorff insists that he has not had any dramatic reversals in his thought. He describes himself as a Dutch Reformed Calvinist in the mode of Abraham Kuyper. That was his orientation from his days as a student at Calvin College, and that orientation remains.

While his mind may not have changed, his outlook has expanded in the matter of justice. In 1976 he participated in a conference at the University of Potchefstroom in South Africa. At that conference, he writes, “There were quite a few Dutch scholars present . . . , a few of us from Canada and the U. S., both blacks and whites from other parts of Africa, and Afrikaners from South Africa along with blacks and so-called coloreds.”

He reports that the Dutch were angry with the Afrikaners over apartheid, the Afrikaners were angry with the Dutch for being angry about apartheid. Then the blacks and coloreds began to speak up, more quietly than the Dutch and Afrikaners, about how they were daily humiliated and demeaned under apartheid. The Afrikaners did not disagree about the injustice, but they argued that justice was not a relevant category. The relevant category, they insisted, was “love, charity, benevolence.” And then they told of how they were benevolent to the blacks and coloreds: Christmas gifts, used clothing for the children, etc. And they (Afrikaners) were hurt that blacks and coloreds so seldom expressed gratitude for that benevolence.

Here, to me, in one short paragraph, is the heart of Wolterstorff’s article:

Scales fell off my eyes. What I saw, as I had never seen before, was benevolence being used as an instrument of oppression. I felt called by God, in the classical Protestant sense of call, to speak up for these wronged and suffering people and to speak up for justice.

My goodness! Benevolence as an instrument of oppression! One could chase all sorts of rabbits along all sorts of side trails with this thought. Much of our benevolence toward the poor may be a malformed love excusing or overlooking injustice.

Wolterstorff argues that the dichotomy between love and justice is a false dichotomy. “Malformed love,” he writes, “does indeed come into conflict with justice. But well-formed love incorporates doing justice. To delete justice from the Bible is to have very little lift; that holds for the New Testament as well as the Old.”

One final quote with which Wolterstorff ends his article:

“Justice is upfront in scripture. In the thinking and doing of many of my fellow Christians today, it is nowhere to be found. Love and justice weep.”

Amen, Brother Wolterstorff. Amen!