He once said that there can be no peace without justice. Do you agree or not? Is revenge justice or not?
Martin Luther King JR words ring true?
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Revenge is not justice, but retaliation for acts done against one.
Justice is a legal treatment of acts/words etc against an offender.
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It should be understood MLK advocated passive resistance not riots. The cry of the rioters in the LA riots was 'll justice no peace'. He never advocated violence but taken in conrext, sure it rings true.
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That's not how the Bible or King understood justice. Justice is doing what is right, giving people their due.
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PloverWing
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An unjust society is an unstable society. When groups of people are systematically oppressed in unjust ways, sooner or later they get sick of it and they rebel.
Revenge is one of the things that can happen when oppressed people rebel, but it's not the goal we should be striving for. The goal is a social structure that oppresses no one, that treats everyone with respect and dignity. When this is in place, peace is easier to achieve, because there's no rebellion waiting to happen.
As I read the teachings of Jesus, I see him guiding us in this direction: He repeatedly calls attention to the value of the people who were in lower positions in his society -- Samaritans, lepers, "sinners", women, children, the chronically ill, the poor -- and calls us to treat them as we would treat the Lord himself. This is justice: Everyone deserves to be treated well because they are beloved children of God, whether they are rich or poor, male or female, etc. Treating some people with favoritism because they're rich, etc., is unjust. Jesus also called us to work towards this just society in ways that were nonviolent; he did not, for example, teach his followers to take up arms against Rome.
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ViaCrucis
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Not all justice is retributive justice, i.e. justice against an offender; if someone takes what belongs to you and the courts restore what was taken, that is also justice. Justice is not merely against, justice is also for. In fact justice, biblically, is usually restorative justice, justice for the mistreated and the oppressed.
When MLK said peace requires a just society he is not referring to "getting the bad guys" he is referring to a society that treats all people with fairness and equity.
Thinking of justice as only retribution misses, indeed utterly fails to grasp, one of the most essential teachings of Scripture--namely that we have been freely justified by God's grace. Luther's breakthrough, as it were, was when reading the Scriptures when reading Romans 1:17, "For in [the Gospel] the justice of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'the just shall live by faith'" With this Luther understood that the justice of God is not the justice which punishes sins or condemns people, this is the justice by which God makes sinners just through faith; the justice which is from God, in Christ, imputed to us, by which we are made just. The Gospel does not reveal an angry God of retribution and wrath, but the loving and kind God who saves sinners through His Son, the God of grace, mercy, and love. This is the cornerstone of the Reformation.
-CryptoLutheran
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