I have been re reading the story of the Good Samaritan recently and have been refreshed in my thinking about the scope of justice! It’s mandate, magnitude, motivation and method. I found this quote the other day by Martin Luther King Jr. and instantly loved it. Transforming the Jericho road is both the essence of Christian justice and the end point of Christian justice.

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

On a very casual side note, it reminds me of a joke about social workers:

Two social workers are walking through a dodgy side of town when they see a man lieing on the ground, wounds all over covered in his own blood. The first social worker says: “that man has been mugged!” The second social worker replies: “yes, someone needs to find the people who did this and help them”