Jo Hunter Adams
If you’re like me, you are trying to work out how to live your ideals in the context of the constraints on your time and money. For me, a rift developed soon after I finished United World College. As a Christian, there didn’t seem to be a way to combine my faith with all that I had learned at United World College.
What did I learn at UWC? It’s hard to summarize, but it was a kind of awakening—I discovered Christians weren’t the only ones working for justice, in fact, historically there seemed to be evidence of the opposite—Christians as perpetrators of injustice. I was young enough for this to result in fairly deep confusion, and I held the two ideas in tension without really resolving them. In Wales (and beyond) I had the opportunity to serve in different ways—usually with people who had genuinely different beliefs. Looking back, this began an inconsistency. Apart from with a few close friends, in justice settings I kept my faith fairly a little removed, and in faith settings I kept my feelings about injustice—and what I felt was the correct response—private.
There’s nothing wrong with this, except that I believe God is justice. Justice (and mercy) are God’s agenda, not only the domain of a bunch of people. And so justice and faith should interact. That doesn’t mean that people who have a heart for justice need me preaching to them. Nor does it mean that I take this agenda to all faith interactions. I think it means that there’s no contradiction within myself, and the rest will work itself in time.
Over the next few days and weeks, I'll be thinking about a course I recently took part in, and the types of things it's made me think about. Up to now a lot of my thoughts on economic justice have been at a structural level (how do we change the system) whereas recently my thoughts have been more focused on starting small-- economic justice as acted out as an individual. Please join me on this journey!
P.S. And I hope to keep updates on the plants going, as well as a few other things...
