Is There Justice?
What you hear and read might lead you to believe the answer is no. Lawsuits and appeals overload the courts. Those who seek justice don't always find it; there are many disappointments.
The Bible tells how Job wrestled with the problem of justice. He felt goodness didn't always have its reward. But Job felt he had to have an answer. He and his friends had many discussions about this. The book of Job shows that Job loved God and avoided evil. And deep down in his heart, Job came to see that God is just. Elihu told him, "He [God] is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict" (37:23).
Job talked with God. We can do the same in prayer. Praying to God means acknowledging His power, His goodness, His mercy. This helps us to understand our divine rights, and as a result to see more justice in our lives.
The prophet Isaiah declared, "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us" (33:22). What a comforting thought, that we can lean on the power of God, the one Judge and Lawgiver, to bring proper justice in any circumstance.
In court a judge administers the law, maintaining the rights of the citizen. When you turn to God, the supreme Judge, the divine Principle, you find true justice. God is Love, and His law is fair and impartial. Praying to Him isn't just abstract; it helps us see His promise of goodness, mercy, and fairness in action, through instances of peace and justice coming into everyday experience. A loving God would not and could not reverse the good he has ordained for each of His children.
When our son was in college, he was waiting for someone to back out of a parking space so he could take it. A car waiting behind him was struck forcefully from the rear by yet another car, whose driver began raging at our son, accusing him of abruptly stopping and causing the accident.
My son had already been at a stop when this happened. But there were injuries involved, and the driver of the rear car said he was going to sue. Everyone claimed the accident was our son's fault.
At this point we felt it necessary to call a lawyer to help our son. But daily we also prayed to God, which was natural for us to do as Christian Scientists. The textbook of Christian Science says, "Truth should, and does, drive error out of all selfhood. Truth is a two-edged sword, guarding and guiding" (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 538).
What was the truth? What should we believe? We were concerned about the people involved in the accident, and in prayer we remembered that each was in God's love, under His law, governed by His intelligence. Each was an expression of God.
Our lawyer took statements from the claimants, and they all continued to maintain that our son was at fault. But we continued maintaining the spiritual facts, knowing this must reveal truth and justice. We were praying to see what was right, to see the truth that the spiritual fact is the only real fact; that no child of God, made in His image and likeness, is capable of lying or deception. The power of God, who is Truth itself, would expose and destroy any error that needed to be exposed and destroyed. Error and truth cannot occupy the same ground.
Some time went by. Then one day the lawyer called, saying one of the people involved in the accident had changed her story. She admitted the man suing our son had been coercing them to cover his own guilt. (He had been late for a class, and had been hurrying around the parking lot looking for an open space.) It had been rewarding for us to maintain the spiritual facts; and through this, God's law of justice had been revealed.
"Let Truth uncover and destroy error in God's own way, and let human justice pattern the divine" (Science and Health, p. 542). Anyone can prove, through this approach, that there is divine justice.
A God of truth
and without iniquity,
just and right is he.
Deuteronomy 32:4
