Embodying Justice

Mac: 0:02

Welcome to Praxis, a podcast where we explore how to practice and embody the way of Jesus in our everyday lives. Thanks so much for taking the time to listen. We're in a series right now focused on cultivating a healthy church culture. Every church has a culture, whether they realize it or not, and some cultures are reasonably healthy, while others clearly are not. And, of course, no church is perfect. But part of the work every church needs to engage is to intentionally work to close whatever gap exists between being healthy and where they currently are. So in this series, that's what we're trying to do. We're seeking to close the gap, and this involves not only talking about the marks of an unhealthy church culture, but casting vision for how we, as the church, can embody a way of life together that, while it may not be perfect, is oriented toward goodness and kindness and love. So you know, we've named several of the major toxins in the American church soil and we're now discussing some of the healthy nutrients we can put into the soil to help create a healthy church culture.Mac: 1:03

And today we want to discuss the importance of doing justice. Micah 6.8 says he has shown you what is good. The word there is tov. He has shown you what is tov. What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. So, tov, churches are just churches. Today, we want to talk about justice what it is and isn't, how Jesus practiced it and how we can do the same. So here we go.

Josiah: 1:46

Welcome everybody. I'm Josiah

Mac:

and I'm Mac.

Katie: 1:49

And I'm Katie.

Josiah: 1:50

Thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, it is August, it is, and that means that we are winding down with our days left of summer.

Katie: 2:07

I'd love to hear does that excite you or does that make you sad?

Josiah: 2:09

I'm not willing to admit that yet.

Katie: 2:09

That it's done, because I feel like I have a plan to squeeze all of summer into the next two weeks. Okay.

Josiah: 2:13

So we know how you feel.

Katie: 2:18

There's something nice about getting into a school routine and all that, but I like the freedom of summer and the sunshine and all the activity, school routine and all that.

Mac: 2:25

But I like the freedom of summer and the sunshine and all the activity. Well, I'm excited for summer to wrap up and transition into the rhythm of the school year. We had really good rhythms for our kids, like things for them to do in June and July and then those sort of phased out, and so August tends to be a less like. There's just less structure, which means more boredom and so on. So, in particular, our youngest he just thrives with, like the structure. So, yeah, so I'm excited. I'm excited for summer to wrap up, but not necessarily like the weather to change. This is fun.

Josiah: 3:01

Yeah, wisconsin, you can't beat it.

Mac: 3:03

You can't beat Wisconsin summers. I just think they're fantastic, yeah, yeah, wisconsin, you can't beat it. You can't beat Wisconsin summers. I just think they're fantastic, yeah.

Josiah: 3:07

A little humid, but yeah, I'm definitely ready. I think the school year. I wish they'd break up summer break in two different spots. I feel like it's too long. Interesting thought. Well, because if you think about it as if you're a parent and you work like you establish the rhythm of being able to work and your kids go to school, and for three months out of the year you have to completely disrupt that rhythm and just be nice if it was broken up in smaller sections, because it just feels like life is going to get back to normal in a few weeks, yeah, and you spend three months in not normal trying to survive, um and, and even the kids are antsy, like all.

Josiah: 3:53

The kids are thinking about a school and back to school, shopping and what they're going to wear to school.

Mac: 3:59

Speaking of, being antsy, um, I'm antsy to say something to you while I'm in front of our listeners. Okay, um, congratulations, oh, congratulations, josiah. So for our listeners, josiah got married just a few weeks ago. I'm kind of getting blinded by the ring on your. It's just so shiny, I can't see um.

Josiah: 4:20

So, yeah, I'm excited for you, man, congratulations, thank you it was wonderful and we eloped sort of it wasn't a last-minute decision.

Katie: 4:29

A planned elope.

Josiah: 4:30

Yes, yeah, we decided to fly to Colorado and go get married on the side of a mountain. That's cool. Everything went really nice.

Mac: 4:40

It was beautiful. Yeah Well, and I'll just say it's. Having journeyed with you over the last I don't know how many years, but particularly over the last few years, I'm excited about the genesis that God is giving you in your life a new beginning, and so I rejoice with you in that, Thank you.

Katie: 4:58

The picture. I saw a couple of pictures that were stunning.

Josiah: 5:02

Where'd you see pictures?

Katie: 5:03

Your sister.

Josiah: 5:04

Oh okay, yeah, your sister. Oh okay, yeah, your sister.

Katie: 5:06

I'm like I didn't post anything, they probably weren't the professional ones, they were just her phone, but they were beautiful. Charlie, my eight-year-old was so confused about how the two of you were going to fit on the top of a mountain. I think he has like the picture like the Grinch movie on the top of this point, like every mountain's a triangle.

Mac: 5:27

It was the scariest wedding ever.

Katie: 5:30

Excited to be here with you, Josiah, in your newly married state.

Mac: 5:34

What about Adam? Are you excited? And you, Adam, yes and you.

Adam: 5:38

Can I share something I've been antsy to share with you? Yes, all right. So there's these little buttons on the system that I use for recording I made some custom ones for us recently. The first one is it's good, I love it At any point we can hear.

Mac: 5:56

It's good Nice.

Adam: 5:59

The other one, I feel like, is a classic, but it was well worth it. Praxis Padcast. So, Mac, you're usually the one reaching over here and pressing the buttons. Yeah, I saw where those are located so I'm going to have a lot of fun now. I love that.

Katie: 6:17

I think that was actually me making fun of you, Josiah, having to slip up.

Josiah: 6:20

Yeah, it was.

Adam: 6:21

Welcome to the Padcast.

Katie: 6:23

Praxis Padcast. That's the beauty of Welcome to the padcast. Yeah, praxis padcast. Yeah, that's awesome.

Katie: 6:28

Okay, so we are in a series right now focused on healthy church culture. We can change gears a bit and because part of this series, if you didn't get a chance to listen to the previous episodes you can go back and take a listen. But, big picture, what we've been talking about here is church culture. We've been talking about here is church culture. We've been saying every church has a culture and while some churches have healthy church cultures, many do not. And we've also named that everyone in the church has a responsibility for creating the culture that exists. We've said, yep, some people at the top might have like increased responsibility or influence, but the overall culture is created by the totality of people who make up a church. So it's been like a constant theme in this series has been culture.

