North American politics, still bearing certain vestiges of Christendom, has maintained an ongoing love affair with the notion of justice (and, alas, quite often that love affair never moves beyond a notion into concrete practice… but I digress). The West has generally found it convenient to maintain the definition of justice that Christendom provided. Such a definition may well be worth re-examining. Once again I go back to a favourite subject of mine — just because Christians value “justice,” and contemporary culture values “justice,” it doesn't mean both parties are valuing the same thing. In fact I think Christian talk about justice is fundamentally different than the way in which Western culture, particularly North American culture, talks about justice (in this discussion I am especially indebted to Brueggemann; surprise, surprise, I told you that book was good; cf. Theology of the Old Testament, 735-42).
It seems that the prevalent understanding of justice is retributive. Justice is understood as giving a person their just deserts on the basis of performance — a system of reward and punishment based on an individual's behaviour.
However, the biblical understanding of justice is distributive. The intention of biblical justice is to redistribute social goods and social power, and reorder they way in which those are arranged. This is what the liberation theologians are talking about when they argue that God shows a preferential option for the poor. Distributive justice recognises that all members of a community are intimately linked with all other members. It seems to me that restorative justice picks up on this to a certain degree — it does well to emphasise the communal nature of human existence, but perhaps it does not emphasise the concrete physical ramifications of this as much as it should. Distributive justice makes it clear that practising justice is inextricably linked to things like the distribution of goods.
Now a case can certainly be made for both retributive and distributive justice within the biblical texts (the bible, after all, reflects various traditions that are often in tension with one another), but the bible is quite unambiguous about the fact that distributive justice — which destabilises the status quo — trumps retributive justice — which is often used to maintain “order,” specifically the way things are presently ordered. That is to say, those who have a vested interest in the status quo will be eager to maintain a retributive definition of justice. Unfortunately such justice, that is so triumphant in a society that perpetuates (and is premised upon?) social inequalities, has very little to do with any sort of Christian justice.

The deeper I have gone into biblical studies the more I have questioned conventional and popular interpretations of… well… pretty much everything related to Jesus, the bible, and Christianity. I am increasingly convinced that the mainstream forms of Western Christianity have seriously misinterpreted and perverted all three of those things.
When I engage in dialogues around right interpretation (exegesis, not eisegesis!) I hear one objection repeated in many different forms:
“No, the bible can't be that complex, it must be accessible to everybody at all times.”
“If the bible is as complex as you say, then it shouldn't be accessible to everybody. That way it won't be so used and abused.”
There have been several times when I've even wondered about the efficacy of allowing universal access to the biblical texts.
However, I am convinced that such universal access is necessary — but it must also be treated with special caution. The bible is a complex combination of a wide variety of genres, written, edited, and compiled in a wide variety of socio-political contexts. We must approach such a complex document with caution.
Perhaps an illustration (or two) will help. Let's compare the bible with a volume of national law. Now, I'm no lawyer but if I carefully read through the laws I will get a general feeling for the legal system. I will begin to see how some laws are related to others and I will start to understand the values, ethic, and world-view of my nation. However, there is much that I won't understand. There will be a lot of technical jargon that doesn't make sense to me — and there will be a lot that I think I understand but I don't. I may be unaware of other mitigating factors, I may be unaware about the ways in which lawyers can turn a phrase to make it mean something that I do not expect. So, as a person who is no expert in law I need to study law with some humility — and allow the experts to provide the definitive interpretation of the relevant texts.
Similarly, I am no student of architecture. However, I can look at a blue-print of a house and grasp the big picture. I can get where the rooms are, grasp an understanding how their size in relation to each other, even begin to understand where the major support beams are — but there will be a lot about the blue-print that means nothing at all to me. Yet when an architect examines the blue-print she will be able to tell me how such supposedly irrelevant things are actually crucial and have a determining influence on the whole house. I will be able to appreciate some things but at the end of the day I'm going to allow the architect to build the house.
Now here's the point I want to make — a point that many Christian raised in our exceedingly self-absorbed and individualistic culture don't like to hear — Christians must allow the professionals to provide the definitive interpretation and application of the biblical texts. Certainly all of us can examine the documents and gather a sense for the big picture. We can all pull out major points about the character of the Christian god and what it means to live Christianly — but, at the end of the day, if our interpretation (and praxis) differs from the interpretation (and praxis) of the experts, we need to be willing to humble ourselves and submit to those who know the documents in a way that we do not.
Humility must replace any individualistic, positivistic, or triumphalistic reading of the texts.
Walter Brueggemann emphatically asserts that (within the realm of the Old Testament — and I think this point still rings true, although the pouring out of the eschatological spirit must be considered here) God ordains certain people and structures to be the agents through which his presence is mediated to the world (Torah, king, prophet, cult, and wisdom — cf. Theology of the Old Testament). In the Old Testament there is no suggestion that right understanding, or even any form of transformative encounter with God(!), is universally available to the people of God. Instead, there are those who God has met in genuinely transformative ways so that they can mediate God's presence and purposes to the broader community. Those of us who have been raised in triumphalistic, comfortable (and surely blessed) churches would do well to consider these words. We need to carefully consider the arrogance of our presumption that we all have universal and equal access to God. And as we consider these things we must be willing to humble ourselves and submit to those who have genuinely encountered God.

