In my current context Proverbs 31:8-9 are used often to remind all of our responsibility to advocate for the voiceless and to stand up for those who are poor and oppressed. The verses say this:

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.

They are fabulous verses that challenge us towards a justice that lifts up those our world pushes to the margins, those at the bottom of the ladder, for there can be no true justice (the righting of wrong/redemption/reconciliation) without that pursuit. Usually our reading of those verses focuses in on the point in there about advocacy (speaking up) and the people we are doing it for – those who cannot speak for themselves, the destitute, the poor, and the needy, but there’s something else in there that caught my attention as I was considering those verses this morning.

There are two words in there that call for our attention – ‘judge fairly.’ The Message translates that part of the sentence as ‘Speak up for justice!’ and that captures the bigger intent, but there is something distinct in the words that are being translated that I think is more accurately captured in the NIV rendition. The NRSV and others capture it as ‘Speak up; judge righteously…’ These are good translations as well. They’re all solid and accurate translations drawing on the word ‘tsedek’, but I think the phrase ‘judge fairly’ gives us an important specific where the other translations capture a bigger picture.

At its heart the call to judge fairly, or to judge with righteousness, is a call to making things right. In the context of the Proverbs verses it’s a specific call to judge without favouritism, mostly related to not favouring the wealthy over the poor in any judgement, but to judge with equity and fairness in mind because to do otherwise is to feed injustice. In my world it’s easy to hone in on that when it comes to arguing the case of the poor and oppressed, but what about our ‘enemies’? What about those we disagree with strongly? What about those in our lives who are ‘other’? That’s where the call to judge fairly/righteously really becomes a challenge.

It’s easy to think about this in light of the big injustices, human trafficking and slavery are prime examples where I am challenged to pray for the perpetrators of slavery, not just the victims, but what about those at a closer level? There are those I strongly disagree with closer to home and it’s easy to think poorly of them and it would be easy to engage in activities that dehumanise them to further my cause, even if it’s just in the way I think about others. It would also be easy to justify poor activity and conduct on my part by pointing to what others do; to say ‘so and so does this or that, so using the same tactics at my/our end from time to time is excusable.’ I’ve allowed myself this luxury far too often – but we’re challenged to a higher ground if we take the Bible and our faith seriously.

We are to be people who judge fairly and righteously no matter who we are engaging with. We are to be people who love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us – not praying for them as just another weapon in our arsenal or as some sort of passive aggressive way to cut them down, but flowing from a genuine love. If we do not do this, we betray the character of the God who has extended grace and mercy to us while we were enslaved in our wrong and living in rebellion. If we do not pursue the call to love our enemies then I believe we have missed the heart of the revolutionary, transformational nature of the Christian faith, and we are simply following a group of philosophical ideas that justify our own predetermined biases. I’ve fallen into this path more times than I care too admit.

In our pursuit of what is right and good we are to strongly and relentlessly combat the wrong and brokenness of our world, calling for justice where injustice prevails, but we are to do so always with the humanity of ALL in mind, both the victim and the perpetrator. Anger has its place in this, injustice should cause us to be angry, but in our anger we are never given the freedom to sin. This calls for humility and integrity in all that we do no matter what the tactics of the ‘other’ side are. Our activities should never seek to demean, dehumanise, or degrade another no matter how strongly we may disagree. This calls for us to be shaped by the eyes of God and to consider all people with a relentless and compelling love grown within us by the very Spirit who is love, and in the image of the one who embodied it, Jesus.

At the heart of being shaped in such a way sits prayer and our willingness to forgive and ask for forgiveness. Prayer, by its very nature, involves humility, submission, and the recognition of our own need. To bring our enemies into this space with that humility in mind has a natural way of reshaping our perspective of them and it ultimately submits us to viewing them through the eyes of God’s love.

This is not a soppy love, but a gritty love that would see us lay our lives down for anyone, even those who we consider ‘enemies’. It calls us to turn the other cheek even when we feel we have been wronged. This approach, ultimately the approach of the cross, needs to inform all that we do, say, think and feel and when we step outside of it we should not excuse it, but ask for forgiveness from both God and those we may demean in the process, and then move forward, reshaping our approach so that we may always judge fairly and righteously. It is an ideal I fall short of often, therefore this is my own personal challenge, may it be yours too.