Katie: 7:07

So in the first part of the series we tried to take an honest look at what's not going well in the church or things that contribute to unhealthy cultures, and then we pivoted to looking at what does make up a healthy church culture. We've been anchoring this conversation in the book Church Called Tove by Scott and Laura McKnight and we've been kind of running through the list of characteristics that they include in their book that contribute to healthy and unhealthy church cultures, albeit bringing our own perspective to the conversation. So we've gone through a number of characteristics so far, and today we want to discuss the importance of churches acting justly. Micah 6.8 says he has shown you what is good, and the word there for good is tov. He has shown you what is tov and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. So today we want to submit that tov churches are just churches. Churches with the tov culture act justly and they create a culture that pursues right relationship with God and others.

Mac: 8:06

I feel like as soon as we say that word justice, it's almost like we need to clear some space to have a conversation. And the reason why is because I don't think the word justice is like a neutral term. For most people listening, I would imagine it means different things and sort of conjures up different associations for different people. And a big part, I think, of what drives this is that the word justice has been co-opted by politics, so it's got kind of swept up in the culture wars between the political right and the political left, and so for many people when they hear the word justice, they don't think first and foremost, oh here's what the Bible means about justice, or what does Jesus have to say about justice. Rather, they're hearing the word justice in light of the culture, wars and antagonisms at play around us. So maybe this is an oversimplification, but I think this is.

Mac: 9:00

What I'm noticing is that it's almost like advocating for justice for many people in our culture has just been equated with being woke, and so for some people like those on the political left, that's a badge of honor, you know, like we advocate for justice, and for those on the political right it's something to decry, like being anti-woke or whatever, and I just think that association doesn't do good work to just equate justice with being woke. My concern, right at the front of our conversation, is because people bring maybe different associations to this word justice. We first need to clear out some space so we can actually hear what the scripture might be saying to us. Right, like it's almost like. I want to challenge our listeners take off your political lens for just a moment so that you can maybe gain a biblical lens and hear what scripture and what Jesus has to say about practicing and pursuing justice.

Katie: 9:55

Am I making any sense. Yeah, I think it's a great point and the book talks about that. I really liked it. You know they talk about. Okay, like Mac, you're kind of referring to the term social justice.

Katie: 10:03

Like, if you say social justice, that's got this loaded term, yep, if you say criminal justice, that conjures up a whole nother set of like connotations that might be more associated, for better or for worse, with the political right Like all these. If you say fight for justice, okay, well, on behalf of who? Yep, like the context and your own perspective and experience, I think bring a lot of meaning, and so I think that's a wise point. Today we want to sort of acknowledge our lenses, like we all have them. So acknowledge the lenses and the meaning that we're bringing and then do our best to sort of come with an open mind to go. Let's kind of take a fresh look at what Jesus says and let that inform how we engage our politics.

Mac: 10:44

Yeah, and I would even go a step further than that and say no, Jesus is the one who gets to define this. I grabbed a quote from John Mark Comer. He says justice is not a word we let secularism define to my friends on the left, nor is it a practice we can abandon to my friends on the right, because it's central to the heart of God, which I know we're going to get into. He goes on to say Jesus stands in a long line of Hebrew prophets who stand for justice in the world. To follow Jesus is to stand with him for justice. So I guess my challenge is don't just take off your political lens. Actually, let scripture be the thing that helps define it for you. So we're asking you today not to listen. If you're still listening to this conversation, maybe you've turned it off by now. We're asking you not to listen through a political lens, but rather to try to hear things scripturally, Because otherwise you're gonna overhear things we're not saying.

Mac: 11:40

You're gonna hear things we're not saying and you're gonna miss what we are saying.

Josiah: 11:43

You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, and I just want to add this is really important. It's really important to understand why we do this with modern words and we need to do that with more than just the word justice, like we need to do it continually as we study scripture. I would hope that it's one of the primary things that's happening from the pulpit on Sunday mornings at local churches is like hey, this is your understanding of this word as it's translated in English, and we have to be able to recognize that this word has so much meaning packed into it that actually the original intent of scripture didn't have. And if you can't do that, that's when we get ourselves into trouble. We start making too much meaning out of things that don't have it, or vice versa, we take away meaning from things that have a lot of power.

Katie: 12:37

Yeah, like the concept of overhearing and underhearing.

Mac: 12:40

Yeah, overhearing is when you hear things that someone didn't say, and underhearing is when you miss what they are saying. So in a sense, I think in clearing space to say, hey, we're not trying to use this word in a like politically charged way. We're inviting you not to overhear and underhear. And to your point, josiah, yes, one temptation is to import our contemporary understanding of word onto scripture, like we lay that on top of scripture and we distort what it's actually saying. The other thing is we miss what is there in the original context for those people and then therefore lack understanding of what they intended.

Mac: 13:18

So let's do some work there. If I could transition us and talk, let's talk about justice for a moment, with the goal being how does the Bible present this concept? I'd like to do two things. I want to give a quick flyover of the word justice in the Bible and then hopefully land on a definition that is somewhat palatable for us as we move forward. So first, the flyover, and this is like 30,000 feet. There's so much more nuance to this that we could get into, so I'm just gonna kind of do a high level overview here and scratch the surface.

Mac: 13:50

But I think if we wanna understand justice in the Bible, we need to start with God. And the reason why is because, according to the scriptures, god is just. It's one of God's primary attributes, and you'll see this in numerous places. For instance, deuteronomy 32, 4,. God is the rock, his works are perfect and all of his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just as he. And there's several tons of other references that talk about how God is just, perfectly just through and through, and cares about justice. Okay, so that's the first level. God is just. God invites a people to belong to him and to embody God's ways in the world. That's the people of Israel in the Old Testament. So the people of God are supposed to embody the character of God and this is why, throughout the Old Testament you'll notice, they're commanded to live justly. God is just and so they're commanded to reflect God's character by living justly as well.

Mac: 14:48

Miroslav Volf, in his seminal work, exclusion and Embrace, does a lot of work on this topic. He says this in doing justice, israel was to imitate her God who works, vindication and justice for all the oppressed. That's a quote from Psalm 103, six. Doing justice, he continues doing justice. Struggling against injustice was not an optional extra of Israelite faith. It stood at the very core. To know God is to do justice.

Mac: 15:17

Now there are many words in Hebrew, um, that capture this idea of justice. There isn't just one. The two most common are mishpat and tzedakah. Mishpat occurs over 400 times and the root word for tzedakah occurs over 500 times. And then, when you get to the New Testament, the Greek word is dikaiosune and it occurs 283 times in the New Testament. I'm naming those numbers so that we can appreciate that this is not a minor theme, but actually a very major theme. It's circled back to with a high degree of frequency and even perhaps redundancy.

