But let justice roll down like waters.....

....and righteousness as a mighty stream (Amos 5:4).

There are people of a certain age who cannot hear this verse without thinking of THE speech, "I Have a Dream," delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, feels that things have not changed much from King's day 'til now.

Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run

We (i.e., the U.S.) believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.

As a Caucasian Scottish-Canadian it is not for me to say how African-Americans should feel about the progress in race relations, although I would certainly agree that life is still a lot easier for someone of my race here in North America than his. Clearly Dr. Wright feels that justice is not yet rolling down like it must.

What prompted my thinking about justice as the eighth century BC prophet Amos, and, I suspect, Martin Luther King understood it, was an interview done recently with Dr. Henry Morgentaler. 2008 is the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada decision to legalize abortion, a case known officially as Morgentaler v Her Majesty the Queen. This has prompted a number of interviews with Dr. Morgentaler. View, for instance, this site: www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/interview/2008/5_interview_01.html.

Morgentaler is not only Jewish, but a survivor of the Holocaust. He was asked whether his experiences in the horrific Nazi death camps developed his sense of justice:

Did the fact that you survived Dachau and Auschwitz help you? I'm not sure it helped me - it's hard to judge. The fact I survived through the concentration camps gave me a heightened feeling of injustice and I saw injustice meted out to women who needed abortions.

So in a way your experience in the concentration camps is responsible for abortion rights in Canada. To a certain extent, yes. I was sensitized to injustice and when I was in a position to do something about it, I felt it was a duty to do so, at whatever risk there was. I had a feeling I was fighting for fundamental justice.

Morgentaler was jailed for performing illegal abortions prior to 1988. He was asked why a man would go to jail for women's rights:

Do you find it strange that it was a man going to jail for this and not a woman? Well, I never thought about it that way [laughs]. I think to me it was a fight for justice. Whether it was a woman who undertook that or a man, to me it didn't really matter too much. I was a medical doctor, I was in the forefront of this fight and I was qualified to help women and I didn't see any reason why I should be prevented from doing that.

Like King, Morgentaler sees his cause in justice terms. Civil rights and reproductive rights. Freedom from domination by Caucasians and domination by men. Support for the downtrodden. "Free at last! free at last!"

While there certainly are some points of similarity between the fight for civil and women's rights, there is one enormous difference which calls into question Morgentaler's use of the term 'justice' to describe his accomplishments.

Justice for African-Americans did not require the oppression or exploitation of some other vulnerable group. Justice for women, as Morgentaler understands it, did.

Biblical justice, as Amos proclaimed it and Martin Luther King demanded it, is not to be confused with either retributive justice (the meting out of just desserts in a court of law) or even restorative justice (peaceful approaches to harm, problem-solving and violations of legal and human rights), although these are both biblical principles as well.

The reference is to distributive justice; i.e., the distribution of society's benefits and burdens in an equitable manner. No doubt the Rev. King was well acquainted with this principle and understood what it meant in the biblical context.

What does it mean?

If you want to do a little bible study in your spare time, have a look at the Old Testament seventh and sixth century B.C. prophecy of Jeremiah 22:13-17. The little nation of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, had seen the death of its great and godly king Josiah at the hands of the Egyptians, and the rather less impressive reigns of Josiah's three sons and grandson. Jeremiah gives a pretty savage critique of these so-called leaders, and in doing so gives us the template for biblical justice.

Jer. 22:13-15a, 17. Injustice is defined as the exploitation of, or ignoring of the legitimate concerns of anyone who is marginalized, pushed to the periphery, is unable to fend for herself.

Jer. 22:15-16a. Justice is defined as not only avoiding the exploitation of the vulnerable (the passive side of justice), but in fact becoming their champion (the active side of justice--love in action).

Jer. 22:16b. Jeremiah says that the pursuit of justice is the very essence of knowing (being a follower of) God. The word "know" here is the same word used for the most intimate kind of knowledge such as sexual intimacy.

This notion of what it means to do justice was emphasized again and again by Old Testament writers. See, for instance, Psalm 37:30 (speak justice), Proverbs 12:5 (think justice), Proverbs 21:15 (enjoy justice), Psalm 12:5 (expect justice), and Micah 6:8 (do justice).

And it doesn't stop there. At one point Jesus is challenged by his cousin, John the Baptist, to affirm his credentials as God's coming Messiah. At the time, John is in jail and Jesus doesn't seem to be heading up the expected rebellion against the Roman oppressors. Look at this marvelous exchange in the New Testament book of Luke, chp. 7.

7:18-20 - Calling two of them (his disciples), [John the Baptist] sent them to the Lord (i.e., cousin Jesus) to ask, "Are you the one who was to come (i.e., the long awaited Messiah), or should we expect someone else?"

Given the Messianic expectations of the time (a great warrior king who would kick Roman butt all the way back to Italy), one might have expected Jesus to frame his response in certain terms. But note how Jesus defines his messianic credentials:

7:21-22 - At that time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, "Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor."

Pure biblical justice--championing the needs of the most vulnerable.

Jesus' brother James, when writing a letter after the resurrection in response to questions from Christians, indicated that he had learned Jesus' lesson well. It would appear that James had been asked to define the essence of the new Christian religion. His answer is consistent with all that we have quoted above:

James 1:27 - Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Righteousness and justice--two words that appear together more than 50 times in the Old Testament.

I feel safe in concluding that when Martin Luther King quoted Amos 5:4, he chose the passage very deliberately because of its biblical meaning. It was American society's responsibility to champion the needs of its most vulnerable citizens and raise them up to the same level of worth and opportunity as the more advantaged ones.

I heartily agree with Dr. Morgentaler that women were (and are) another worthy candidate for justice. But not by ending the life of another highly vulnerable group--unborn babies. This is not justice at all.

Now you see why the pro-abortion side (Morgentaler has done over 100,000 abortions himself) is so dead set against granting personhood to fetuses. If that were ever to happen, then their version of justice would go out the window, and women would have to be supported in a completely different way.

Pro-life people need to do more to pursue justice for women as well. But it does not stop with bringing down the abortion rate. That's a bare beginning.