Justice ministry

The talk at tonight's LCF big group meeting was the best one yet. It was titled "Hope in Action: the New Mandate for Human Rights in the 21st Century". The speaker was Victor Boutros, an attorney with the Civil Rights division of the United States Department of Justice. His undergraduate major was in philosophy, he did his JD at the University of Chicago, and had worked with the International Justice Mission (an American Christian non-profit human rights organisation that operates internationally and utilises lawyers to rescue victims of human rights abuses, such as slavery, human trafficking, forced prostitution and illegal detention) in the past, and he incorporated his experiences with the organisation in his talk. 

It was a thought-provoking, moving presentation. Victor was a brilliant, eloquent and intelligent speaker. He began by saying that there is a difference between the theory of evil and existential evil. Quite apart from abstract debates about the concept of good and evil, there are people out there in our world who cannot believe in a God that is good because of the terrible circumstances they live in. He told us stories about real victims of human rights abuses that IJM had met and helped: Shama, a slave child in India; Jyoti, a child prostitute in Mumbai; and Rosa, a child raped in the Philippines. Slavery isn't over just because America abolished it way back when. Millions of children get kidnapped and sold to brothels in developing countries every year. And in many developing countries, people commit crimes and get off scot free because they have powerful connections in the law enforcement system. For some people, this is reality, this is life. 

Victor defined "injustice" as an abuse of power. It can and does deprive people of their basic rights and liberties. He said that the two components of injustice are coercion (the use of force and/or threats) and deception (falsities to cover up the fact of injustice). Violent liars are the primary perpetrators of injustice. Combatting justice is a twofold step: first, you have to fight deception with truth, and second, you have to bring that truth to a place of power (e.g. before people who can actually do something about the injustice you've identified, such as local magistrates that aren't corrupt) so it can quell coercion. Perpetrators of injustice insult and deride God by intentionally marring others who have been made in His image. While we know they'll face judgment in the end, that doesn't meant that we can leave them be to continue mistreating innocent people. 

He also talked about the human rights movement over time, and how we're living in a new era of human rights engagement today. The first generation of human rights activists worked to establish and define international human rights norms. The second generation tried to get these norms adopted into the domestic legal systems of the various States that had agreed upon their definition at the international level. Our generation has the responsibility of working to have these international and domestic human rights laws actually enforced to help individual victims of human rights abuses. We can't feel alienated because we weren't a part of the generations that pioneered the birth and initial development of human rights, we shouldn't feel dejected because we don't have the opportunity to be Abraham Lincoln or William Wilberforce. The fight's not over, because human rights abuses are still rampant all over the world, and particularly in developing countries. Victor gave a great analogy to describe the disparity between the law on the books and the reality on the ground: people are dying from various forms of injustice, human rights laws are the vaccine, but this vaccine is locked up in warehouses and not getting into the bloodstreams of those who desperately need it. We need to unlock the warehouses and distribute the vaccine to the dying patients. 

So often lawyers think that their skills are too specific to their own legal systems that they can't help bring change to the lives of the needy in developing countries, in contrast to people like doctors or engineers. But this simply isn't true. Lawyers can work across borders to bring about justice and change, they don't have to relegate themselves to providing financial support to people who are out there doing stuff. (I'm not saying that providing financial support is lame, I'm just saying that it's not the only option out there for lawyers who really want to be the ones out there in the field doing the work themselves.)

So what can we do about all this? As Christians, what can we do about all those who are suffering from existential evil and unable to believe that there is in fact a God that is good? As lawyers, what can we do about all the human rights abuses that go on in the world? God hates injustice, and God is good. But if God is good, and all-powerful, why doesn't He do something about all the injustice out there? It's an age-old question. I don't think I'll ever have a satisfactory answer to it. But what I can say is, God can do anything, and the fact that He doesn't just click His fingers to get rid of injustice in an instant really speaks to the notion that He has mandated His people to do His good work. Victor said that God is the vine, and we are His branches. The vine doesn't need the branches, whereas the branches need the vine. When the life force of the vine courses through the branches, it can bear real fruit. The point is, we are meant to be God's ambassadors to battle and triumph over injustice. We are meant to go out there and help the helpless, give hope to the hopeless, not for our own sake but for God's sake.

It wasn't all bleak and depressing, though. Victor told us about how IJM worked with local authorities in India and the Philippines to rescue the two Indian girls out of slavery and prostitution, and to bring the child rapist to justice. It was encouraging to see that they were able to make a tangible difference to real individuals' lives. 

Victor's conclusion was that as Christian lawyers, we each have a calling to do justice. It may not necessarily be in the international human rights field. But we all have some sort of justice ministry vocation. Through our legal training, we are equipped with a very special set of skills that we can use to locate injustice, reduce the truth against its deception to the level of proof and creatively bring the truth to a place of power to dispel its coercion. It's not a bad thing to work in a "safe" law firm job, we can still glorify God in our daily work lives and still serve our clients and be a good influence to our colleagues. But God calls us to do something deeper and more meaningful. We can do His justice in our world, and man, we should. We have to. We're called to. 

As I listened to Victor, I felt really moved. It was more than transient emotional response to the pictures of the girls and to the statistics he gave about international human abuse rates. I felt this real conviction, right in my gut. I have to do an IJM internship. I just have to. I'd heard of the organisation in my second year at law school, and I remember being interested in it at the time, but I never followed through with anything. I guess I got caught up in my studies and summer clerking and stuff. But man, I really feel that this is something that I should do in the near future, maybe at the end of next year. I know it's only going to be a few months overseas, probably working on a few random cases, potentially without any real results during the time I'm there. But that's not the point. The point is, given the overwhelming amount of injustice that's out there, every little bit counts. Even if I don't get to see the fruits of my labour while I'm there, the work I participate in will no doubt lead to positive results at some point in the future. The "random cases" represent real people who are being abused. I'm going to pray about it, continue giving it thought over the course of the year next year, and try to make it work if my heart's still at peace about it closer to the time. As to long-term goals, I'm not sure yet. But one thing I know is that justice ministry is something that's constantly going to be on my mind, and my hope is that God will open doors for me to do His work in some way, shape and form in the long run. 

With that in mind, it's time to get back into exam study. Peace.

G.