Mac: 16:00

The primary mistake I notice some people make in understanding this idea of justice and sometimes it's translated righteousness is to assume that it's just about my relationship with God. But to unpack a lot of study, I'll just say this that justice or righteousness in the Bible is both a vertical thing. So, yes, it has to do with your relationship with God, being rightly related with God, but it also has to do with being rightly related to other people, and this is why there's all sorts of commands in scripture that talk about connect the idea of living justly with how you treat other people. Just a couple of quick examples so that you know I'm not making this up. One of my favorites is in Leviticus 23, 22, when it tells the Israelites hey, when you're harvesting your crop, don't harvest right up to the edges. In other words, don't use all of the crop on yourselves. Rather intentionally leave some for the foreigner and the poor residing among you. I am the Lord.

Mac: 17:03

So the prophets are constantly then making appeals in this direction. For example, in Hosea 12.6, there's this command to maintain love and justice. In Amos 5.15, establish justice. And then we've quoted Micah 6.8 a couple times now about just this command to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly. So that's kind of an overview.

Mac: 17:24

God is just God's. People are called to embody God's character in the world. So we're called to live justly. This is why, by the way, god gets so upset when his people fail to live justly. There's sort of this scathing rebuke of the Israelites in Amos 5, where they're still showing up to worship and he's like I despise. Your religious festivals and your assemblies are like a stench to me, and the reason why is because they're neglecting right relationship horizontally. And so he challenges them no, you need to start practicing relational justice. Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream.

Mac: 18:04

So Jesus then comes along and he stands in line with the Hebrew prophets and with this theme of biblical justice. Jesus, as God in the flesh, embodies the very justice of God. He lives perfectly, just or righteously, and he calls his disciples then to live the same way. And of course it's clear, it's integrated into Jesus's teachings Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And he reams out the religious leaders who are tithing their spices but neglect the weightier matters of the law mercy, love and justice. So I don't know. Maybe that's my attempt to give a quick overview. Anything you guys would fill in. Is this making sense? Is it clear? What would you guys add or change to that?

Josiah: 18:52

Yeah, I think nothing to add, but maybe just to point out an important part for us to understand is the right relationship with God and the right relationship with people. Right relationship with God and the right relationship with people and I think it is very, it's very easy as Christians to be to make everything, especially in the evangelical context, that everything is about my right relationship with God and it can become very, it can become a very individualistic religion right, that everything's about me. I came to God, my life has changed. Now I go to church on Sundays and everything's different about my life. But I have neglected what that means for the justice that God wants to not just enact in the greater world but in the relationships around me, that God wants to make his relationship with me right but also my relationships with others right.

Katie: 19:47

Yeah, yeah, I went through a study guide maybe five years ago about just highlighting all the places justice was mentioned. Maybe not all the places it wasn't as many pages as the numbers you just named, Mac, but just the way that justice was a theme throughout the New Testament but also the old, and that was just really eyeopening to me. Like I think for a long time I had a tendency of focusing more on the New Testament but, man, when you really anchor it in the Old Testament and you understand what's going on there, it opened up this whole new like awareness of how important justice was for the Israelites and how.

Katie: 20:23

Jesus fulfilled that.

Mac: 20:24

Totally. I got into like a two-year total nerd moment where I was deeply into the book of Leviticus and that was my biggest takeaway was here you have this group of people who have been victims of injustice, coming out of slavery in Egypt. They're now like essentially being given a fresh start, and most of Leviticus is designed to say here's how you're gonna relate to me in worship and then here's how you're gonna live justly among one another, with one another. And, of course, josiah, as you said, like Jesus, does not let us separate the vertical and the horizontal. This is why, when he's asked, hey, what's the most important law, he says hey, it's loving God with your whole self, and it's then loving your neighbor as yourself. There are two sides of the same coin. So let's get at a definition.

Mac: 21:19

One definition I used in a sermon a few, maybe a couple, months ago. I'm just gonna reuse it here is that justice is the divinely ordered way of relating to one another in human society. So the key there is just to understand that it's about justice, is about enacting God's ways in the world. It's about wanting to see, then, all things that are wrong made right. John Mark Comer says justice about making wrong things right, crooked things straight. So it's really just about wanting to see God's kingdom be a reality, which means that the places in the world where it's not a reality we should be fighting against those working to see God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so does that work. Do you think that definition works?

Katie: 22:09

I like it.

Adam: 22:10

Okay, yes, cool Cool.

Mac: 22:14

So, all right, Well, there's lots of quotes and amazing things people have said about this topic, but I want to transition and kind of turn it over to you guys to get us going, and we've hinted at this. But how do you see Jesus, you know, standing in line with the Hebrew prophets and the Hebrew scripture, embodying and enacting justice throughout his life and ministry and enacting justice throughout his life and ministry. If we're called as disciples to live like Jesus and Jesus lived justly let's start by attending to how we see Jesus putting this on display for us.

Josiah: 22:45

Yeah, well, first off, jesus explicitly taught about this topic. So Jesus was a rabbi and taught as a teacher and was explicitly teaching on it throughout his teaching. So we see it right in the Sermon on the Mount in the Beatitudes Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And, mac, I learned this when you preached on it recently, but also you've already spoken about it earlier that that word for righteousness could also be translated into justice, which maybe helps us realize that I don't know about you guys, but the word righteousness has its own connotations for me.

Mac: 23:30

Yes.

Josiah: 23:31

It makes me think of having to be perfect, right and making sure I never make a mistake.

Katie: 23:37

Yeah, Kind of like a moralism kind of question.

Mac: 23:40

Right. Well, sometimes when you're doing a word study in the original languages, you go, oh, it could be translated this way. But the question is okay, but how should it be translated? The reason why I think that should be translated justice, not just could be is because in the Beatitudes, jesus is quoting every one of the Beatitudes, he's either quoting or alluding to passages in the Old Testament that are associated with God's coming kingdom, his delivering grace, and that one in particular. He's quoting Isaiah 61. And three times in that passage it talks about God as the one bringing justice, and every time that Hebrew word that's used there is translated into the Greek, it's the same word that Jesus uses here. So clearly, in Isaiah 61, it means justice. If we're gonna follow the logic, it should be translated justice.

Josiah: 24:30

Yeah, yeah, that was very interesting to me and helpful for me in growing up in a Christian context where righteousness was I'm not saying it was used. It just had connotations of me having to be as perfect as God is in order to have good relationship with him. And that's not what. That's most likely not what Jesus is saying here. So, anyway, so that we have another space where he's teaching and he says unless your righteousness or your justice surpasses that of the Pharisees spots where he was multiple places where he's pointing out the flaws within the Pharisees' teaching, where they were neglecting the more important matters. So, yeah, jesus was explicitly teaching this topic to his disciples, so it must have been very important.

