As we move through our “Justice” season here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, I’ve been pondering how we talk to children about such a broad and complicated topic. Sometimes, in an effort to help kids understand justice, we say that it is kind of like fairness.
And “fair” is such a loaded word, isn’t it? As a younger sister, “That’s not fair!” was one of my mantras. And, inevitably, the response was usually, “Life isn’t fair!” Have you ever been told that? Or maybe you’ve been the one to say it? I certainly have.
To some extent, it’s true – life is not fair. Kindhearted people get very sick, mean people win the lottery, and the deck seems stacked against many of us from the moment we are born. And, as Unitarian Universalists, we don’t have a final judgment that will balance it all out by punishing the mean folks and rewarding the good.
One response to this is to say, “Well, life isn’t fair so everybody should quit whining,” or “It isn’t my fault that life isn’t fair.” And it is true. That response might be fair, but is it compassionate? We can get so caught up in fairness and trying to make sure that we’re all getting what we deserve, that we forget about acting with compassion. We forget about the humanity of the people involved. We forget that justice, equity, and compassion all go together in our principles.
Right now, the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on Social Witness is engaged in a Congregational Study Action Issue called Escalating Inequality (click here to learn more about the process). This means that they want congregations to engage questions about the moral, spiritual, and theological dimensions of escalating inequality in our communities and in the broader world.
It’s easy to make this a topic that is all about numbers – income, debt, wages, taxes, and so on. And those numbers matter a great deal. But I think our greatest challenge is to discern where our compassion calls us. How does compassion call us to think about the minimum wage? How does compassion call us to handle predatory payday lenders? How does compassion call us to address income gaps for women and people of color?
As we move through this season of justice, I invite all of us to consider how compassion shapes our efforts for justice and equity.
In faith,
Hannah