Our enemies are brutal, but they are no match for the United States of America. And they are no match for the men and women of the United States of America.
~ George W. Bush, from his address at Fort Bragg
I'm sorry George, I can't help but notice a double entendre in your words. How exactly are your enemies no match for your nation and your people? Is it that their strength is no match? Or is it that their brutality is no match for the brutality of your nation? I know that's probably not what you meant but it seems to be what your words imply. And for once I'm inclined to agree with you. The insurgents* may be brutal but their brutality is pathetic — dare I say pitiable? — in comparison to the brutality committed by your regime.
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*Notice the way in which the American Empire has co-opted the language of revolution. George W. Bush is labeled the “American Revolutionary” while the freedom fighters in Iraq are called “insurgents” (see my post on Time Magazine's special issue in December 2004).

Hulk,
I'm a lucky son-of-a-bitch to have a friend like you. Your email in response to my last post brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to write something just as meaningful in response, I wanted to write a post that would let everybody know what a fucking amazing friend you are. I wanted to tell everybody about your wisdom, your passion, and your empathy. I wanted you to know how deeply I admire you… but all I've got are these few lines that read like a Hallmark card (well, except for the swearing).
I love you brother. And thanks.
(By the way, I talked to Bushey today — he was trying to convince me to go planting up by Fort Nelson. That got me thinking about the season we planted together… I realised that a lot of my good memories from that summer are related to watching you freak out. Thanks for that, too.)

The metaphor of the judge does not have its locus in a theory of law. It lives, rather, in a world of desperate, practical appeal to those who have no other ground of appeal or hope and in a world of righteous rage among those who are appalled at exploitative brutality that must be called to accountability.
~ Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament.
As Christianity was infiltrated by Greek philosophies and other modes of thought from the Greco-Roman world, the idea of judgment became increasingly related to a law of moral purity, and personal piety. That is to say, judgment became associated with sin that had more to do with personal holiness and less to do with social justice. Of course this is only natural once Christianity becomes the official religion of the Constantine's empire (and any other subsequent Christian empires), for the religion of empire is a religion which cannot show much regard for the social injustices that result from the excercise of power. If anything such a religion provides a the empire with a justification for such inequalities.
However, a Christianity that only thinks of judgment in this context is essentially unbiblical. As Brueggemann emphasises, the notion of God as the judge, the notion of God excercising his judgment, is intimately tied to socio-economic issues.* God as judge is understood as the God who will not tolerate social injustices. God as judge is the God who sides with the oppressed over against the oppressor. God as judge is the God who brings liberation to captives and food to the hungry.
Of course Christian discourse about judgment is mostly dominated by questions relating to the final destination of one's eternal soul (which is itself a Greek, and not a Hebraic, concept). However, Krister Stendahl, a New Testament scholar who is partially responsible for launching the school of thought known as 'the new perspective on Paul,' does an excellent job of bringing a genuinely biblical understanding of judgment back into the discussion. He argues that God's judgment cannot be divorced from the realm of the social and the political. The notion of God's judgment cannot help but give us pause about our current socio-economic status. In the conclusion to his stirring essay “Judgment and Mercy” (found in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles), he writes,
Judgment and mercy. We must resist all homogenizing, neutralizing, dialecticizing and balancing acts with these terms.** There is little mercy except the chance of repentance for those of us who sit in judgment; but when judgment comes upon us, there is much mercy for the oppressed… So let us weep! And let them rejoice when the judgment that comes upon us provides their liberation!
Christians would do well to worry less about the state of their own souls and worry more about the state of their neighbours' bodies.
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* I say “his” because the title of “judge” when applied to YHWH is generally associated with YHWH's masculinity. There are other titles that emphasise YHWH's femininity — of course, as Brueggemann also highlights, we need to understand all nouns as “noun-metaphors” when they are applied to YHWH in the Old Testament. They are not Israel's primary way of referring to YHWH and only gain their meaning from their association with the broader narrative and from the ways in which YHWH acts in the story of Israel.
** This thought also fits well with Brueggemann's insistence that one should refuse to resolve tensions that are inherent to the biblical texts. Brueggemann argues that such tensions must be maintained because they are essentially a part of the character of YHWH as it is revealed to us.