Mac: 25:18

Yeah, yeah. You can't just skirt the teachings of Jesus if you're going to follow Jesus right Like this is the one thing that I keep trying to name.

Mac: 25:27

We're in a series if you're part of our community on the Sermon on the Mount called the Way of Jesus, and the most shocking statistic that I've noticed recently that's kind of grabbed my attention and sort of is driving me right now in ministry is that 63% of Americans adult Americans identify as Christian. But upon deeper analysis of what that means, only 4% are living out the teachings of Jesus. So that means we're living in a culture where many people are sort of cultural Christians but they're not practicing Christians. And it seems, if you wanna be a practicing Christian someone who a disciple, an apprentice, someone who's wanting to be in intimate relationship with Jesus, becoming like Jesus and doing what Jesus did you've got to know what his teachings are.

Katie: 26:16

Yeah, right, yeah.

Mac: 26:18

Cause you can't claim to follow Jesus and then just kind of completely ignore everything he said and did. That doesn't make sense.

Adam: 26:24

Yep, yep.

Katie: 26:26

Another thing I would add is, I think Jesus sort of prophetically exposed injustice around him. When you look at the things he said and what he did, yeah, he really did. He did just that. So one example that comes to mind is like the cleansing of the temple. In the gospels you have the story of Jesus coming into the temple courts and finds that people were kind of buying and selling things there.

Katie: 26:49

And okay, one thing I learned recently, which I don't think I understood previously, is that it wouldn't be abnormal to be like buying and selling things kind of around the temple. You had Israelites coming in to celebrate Passover, right, and they would have had to like, maybe purchase animals for sacrifice or exchange their money, and it wasn't uncommon for that general practice. But I think what was happening here is that people were being exploited. People who were from far away, who were in a position of sort of powerlessness, were being exploited. People who were from far away, who were in a position of sort of powerlessness, were being exploited, and the place where that exploitation was happening was in the temple, like in God's sacred space. The place that is supposed to be honored was being used to perpetuate injustice.

Mac: 27:29

Yeah, that's right. And maybe another way that I think that that narrative is misunderstood is some people sort of see Jesus losing his sauce, like he just is so filled with rage he kind of loses his temper. But Jesus was a prophet. He's more than a prophet but not less than a prophet. And if you look at the way the prophets functioned in the Old Testament, their primary job wasn't to predict the future. They did do some of that, but it was predominantly to call Israel back into covenant faithfulness, righteousness and justice and alignment with God's will and God's ways. And throughout the Old Testament, when you read the prophets, you'll notice they often had to do pretty dramatic and symbolic things to draw attention to Israel's lack of faithfulness. So for instance, like Hosea had to actually marry an unfaithful woman to go this is God in Israel, you're the unfaithful woman right.

Josiah: 28:26

Didn't he also have to shave his hair, or was that a different one? Shave his head and then drift his hair into three different parts of the wind to represent different things. Jeremiah had to bury like a belt and then drift his hair into three different parts of the wind to represent different things.

Mac: 28:36

Jeremiah had to bury like a belt and then let it decay, and then come back and go. Hey, israel, this is what you've become. You've become ruined. Ezekiel had to lay on his side for an extended period of time to represent the siege of Jerusalem. Isaiah had it the worst he had to walk around naked and barefoot for three years as a sign against Egypt and Cush. So it was just like this. So sometimes we forget that Jesus is standing in line with these prophets who did these visible things to draw attention to reality and to your point, katie. That's what's going on. It's prophetic drama. Jesus is doing something dramatic and prophetic to draw attention to the exploitation you're naming.

Katie: 29:21

Yeah, yeah again. Anchoring what Jesus does in the Old Testament helps us understand better what he's doing. I think another example of him exposing injustice is healing on the Sabbath.

Katie: 29:33

We see him heal people and raise people from the dead, and that angers the religious leaders, and I think what he's doing is he's exposing the injustice of their legalism right, like you have this rule that is purportedly anchored in God's law but it doesn't align with God's heart, like what's more important here healing someone or carrying out this rule that you created. That actually undermines God's heart for people, and so by healing and kind of challenging them, I think he's exposing injustice that's actually embedded in the law that they held up.

Mac: 30:09

Yeah, I mean, and I would add, now that you've brought up the point that Jesus is sort of exposing the injustice around him. I would add to that list the way he relates to women. It was a patriarchal culture where women were treated not much better than slaves or property. And Jesus welcomes women to be his disciples, which was unheard of, and they're the first ones to actually encounter him after the resurrection.

Josiah: 30:33

So that would have been exposing a provocative exposure of injustice around him right yeah, and not in a way that would have benefited his ministry, right Right. So it's not like it was for self-promotion in any sort of way. He was doing so because he was enacting the justice of God's heart.

Mac: 30:54

And maybe we'll get into this. Most of the people that expose injustice don't do it to their benefit. They actually pay a steep price and ultimately we see Jesus paying that price. He is crucified for exposing injustice, and the cross itself is an exposure of injustice, because he was in fact innocent. Yeah, and speaking to that, so maybe one that I would add is that Jesus died and rose from the dead to establish the justice of God. So you know, jesus went to the cross to fix all that's broken in the world and to set it right, and this obviously includes the vertical. We've named this. While we were yet sinners, christ died for us so he restores our relationship with God.

Mac: 31:39

But I think, especially in evangelical churches, we often miss this. The cross also reconciles us horizontally. I mean, ephesians 2 talks about how, through Jesus's death on the cross, the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile was torn down, and so Jesus, through his death and resurrection, actually defeats the principalities and powers that hold humanity hostage to sin and that drive the injustice in the world. This is why Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead was to defeat injustice itself, right? So not only did Jesus confront injustice in his life and ministry, but he died to put injustice to death once and for all.

Mac: 32:19

And here's what I'm excited about. Is that this actually, I think, needs to be part of how we present the good news to people Again, kind of going back to the vertical and the horizontal. So much of our gospel presentation is, just as you were saying, josiah, like this individualistic. Here's what God did for you Not to negate that, but the gospel is so much bigger than that, and so part of what Jesus accomplishes, part of what the good news is about, is restoring all that's broken in the world, and I think we actually miss an opportunity with people to name that. God is a God who, through Jesus, brings about redemption and justice that we all crave. I've noticed with some of my liberal friends it's like man, you guys really do have some of the values of the kingdom, but you don't really want the king and you can't have the justice of the kingdom without the king you know, yeah, yeah, it's such a good point.

