Justice

  Today I thought I'd make a comment about justice. I have recently been re-watching Batman: The Animated Series, an old childhood favourite of mine. As I was watching it, a thought occurred to me. Why do people find such stories attractive? There are many reasons, of course. Mark Hamill's superb acting as the Joker is one excellent reason for watching the show, but the thought that immediately struck me was Batman's connection with justice. Justice is a complex issue, as anyone who has read Plato's Republic can affirm. What I am getting at here is a basic desire to see wrongdoing punished, to see the victims vindicated, to see damage repaired, and protection guaranteed for the future. Batman is built on the basic assumption that something is wrong with the world: the hero would have no villains to fight, no raison d'être, unless there already existed some uncontrollable urge in humanity to do what is evil.

  But it doesn't stop with the hero: what makes Batman and other similar comics so interesting is the ability to empathize with the villains also. They too are often trying to correct some injustice. Revenge is often their motive, and more than once they ask Batman what the difference is between him and them. It's not my intention to argue the rights and wrongs of vigilantism here; rather, I wish to highlight the close connection between psychology and justice as a motif in art and literature. In the West, Christians often talk about Christ's Crucifixion in a legal framework, following the Apostle Paul. We talk of sin, and that is understood to mean 'crime'; the sin/crime deserves to be punished and Christ takes the punishment that we deserve. Thus Christ's sacrifice is presented as meeting the requirements of justice, with God as the Judge and injured party, and humanity as the wrongdoers. This is not the only way of talking about the Crucifixion and what it means, but I would like to suggest that it is an important and powerful one because of the place justice occupies in the human condition and psyche, as seen in our artistic expression.

  I do not mean that our psychology creates this interpretation of the Cross. It is objectively true that Christ died for the sins of humanity, whether we see it this way or not. What I am saying is that God built into us a sense of justice, a remembrance of the way things were and should be - there is no getting away from Eden. Fallen as we are, we still have a conscience, something that bears witness against the evil we do, against the current state of the world. It fills us with a longing for Paradise and points us back towards God.

Do you cry out for justice? Turn to Christ.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." (Matthew 5:6, NIV)

God bless.