Selective Justice Is Not Justice

Selective Justice Is Not Justice

People believe what they want to believe.

They do not want to take a stand that might cost them something. They do not want to extend themselves beyond the boundaries of the causes they have already chosen, or the battles they have already imagined themselves fighting.

This is what perplexes me.

I have discussions with people whom I know to be highly intelligent. In many other conversations, they demonstrate an impressive ability to reason, analyse and follow evidence wherever it leads.

But introduce certain subjects, particularly Israel and Palestine, and suddenly their logic disappears.

They say things like:

“The land belonged to the Jews 2,000 years ago.”

And I am left wondering: What exactly does that mean?

Does that give anyone the right to arrive today, drive people from their homes, seize their land, restrict their movement and imprison them for years because the land supposedly belonged to their ancestors two millennia ago?

How does that make sense?

Propaganda can imprison the mind so completely that you find yourself explaining things to intelligent adults that they would ordinarily understand without difficulty.

Palestinians possess deeds, records and legal documentation showing ownership of their homes and land. In Nigerian terms, think of something resembling a Certificate of Occupancy, a C of O. These were not empty spaces waiting for someone to claim them. People lived there. Families owned homes, cultivated land and built communities there.

Now imagine that you are from southeastern Nigeria and you lawfully purchase a large piece of land in Lagos. The government recognises your ownership and gives you the necessary documents.

Then, one day, another group arrives from the Republic of Benin and declares:

“This land belonged to our ancestors 2,000 years ago.”

They proceed to drive you out. They also drive out the Yoruba family that originally sold the land to you.

Would that make sense?

Would ancient ancestry automatically cancel your ownership, your home and your humanity?

Put yourself in that position.

But many people cannot, or will not, place themselves in the position of the Palestinian. Truth is not necessarily what they are seeking. Justice is not necessarily what they desire.

What they want is selective justice.

And selective justice is not justice at all.

This is one of my deepest problems with much of evangelical Christianity. It emerged, in significant part, from a culture shaped by white supremacy, and it has too often trained Black Christians to adopt the worldview of those who once regarded them as inferior.

The message is subtle but unmistakable:

“Hate whom we hate. Love whom we love. Defend what we defend, and you will be accepted. Those people on the other side of the fence are beneath you because they are beneath us.”

It turns Black Christians into spiritual house servants, desperate for approval from a master whose racial hierarchy they have absorbed as theology.

Justice becomes secondary.

Belonging becomes everything.

Acceptance depends on occupying the correct position on an imagined ladder of race, religion and civilisation. The objective is not to stand with the oppressed, but to receive the approval of those who have decided who is worthy of sympathy and who is not.

It is mind-blowing.

Perhaps this is why I am so opposed to this corrupted form of evangelical Christianity, and why I become especially angry when Black Christians subscribe to it so uncritically.

It contradicts the mission of Christ.

It misrepresents the nature of Christ.

Christ came to set captives free. He did not set one group free so that it could place its knee upon the neck of another. He did not come merely for our nation, our race, our tribe or the people whose suffering we find politically convenient.

He came for the oppressed.

All of them.

And any Christianity that requires us to deny another people’s humanity is not defending Christ.

It is denying Him.

Don Kenobi

#MyFrancisEssays