Katie: 33:14

This, to me, hits on that tension of living in like the already and the not yet. Like Jesus's death inaugurated in the reign of God and the kingdom of justice, but it's not yet fully realized or fully consummated. Jesus shows us that God's kingdom is one that like makes all things right in the world, like it does justice, and so when we work for justice, we're partnering with God to bring about his kingdom in the world. Like it does justice, and so when we work for justice, we're partnering with God to bring about his kingdom on the earth.

Katie: 33:41

I was listening to an NT Wright podcast lately and he's really helped sort of deepen my thinking on this stuff and he said that he said, basically, the things we do in the present will somehow be made part of this new world that God is going to make. Jesus talks about how giving a cup of cold water to somebody because they believe in him will not go unremembered, and he says that even small gestures like that will be taken up and woven into this great tapestry of God's new creation. And so I just I love that picture of how we're not supposed to just sort of sit back and like leave certain things in our head or pray or kind of wait passively for the end of the world where all things are made right. We're actually called because we believe in Jesus's death and resurrection. We're called to partner with God and bringing about justice today.

Mac: 34:26

Yeah, yeah. It almost seems like for some people it's just about praying a prayer and then you get to go to heaven when you die and nothing here really matters. And I hear what NT Wright and you're saying, challenging that, no, you're to be working for that right now. But then there's other people that seem to want that right now and they're willing to fight for it right now, which is great. But sometimes they don't recognize that like, yeah, but it's not going to become a reality apart from Jesus.

Mac: 34:53

Like you want racism to end? Great Me too. Only Jesus is going to be able to bring that to an end. You want a world free of misogyny? Great Me too. Only Jesus is going to end up creating a world where that's actually a reality. You want a world free of exploitation? Yeah, me too. Me too, and we are to be fighting for that right now. But we're fighting for it in the way of Jesus, knowing that he is the one who's going to finally bring it about in the new heavens and the new earth. And I like that idea of, like, every effort, every action, somehow God is going to gather up as part of establishing that new creation.

Katie: 35:28

Yeah, we're bringing the kingdom here now and working to create that new creation.

Josiah: 35:33

Yep, yeah, yeah. So we're talking a lot about what this looks like, how Jesus is calling, might be calling us to act justly. What does that look like as a church then? So we're talking about the concept and we're understanding the importance, we've defined it, we've set all this up. So now what does that look like if we're a local body of believers? What does it look like for us to act justly then?

Katie: 36:02

Yep, it's an important question. We are the church and we're speaking to the church. Yeah, I might say that the first half of this work just starts by being able to spot injustice. Work just starts by being able to spot injustice, and I would go further to say that if something's not impacting you, it might be harder to see it. Not it might. It will be harder to see it. If there's an injustice and you're not impacted by it, you're going to have to work a little harder. Let me give an example here. At Crosspoint, maybe what?

Katie: 36:34

Four or five years ago we made the shift to allowing women to preach and we had a number of conversations and we sort of engaged and for the most part, people were aligned with that. Some people weren't, which is fine. They had their different reasons for beliefs and their convictions and how they read scripture. But I remember one person saying something like hey, things are working fine the way they are, so why would we change it? And I remember thinking, okay, well, fine, for who? You're not someone who is wanting to hear a woman preach. You're not a woman who's wanting to preach. So maybe you're not understanding the impact like someone who's actually impacted by the way things are.

Katie: 37:14

Another one might be when we buy our clothes. There's this term like fast fashion. When we buy things that because they're cheap on Amazon and they're whatever we want them clothes, whatever you name it we don't always know the hidden cost to creating that thing. Was it created in fair working conditions? Was it using child labor, and what are the injustices that went on to deliver this thing to you? We have to work harder to see that and know that we could actually be perpetuating injustice that doesn't impact us, and so it's easy just to kind of have blinders on. So my point is that if you're not negatively impacted, we're going to have to look a little harder to spot it.

Mac: 37:52

Yeah, I wonder too if we could maybe make a distinction too about like injustice within the church and like matters of justice outside the wall, like in society. You know what I mean and I see your point carrying through to both of those right.

Mac: 38:10

Your first example had to do with like hey, women preaching. Not only is that a scriptural thing, like in equipping of all God's people to use their gifts and activate their calling, but then the second example of like hey, how you get your clothes, is more of a societal thing. You know what I mean. And we have to be able to spot injustice both within the church and outside the church.

Katie: 38:35

Yeah, it's a good distinction. Another example, maybe in the church category that they name in the book, is loyalty culture. So Scott and Laura talk about something called toxic loyalty. Basically, they say, hey, loyalty is a good thing, generally like, loyalty is a virtue, but when it obstructs justice and prevents people from doing what is right, it becomes toxic. When it becomes the highest value, it can become unhealthy. The example they give is Rachel Denhollander, who's most well-known for exposing sexual abuse with Larry Nassar of the USA Gymnastics. But prior to that, she had called attention to sexual abuse within her church and when she and others came forward, they were called divisive, they were told not to report it to the authorities and they were even removed from volunteer positions within the church for speaking out about what was happening. All in the name of loyalty. You're being divisive, you're not being loyal, you're not being unifying. So another way of saying this would be to say, yeah, loyalty is important, but loyalty to who, like? Loyalty to an organization or loyalty to God, like when those two conflict, where is your loyalty?

Mac: 39:42

And.

Katie: 39:43

I think when the loyalty to the organization becomes primary, that's when you have what they call this toxic loyalty and that can get in the way of working for justice.

Mac: 39:51

Yeah, and unfortunately, even though we've made a distinction between injustice in the world and injustice within the church, often those mirror each other. So, for instance, in a company where the CEO has all the power, well, the church has sort of adopted the CEO lead pastor mentality and oftentimes loyalty to the lead pastor then sort of compels people to close their eyes or ignore injustices by that pastor. Right, I've noticed, being in a church for a long time there's lots of ways that injustice flows through or in a church. Sometimes people who are more affluent get special treatment, get more attention, get a seat at the decision-making table, whereas people who are maybe less important, less affluent, don't get as much attention or recognition.

Mac: 40:45

Right, that's an injustice that scripture actually speaks to in James chapter two. Like you're not to do that, you're not to show favoritism that way. Right, you're not to show favoritism that way, right? So I guess what I'm saying is kind of like when it'd be easy to talk about justice and point out the injustices of others, rather than like, okay, well, maybe we need to orient to this the way Jesus talked about, which is to imagine we have a massive log in our eye, rather than like try to pick out the speck in someone else's eye. You know what I mean. Yeah.

Katie: 41:19

Yeah, I think, unfortunately, we could have a really long conversation about all the injustices within the church.

