Just and just as loving
When you think of justice, what do you think of? White wigs and black robes? Gavels? Maybe, if you were a disobedient child you think of spankings and punishment. If you've seen the show Blue Bloods you probably have a good idea of what is considered lawful, according to the state, as well as the penalties for breaking those laws.
I've been noticing a pattern in my life that I'm sure stems back to moments so early in life that I can't even remember them. This pattern has to do with the sliding scale of justice that I keep inside my own subconscious, and I use it to measure all acts directed toward me. This personalized scale of right and wrong is convenient for me because it changes to accommodate my own growth and development. Circumstances that I may find myself in as a toddler, will morph into a flipped black and white when I turn 16, in which Yin is Yang and Yang is Yin. Are you following?
If you are, I'm impressed, because what I just wrote makes very little sense.
Let me give an example.
When I was at the ripe old age of 6, my grandmother, Moomoo, took me along with her to one of the antique stores at which she worked. Her coworker brought lemon cookies to work that day and she gave each of my sisters and I one to enjoy. Singularity for a sugar fiend such as myself is never an option, however (unless it is one single whole pie or cake or pint of ice-cream). Once I eat one cookie, I must have 8 more. At the time, this seemed just. I needed more cookies. My sanity depended upon it. At the age of 6, I was wise and experienced enough to know that permission would never be granted to such a request. It might even be laughed at.
My 6 year old self could play the scenario from start to finish in her head. My grandmother would argue that 8 more cookies would make me INsane - not help maintain the little composure I already had. Nope. Permission wouldn't work so thievery was my only choice. I didn't call it stealing of course. In my mind, the secret mission, Lemon Cookie, was much more like a rescue. Who would eat those extra cookies but I? Most of them would probably end up in the trash after going untouched for days, rendering them stale and inedible; A reality in my life at home that distressed me greatly.
It wasn't difficult retrieving the cookies since they weren't heavily guarded, and I was certain to check my blind spots and look both ways before moving in on my targets (I am certain that if I used the same amount of caution while driving that I did throughout my sugar caper episodes, [yes there were many more instances like this one in my childhood] my insurance would be much cheaper).
There was an antique wardrobe in the store that, if you would like to imagine it, very much resembled the one described in the famous Narnia chronicles. This was my home base that I had staked out prior to the execution of my plan. It was within this mothball home that I set about devouring the spoils of my victory. I don't think I had even passed the half moon phase of my second cookie, when my grandmother's hand reached into the wardrobe door, and pulled me and my treasury out into the open. She began marching us to the front of the store where her friend to whom the cookies rightfully belonged, sat perched on a stool. The crumbs that had previously cradled themselves in my lap on the wardrobe floor fell incrementally to the floor, my own trail of tears.
"Emily," my grandmother's stern voice commanded, "tell (we will call her Lucinda) what you've done."
I felt a wave of shame move from my forehead to my toes and I choked out, behind a wall of hot tears, "I took your cookies." Lucinda patted my hand and assured me that if I had only asked she would have been happy to give me another one. In the back of my small mind I thought, "Exactly. Another ONE." This, to me was an unjust circumstance in which I was not only denied the sustenance upon which my joy and existence seemed to depend, but I was also raked over the coals for my efforts to fight for it. To bring this point round, I would today however, be the person smacking the hand of the 6
year old who went for a fistful of cookies, knowing full well the long term health concerns (to the caretaker primarily, and the child secondarily) that can come from too much sugar.
The reason I shared this story was to make the point that my version of justice is often slanted in my favor. If I was the one whose cookies were stolen, I know my small 6 year old mind would have perceived the situation from a much different angle. Watching my son get baptized was the first time in my life that I had ever seen justice so disproportionally served and realized what it meant.
My brother in law, Josh, gave a brief sermon before my 4 month old and his 6 cousins were all sprinkled with water in the name of Jesus Christ. He walked with us through the history of Justice. The wicked perish, but the sinless are spared. This is the scale with which we all believe to weigh punishment and reward, both for ourselves and for others. In the beginning, when the first sinful act was done, we were consequentially separated from our Just and Holy God. It had to be that way. How could Light go into darkness and remain light? How could a pure White Linen be covered in scarlet and remain stainless? Or a flickering Flame, dunked into icy water and remain lit? When we sinned, we became the essence of what our God, by His nature, cannot allow into His presence.
Josh pointed out this symbolism of Justice and God's holiness, starting with the spared lives of Noah and his family in the Ark. They remained safe from the flood waters that covered the ground and drowned every living thing. From there He carried the Israelites, God's people, from Egypt, through the parted red sea which they crossed through on dry ground, and finally into the promised land, again on dry ground.
When Christ came to earth, this was His mission. To lead His people on the final leg of the journey to the foot of His Father's throne. He parted the final waves that separated us from Him. As Josh said, John the Baptist did not even understand what it meant when Jesus asked to be lowered into the Jordan. The waters didn't part for the true righteous One. He was plunged into the darkness and turned it to light, the water was overwhelmed by His unquenchable fire of love, and the scarlet of His own blood worked better than the strongest clorox on our sins.
Watching my baby get sprinkled with baptismal water in remembrance of this reality, the only Righteous One, GOD's son for my son, shifted all of the weight that I hung in my own favor on my personal scale of justice. I realized how powerful my God must be, to be perfectly just but equally and proportionally, just as loving. I realized in the moment that my father in law, Joseph, took my baby into his hands and held him over the water of the pond, that if he were to be dropped and fall beneath the surface, he would never reappear unless someone reached into the murk and pulled him back out. I have always been thankful that Christ died for me. Aren't we all? But now I'm a mom, and it doesn't matter how many kisses I place on Judah's forehead, or how many nights I choose sleeplessness to comfort him, nothing I do and no love I can invest would ever have been enough to bring him from beneath the surface of his own sin. Christ, the true Moses and Joshua, plunged its depths in a baptism of our sins so we could arise from our baptism washed in His blood and clothed in His glory.