Distributive Justice

In TS505DE, we have discussion board posts as part of our weekly assignments. Normally the prof poses a few questions about that week's readings, we get to choose what to answer, and then engage the other members of the class in replying to postings, etc.

As an example, here's a recent question, and my answer:

Q. Pick one of the understandings of justice from the readings that you find most compelling (retributive, restorative, distributive), and do the following: Explain why you find this so compelling, giving support for your position. Explore some of the most serious objections to your position. What are the grounds for these objections? How would you answer them? In the course of your discussion, explore the implications of your position for your ministry and/or personal life.

A. I'll discuss "distributive" justice from the perspective of an "aha!" moment I had while reading Clark & Rakestraw. I find this concept compelling because I used to find it offensive, and now I think I get it. The idea of distributive justice was offensive to me at one time because I thought that it smacked of collectivism and the Marxist dogma of a forced redistribution of wealth by the state. I also thought that it was a dressed-up means of transferring to the state the rights of the citizen to own private property, under the guise of helping the disadvantaged. I thought that it penalized the productive elements of society in order to support the unproductive ones. In short, it was anti-capitalist, and since capitalism was an integral part of the founding of this great Christian nation (or so I thought), then Capitalism must be a Godly system. And those who oppose a Godly system must by definition be ... ungodly.

Well... maybe not so much. For me, it's been a slow process of the gradual eroding of those views, both by watching in dismay the unchecked excesses of de-regulated Captialism since the Reagan Revolution (which I loved at the time), along with a growing understanding of God's preferential option for the poor, and how it permeates the Scriptures, Old and New Testaments. This latter idea has come from taking classes in Catholicism and learning about Catholic Social Teaching.

So, into this fertile worldview field, broken up and tilled by Wall Street failures and consumer greed, seeds from Catholic Social Teaching and non-Western Theologies got scattered. These took root and grew into shoots of concern for the marginalized of society. Then Lewis Smedes laid out the many aspects of distributive justice: how to distribute not only societal wealth, but legal protections, privileges, rights, responsibilities, taxes, education, health care, etc. Plus, they offered many possibilities for determining who gets what: ability, potential, affluence, need, innocence, age, responsibility, merit, etc. This frank discussion of options, plus Paul Henry's excellent argument of the role justice can play in bridging the divide between power and love, made me much less fearful of the negative political abuses of distributive justice.

The "aha!" moment came when Stephen Mott declared that each person has equal merit before God, and to God the well-being of each is as important as any other. That freed me to see that distributive justice CAN focus on needs, since the assigning of merit is a human construct, not a Biblical one. If I take discussions of merit out of the picture, need then rises toward the top, and is no longer overwhelmed by determinations of ability, potential, affluence, education, etc. There are still arguments to be made about needs vs wants, and a legitimate desire for matching work & reward, but equality of each person before God does take a lot of "noise" out of the discussion. God's unconditional love for each of us can inform our idea of justice, and give us a way of properly putting a check on power, so that political power is only used in support of justice that has been Biblically shaped.