Mac: 41:23

Well, and we've, honestly, we've alluded to a lot of them, you know, along the way, especially in the toxic sort of naming some of the toxins in the soil. So, okay, well, maybe I'll just propel us forward. Oh, go ahead, josiah, I just noticed you're doing a lot of things that are indicating there's a finger in the air.

Katie: 41:43

There's the deep breath.

Josiah: 41:44

Well, I said, yeah, after that sentence you said and then I was certain I was going to say what I was thinking, and then it left my brain.

Josiah: 41:53

And then it left my brain, yeah, I was going to say that it's almost like this concept of justice needs to be understood as like a foundational concept before we even talk about the other things that we've been talking about, the other toxins in the soil, because when you mentioned the whole toxic loyalty thing, I'm just imagining that if you're in a situation and you're feeling divisive because you realize this is going to cause a big uproar, this is going to cause a big mess, if I say something understanding that God's heart is for justice, that things are to be made right, that there would be no one victimized, that no matter how important the work that's happening at this church is, this heart for things being right is core to God's character and it should be to ours as well.

Josiah: 42:56

So it just becomes a weighting system of like which thing is more important? And if something is a part of God's character, it should be very important to us as a church. So it almost helps us in our decision-making and like if something is worth bringing up or if it's worth talking about or worth moving towards. We need to. We need to understand the weightier matters, and I guess what I hear everyone saying in this conversation is that justice is a very weighty matter when it comes to God's kingdom.

Mac: 43:25

Yes, At the heart of justice is doing the right thing, even when it's the hard thing. And so underneath this is a true commitment, a deep conviction and commitment to doing the right thing even when it's the hard thing. And I don't think we just get to fill in the term justice with whatever we want. You know what I mean. Like that's the important thing here. Scott McKnight has this great quote in the book. He says justice means to be empowered through the spirit to do the right thing, and the right thing is what Jesus teaches. So we're talking about, we talk about a commitment, a weightier commitment to do the right thing. We're talking about enacting the teachings of Jesus together. And I'm assuming I'm just going to name this I'm assuming that not only is doing the right thing the hard thing, doing the just thing is often going to be the more difficult choice of the two, but it naturally is going to be costly to you.

Mac: 44:21

Living in the way of Jesus involves cruciformity. Jesus's way involves exposing and pursuing justice, and it's going to take place at cost to yourself. As you were saying before, Josiah. It's not like, as Jesus did this. People were applauding him. It ended up costing Jesus his very life.

Mac: 44:42

And actually, when you look at all those incredible examples throughout church history of people we'd hold up as, wow, what an incredible example of someone who gave their life to pursuing God's kingdom come. Someone who gave their life to pursuing God's kingdom, come the very justice of God. Many of them paid a price for it. You think about Dietrich Bonhoeffer deciding to return to Germany and ultimately dying in a concentration camp. You think about Martin Luther King, and on and on it goes. Oscar Romero, and you know what I mean. Like all these people, Desmond Tutu, all these people paid a price, a really steep price, for advocating for justice. Yep, and I wonder okay, you guys are just sitting there, I'm going to provoke you Like, is the church willing to pay that price? Are we willing to pay the price of being on the side of God's justice? Or do we look at like, oh, if we do this, it's going to cost us, People aren't going to be happy or whatever, and so we just, like, remain silent and maybe even complicit in the injustice.

Katie: 45:49

You know what I mean.

Josiah: 45:51

I do. I mentioned that the shift towards allowing women to preach and be in positions of leadership that they weren't before was an act of justice for us, like that was a. It was a clear understanding for us to say no. We want to be more faithful to scripture and allow everyone to express their gifts here. That did not. That was not met with applause from everybody.

Mac: 46:20

No, and let me double click on that, because some people accused our community of being culturally complicit and allowing women to preach and teach Right and my-.

Josiah: 46:29

Like we're neglecting certain scriptures because they are inconvenient neglecting certain scriptures because they are inconvenient.

Mac: 46:41

That and my counter response was actually an environment where women are treated as different than men is culturally conditioned, and it started in Genesis 3 with the fall. One of the consequences that God outlines for Adam and Eve is now there's going to be enmity between the two of you and he's going to dominate over you. Hierarchy did not exist before that moment, and now all of a sudden it does exist, and so this is my opinion. I'm not saying all of our listeners need to agree. This is my opinion, but I actually think that church cultures who maintain a patriarchal hierarchy where men are in charge over women is actually sort of perpetuating the fall, and it's actually culturally conditioned. And the kingdom of God there's no Jew or Greek slave, nor free male nor female, and so part of the kingdom coming again.

Mac: 47:29

This is my conviction and is rooted in scripture. At least my understanding of scripture is to go. Yes, so it is a matter of justice. Justice tears down those hierarchies, it tears down the walls that divide people and it creates equal footing at the foot of the cross.

Katie: 47:44

Yeah, I agree with all that and, like Josiah, it feels a little bit disorienting when you make a move in the name of faithfulness and in the name of moving closer in line with what we believe scripture to be saying, and then are accused of capitulating to culture.

Mac: 48:02

It's the worst. Yeah, yeah, it's not fun.

Josiah: 48:06

Well, I think of it this way the announcement of the kingdom and the justice of God rolling into let's just say it's rolling into a local environment is really good news for people who are oppressed and broken and downtrodden, but it's not necessarily good news for the people who have been benefiting from the injustice.

Mac: 48:27

That's right.

Josiah: 48:28

So I guess for us maybe we can when we understand this concept of justice, that it's making things right and it's going to expose the ways that people have been mistreated, we can expect that there will be a disruption in the people's lives who wanted the status quo to stay the same.

Mac: 48:49

And you see that throughout Jesus's ministry. Who are the people that are gathering around Jesus with excitement? It's the downtrodden, it's the marginalized, and so on. Who are the people who are outraged by what Jesus is doing and saying? It's those with power. Right, Because justice is coming, the kingdom of God is breaking in and it's elevating those who have been pushed down and it's lowering those who have been elevated, right yeah.

Katie: 49:15

And even in lowering those who have been elevated, not shaming, not condemning, but inviting them into placing their identity in Christ, and I think there's grace for both.

Mac: 49:24

It's for their own liberation, and good yeah, like exploiting other people to your benefit isn't actually good for you.

Katie: 49:31

Yes, yes, that's the point I was trying to make.

Mac: 49:36

Sorry, I'm getting a little wound up. You're giving me that. Look like. Oh, Mac, you're fine.

Katie: 49:40

No, that was a great. I won't call it a rant. It was a great discussion, that's good.

