Justice Is Just Us

While strolling through Facebook, I reviewed the Virginia Governor’s debate between the two candidates. As hard as I tried to find common respect and concern for the horrific issues impacting our country, all I saw were attacks from Sears. She barely allowed Spanberger to speak before striking with judgment, accusation, and bitterness.

As I continued scrolling through social media, I realized it was unreasonable for me to expect any less. We have become a world of judgment. For some reason, we think it’s acceptable to determine what is right for others based on our own personal or community standards. We thrive on the next headline, the next celebrity scandal, the next world tragedy. We have become desensitized to horror, pain, cruelty, and madness. Maybe we’ve all become mad ourselves.

Even among believers, I can’t find solace. Jesus gave two very simple, very direct commandments:

Love God with all your heart and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the rest.

So why does such a simple request turn into human interpretations that justify judgment? I understand sharing God’s word with others, but Christ never did it through condemnation. He led with love and compassion. Yet so many interpret Scripture through their own understanding—when the Word clearly tells us to lean not on our own understanding.

Jesus didn’t talk down to the woman at the well. He didn’t gossip about her or chastise her. He knew everything about her and still handled her with grace and love. That’s how He handles us—through grace and love.

Yet we damn others to hell for their choices. We hate and judge those who love the same sex, but overlook priests, pastors, and ministers who exploit members of their congregations. We protest against abortion in the name of being pro-life, yet some are willing to take lives through executions on death row. We justify police officers killing Black men in the streets because they “felt threatened.” Isn’t killing the same no matter who does it?

We claim to love everyone, yet turn our noses up at those who look, dress, or live differently. Is that really love?

We glorify the woman who marries but scorn the woman who chooses love without a paper—or the woman who confidently lives single. We criticize the young for their music, culture, and expression, as if we were never young ourselves.

We’ve become obsessed with tearing others apart, evaluating their choices against our limited standards.

Our country is crumbling beneath the weight of its own judgment. We align ourselves with the right wing, the left wing, the Democratic side, the Republican side—but where is God’s side?

Where is the love side?

Where is the compassion side?

We chase the bag, the title, the “top,” forgetting those we left behind, those we stepped over, and what truly matters in our quest for the North Star.

Some of us are drowning in our own misery, spilling it onto everyone around us. We no longer see beauty in the stars, the flowers, or even the air we breathe. We’ve lost gratitude.

What is happening to us? Why are we numb to others’ pain? Why are we so easily distracted by chaos? Why have we given away our power?

We have power—the power to love, to forgive, to show empathy and compassion. The power to stand for what is right and just. But justice cannot exist without truth and love.

Justice is “Just Us. "We are the majority. Why have we forgotten that?

We are human before we are anything else. That is how God created us—to represent His character in human form.

We rage against the devil yet ignore the enemy within.

In this century of being “woke”—alert, aware, and conscious—it seems to me that we are in a deep, collective coma.

My continued prayer is this: God, have mercy on our broken souls.