Compassion and Justice

Dad,

For me, there are two issues here: compassion and justice. Your question, should the delivery of compassion be done voluntarily or should it be forced on someone, only gets at the first issue. If the health care issue was simply a matter of, well, there just happen to be poor people out there who can’t afford health insurance or who can’t afford to go to the doctor, then that would be one thing. But I think it’s more complicated than that.

This is getting to one of the “pitfalls” I see in capitalism. A while back we were discussing capitalism and you posed the following question: Say I buy a boat from someone for $100 and sell the boat to someone else for $120. What’s wrong with that?

There may not be anything wrong with that. The fact that I have made a profit of $20 is not a bad thing in itself. But, this assumes that the decision to buy and sell the boat only impacts me, the guy I bought the boat from and the guy I sell it to. Does it matter how the first guy got the boat to begin with?

Let's say I buy a boat from Tom for $100, then sell it to Ellen for $120. I've earned a nice $20, Tom goes out and buys something he needs with the $100, and Ellen was fine with paying $120 for the boat, so everyone's happy. Except, later I find out that Tom actually stole the boat from Bill. I have done nothing wrong in this scenario. But, injustice has been done, and although I did not perpetrate it, I have benefited from it. As a citizen, do I have any responsibility to help make things right for Bill? What about as a Christian? And what would it look like to pursue justice for Bill in this situation? Simply punish Tom? But Bill still doesn’t have his boat. Should Ellen give him the boat back? Should I give him the $20 I earned?

This is just one very simplified scenario, but the questions it raises are very real and very relevant to me, and I honestly don’t know the answers. This kind of thing happens in a system where one of the primary motivations is profit. Sinful people will sometimes lie, cheat and steal to maximize their profit. When they do that, usually someone else is affected by it. How do we deal with the fallout of a system that lends itself to this kind of injustice? Is this where the government should step in? I don’t know. But as a Christian who believes caring for the poor and oppressed is intimately tied up with the gospel and my own relationship to God, I feel that I have to be concerned with pursuing justice for those who have been hurt by injustice, whether it was perpetrated by me or not.

This is why simply giving money to a “compassion ministry” is not enough for me. I could do that, but it seems like those ministries, although they are doing a wonderful and necessary service, are just putting a bandaid on a wound that needs surgery. If someone at this moment doesn’t have clothing or food or medical attention or whatever else they need to survive, then those immediate needs need to be provided for. But someone should also be looking into the deeper issues of why that person needs food or clothing or medical care. Is it simply because they are lazy and don’t want to work for it? Perhaps, sometimes. But could it also be because there is something wrong in our system that is keeping them from being able to provide for themselves?

So, going back to your question: should compassion be given voluntarily or forcibly? It seems obvious compassion is something that should be given freely. But what about the issue of justice? When injustice is done there are those who perpetrated it, those who benefit from it, and those who are hurt by it. Since we live in a community where all of our decisions affect others in the community, I think all three of those people have some responsibility. Figuring out exactly what each of their responsibilities are is the complicated question.