Josiah: 49:55

Yeah, that's good, yeah. Another way that's probably worth mentioning is just and it kind of goes along with the lines of this is we need to acknowledge when we fail to act justly, and this can happen very explicitly and sort of implicitly right that, like there can be very obvious ways in which we are, our eyes are open to realize oh, I've done something wrong, I need to repent, um.

Josiah: 50:08

But also there are there are times when something's happening and we sit by and don't want to be the one to cause the disruption, right In the name of not not wanting to be divisive or in other things, um, and I think of a.

Josiah: 50:24

I actually have an example from our. It was a large number of years ago when, towards the beginning of my tenure here, I remember I was organizing some youth worship leaders who had been leading and they were promised to get paid for their leadership because we were sort of in a spot of needing some things.

Josiah: 50:50

And it was a large ask. They were leading on Sunday morning and having to do a fair amount of things. So we had agreed me and my colleague, who is not here anymore, agreed to say hey, this is what we're going to pay you, a certain amount for your extra efforts because we need to rely on you. Long story short, you fast forward some time and when it was time to pay them, there was resistance from my colleague and actually even said that maybe he'd never said that, and there was a little bit of an uproar from the worship leaders that I was helping to manage in the fact that they weren't getting paid, and I felt pretty powerless.

Josiah: 51:39

I had said some things but it really wasn't my call, budget-wise, to do it, and I remember it was shortly after Cameron was hired on staff that he came in and when he heard about it, his first reaction was he went directly to the source of like, hey, what's going on? And essentially used his position because he was overseeing some of the youth stuff to say, no, we're going to do this right and we're going to make it right, because we told you we were going to pay you, we're going to pay you, and within a couple of weeks checks were cut and I remember from someone who didn't feel like I had the power to say something, when someone else came in and advocated for that he could have not done anything because it probably was a disruption.

Katie: 52:29

It probably made lots of people, especially being new.

Josiah: 52:31

Yes, he came in new and said no, this is wrong, we're just going to, we need to make it right. And it was such a freeing feeling from the person who was powerless, you know, and I'm sure even more so for the people who were waiting to get paid, who couldn't say anything and advocate for themselves, someone to come in to say I'm going to use the position I have to act justly and, even though I'm not the one who made the mistake, I want to be part of making it right and I think it made it. Yeah, anyway, I just like being on the other side of that. It was very, very empowering and meaningful. Yeah, anyway, I just like being on the other side of that. It was very, very empowering and meaningful.

Mac: 53:11

Yeah, it also strikes me as significant that we need to be able to share these stories because, like the early church didn't hide their failures to do the same, like there's stories of how the early church was compromised when it came to injustice and so on, and then it talks about how they made it right. So one example, for instance, would be Acts 6, when you had the distribution of food to the widows, and the Greek women were being overlooked in favor of the Jewish women and similar to Cameron's attitude. When the leaders found out about it, they attended to it, they did something about it and actually appointed a team of people to make sure there was even distribution, all of whom, by the way, were Greek. But they made it right. Oftentimes, when we prepare to take communion, we make it that individual thing like do you have any sin? You should confess that.

Mac: 53:58

I'm not saying that's bad, but that's actually not what Paul was doing in that moment. The church at Corinth was divided along socioeconomic lines, and so you had poor people had to work all day and you had the wealthy people who didn't have to work as long. They were getting there first and eating all the food, and so Paul is reaming them out because he's like the table is a place where you come together as equals and you are doing the exact opposite, right? He doesn't hide that Like.

Mac: 54:29

This is in the scripture for all of us to see that, whoa, even while they're celebrating the Lord's supper, taking communion, there's injustice reflected at the table and he goes after it, right? So I think it does really good work. I'm just going to assume most churches have some layers of injustice, some stories like that where all of a sudden, these volunteers aren't getting paid, and those are crucial moments. Those are Kairos moments where we have to decide are we really committed to doing the right thing, even when it maybe puts strain on the budget or messes things up? Messes up how I'm going to step onto the staff team or whatever. Are we willing to do the right thing?

Katie: 55:07

Yeah, and up messes up, how I'm going to step onto the staff team or whatever. Are we willing to do the right thing? Yeah, and kind of two buckets I hear you guys naming. One is when you helped in some way perpetuate the injustice and one is when you actually didn't, but being complicit in it. Like, but to do nothing or to not speak up would be complicit in an injustice.

Mac: 55:24

Yeah, and then you look at the broader church right now and all the scandals that are being reported. Oftentimes it did involve some reports early on that were ignored, or not. Someone didn't attend to it and do the right thing, and over time, um, it made it a hundred times worse than had they just done the right thing right from the beginning, and so many more people end up getting hurt. There's more victims. There's right.

Katie: 55:46

Yeah, yeah, okay. We've said a lot. We've talked about justice at length. We've talked about what gets in the way of it, how can we can try to act justly as a church. What would you guys say kind of pivoting here? What would you say are some concrete practices that we can put?

Mac: 56:07

into place to embody this. I want to circle back to something you said earlier, Katie, that I think should be a practice and is so important. You highlighted the significance of empathy.

Katie: 56:18

I did.

Mac: 56:18

Yeah, you were talking about how, when it doesn't really impact you, you likely aren't going to see it. Yes, and so practice one is to grow your empathy, because I think if you're not personally impacted by an injustice, it's easy for you to ignore it. Like if you're insulated from it, you may not even see it, and I know for me. Let me give you an example it would be my son, griffin. Before we had Griffin, who has Down syndrome, I felt very insulated from individuals who had disabilities, and now that I have a child with a disability, I have a whole new set of eyes as to how Griffin is being treated, how people interact with them and so on and so forth. Right, and now when I encounter other people with disabilities, I relate to them so much differently because of Griffin. I relate to them so much differently than had Griffin. I relate to them so much differently than had I before I had Griffin. That make sense.

Mac: 57:13

And what's going on? There is empathy. I now am inside that person's experience in a different way. I relate to their parents and their child differently. So my point is if maybe you hear some area that's being named as unjust and you're unmoved by that, right, and I get the term. Justice is complicated. Oftentimes there's clashing justices, which Miroslav Volf does a great job talking about in Exclusion and Embrace. It's complicated find yourself unmoved by an area that's being named as unjust. It might be worth really slowing down and imagine, like putting yourself in those people's shoes and imagining their experience, so that you can be moved to action.

Josiah: 57:58

Yeah, yeah, it's a really worthwhile prayer to say God, I'm okay getting disrupted in my own personal peace to be a part of your justice in the world. I do think there's this time when I was in high school we had a couple of people who one of them came to our church and he had a disability and he was just a wonderful person. He's still someone that if I saw him in person Colin Adam knows him too he would run up and give me a hug. But a wonderful person, but he.

