Justice & Righteousness : Honor & Generosity Part I

Righteousness and justices are the foundation of your throne;

faithful love and truth go before you.

~Psalm 89:14 (CSB)

We hear a great deal about injustice these days.  If we were to go back through history, we would find even more evidence of injustices against any number of people groups for any number of reasons.  Whenever we are faced with differences, be it skin color, appearance, religion, political views, or something else, we seem to withdraw and look for reasons why our group is the preferred group rather than seek unity in diversity.  

Justice, by definition, refers to morally right and fair behavior.  The definition itself helps me understand why we see the injustices we do.  In our postmodern society, how could we possibly come to an objective definition of what is morally right and fair behavior?  Everyone declares their own truth, so objective or absolute truth does not exist; therefore, morality is also whatever an individual decides it is.

So, where does that leave us?  Hold this thought for a moment and let us consider righteousness.

Quite often, we hear of self-righteousness, which has connotations of hypocrisy, selfishness, and superiority.  I think we tend to hear more about self-righteousness than we do righteousness, so we forget the benefits of righteousness.  Righteousness, on its own, is a very good thing: it is the idea of being morally right, virtuous, figuratively clean.  Given our postmodern society, we again run into the issue of determining what is morally right and virtuous, though.  Who gets to decide that?   

Ultimately, God gets to be the judge and jury on what is just and righteous.  Why you may ask?  God is the Creator and King of the universe.  Given that reality, He determines what our objective, absolute truth and morality look like.  He establishes what justice and righteousness are.  There are any number of people who may argue with me over this point, but I have determined that if I have to live in a world where individuals name their own subjective truth, then I need to have a solid foundation of objective Truth, and I find that in God alone.

Now that we've established that God defines justice and righteousness let's consider them in a little more depth.

Justice and righteousness are a common pairing.  Together they are a dynamic duo that establishes a solid foundation for any society or political system.  My verse for this post is Psalm 89:14 which says, "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; faithful love and truth go before you."  Righteousness and justice are the foundation of God's throne, His kingdom.  I really love the sound of that.  It is so easy for me to get caught up in our world's brokenness that I forget that God is still at work.  Despite injustices, unrighteousness, and self-righteousness, God is always just and righteous.

To be continued…