Josiah: 58:36

I remember in high school he and a couple of other people they sat, he along with some of the other people who were either had disabilities or other things. They would all sit at the same lunch table and they were like the kids. Everybody either didn't understand or they thought they were kind of gross or things like that. And I remember that and I remember making the choice because I knew one of them had some access to go sit with him at the lunch table and I would often and I felt uncomfortable the first couple of times because you're just not sure how they're going to feel about you or all that stuff. But when you start to get, when you allow yourself to be proximate to things that are an issue, you start to notice more things that are an issue. Yes, and I remember very specifically there were these.

Josiah: 59:24

There were kids in school that liked to make fun of some of these people from the table and Colin was a friend and they would always do this thing where they would drop change when he walked past because he would stop and pick it up, no matter what. It didn't matter who dropped it, like if there was money on the ground. He was very aware of it and he didn't realize people were even teasing him for it. They would laugh at him for it. And I remember then making the conscious effort to try to walk next to him when he walked past. And then when people would drop change, we just like instead of I don't know, maybe I could have tried to fight him or something like try to push people around, but rather I would just walk next to him and would just walk past instead of going to pick up the change. Be like, okay, let's just walk over here and try to distract him, try to make I don't know, it was just my effort to be like your way of helping.

Josiah: 1:00:19

Just trying to help, but I guess my point is that story came to mind in the sense that that, like I don't know if I would have been empathetic towards him without having a relationship with him.

Mac: 1:00:30

That's right. Yeah, I guess it's just to say uh, our willingness to live justly is connected to our empathy, and this isn't just with people with disabilities, it's every area where there's someone who's being mistreated. You know, I know that the whole idea of racism is complicated for people. Some see it, some don't. But lean in, Talk to people and listen to their experiences.

Mac: 1:00:57

If you listen to some of our comments about women and you're like I don't see it. I've talked to women and their experiences. You press in with empathy and you get on the inside of how someone is thinking and feeling and you come out different on the other end.

Katie: 1:01:15

Yeah. So that leads us into another practice that I would just name as educating yourself. That's a great way. Getting proximate and talking to other people about their experience is a great way to educate yourself. There is so much information out there now podcasts, books, resources, blogs, I mean whatever. Take any area of injustice and just engage the material out there. We've talked about women in the church. We've talked about sexual abuse and harassment.

Katie: 1:01:42

Another one you just touched on, mac, is like racial injustice. That's one that I really started opening my eyes to maybe five, six years ago, and there was just a lot that I didn't see until I chose to really step into certain spaces and engage resources. I mean, okay, I found out only recently that we still have deeds, like property deeds in Milwaukee that have racial restrictions written into them. They're not legal, they're not legally enforceable. It was struck down in the 60s but the deeds still have the language like no persons of color may purchase this house. That language still exists in a lot of these. That blew my mind. That blew my mind, and so then I started learning about kind of redlining and all of that. So I guess I would say it's important to take the time to educate yourself about injustices that exist, because the first step in working towards justice is awareness of places where it's not present.

Mac: 1:02:31

Yeah, and there are really smart Christians who are wrestling with these things from a Jesus-centered, scripturally-based perspective. So it's not like again, don't hear that in terms of, like the culture warsy stuff. No, no, no, starting point is the person of Jesus and God's word and then, as we build up from that, we engage.

Katie: 1:02:53

Right. If God's standard is justice God's standard for what's right and wrong anchors all of this Then the way we define justice or injustice is by things that don't match up with God's standard. That's right.

Josiah: 1:03:06

Yep, yeah.

Josiah: 1:03:14

Another one would name is to consider your own role in the injustices that are happening, maybe in your world.

Josiah: 1:03:20

This would be maybe you have done something to wrong someone or have continually done so and you're realizing it and you're cleaning up a mess and making things right, but also maybe some of the ways, um, that, uh, maybe, just as we're talking, you're thinking, um, you know, some of these issues seemed like non-issues to me and I'm realizing that if, if this is an issue that God cares about, um, there's, there's been ways that I've been complicit.

Josiah: 1:03:56

I guess I would just name that it is scary to step into matters of justice when you have something to lose from the process. I think it's worth acknowledging that the internal resistance of I don't want to deal with it because I don't want to disrupt my peace is a very normal feeling to have. If you're stepping into something and, rather than trying to villainize yourself or others or get defensive, just realize it's normal to feel an internal resistance because I'm actively choosing to step into something that's going to disrupt my own status quo. That's just human nature and to normalize that. I will feel scared, deciding to become proximate to something that is probably close to God's heart and normalize the fact that I will feel scared, but I can still do it.

Mac: 1:04:47

Yeah, I mean it's going to require you to go outside your comfort zone and obviously there's growth when you do that and we as a church community want to put opportunities before people to participate in pushing past their comfort zone and being part of justice making. And there's lots of opportunities, if you're part of our community and have never done that, to step into. We have a student mentoring program for kids who need some extra support. In our community We've got a racial peacemaking group which is working with bridge builders, and an organization in Milwaukee that renovates neighborhoods Really cool, I mean we've had a group of people going down there every month and just phenomenal experience down there.

Mac: 1:05:28

We did the human trafficking episode last episode, so there's an opportunity to press in there, celebrate recovery, supporting people in recovery, work I don't know food pantry like there's all sorts of stuff we're doing to go. This is an embodiment of God's ways and actually caring for people. And, as Martin Luther King said, you know, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. We want you to be part of that arc, you know.

Katie: 1:05:56

Yeah, that's a good word. All right, so maybe let me try to summarize our conversation. Today, we keep coming back to this idea of Tov. If we wanna be like a Tov church or a church that's centered on goodness, then we will need to care about justice. Churches that nurture goodness will care about justice and I think they'll orient themselves around what is right and true and good. They'll work to acknowledge and understand the things that get in the way of justice, such as loyalty culture, and they'll commit themselves to doing the right thing even when it's hard.

Mac: 1:06:27

Yeah Well, thanks for joining us today. We hope you, you know, got a lot out of this episode. Next time we're going to discuss another nutrient, um, and that is service. We're going to talk about how tangible acts of self-sacrificial love can create a healthy church culture. So we hope you'll tune in.

Adam: 1:06:45

Praxis is recorded and produced at Crosspoint Community Church. You can find out more about the show and our church at crosspointwicom. If you have any questions, comments or have any suggestions for future topics, feel free to send us an email. Also, if you enjoy the show, consider leaving a review and if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts.