Justice and the Will of God

1. In what ways does justice achieved in the realm of human experience reflect the will of God?

If it is true that man is made in God's image, and if it is true that God is good, then it follows that it must be the will of God for mankind to experience how to be in accord with the good. It is self-evident that justice is a good, for by definition justice entails fairness, impartiality, and righteousnss as a fundamental principle of existence. Defining justice in terms of a principle or in terms of mere existence, however, is not sufficient.

That is because the will of God is a dynamic, not a static, state of being. The example of Christ's life and the extraordinary example of his death vividly reinforces what we know intuitively: that God is involved with human beings, not only in respect of their being as such but in respect of their experience. As Laborem Exercens comments in that regard: "by means of work man participates in the activity of God Himself, his Creator, was given particular prominence by Jesus Christ" (John Paul II 59). Work experience is part of the larger realm of the whole of human experience--inevitably social. Interaction between human beings is fundamental to human existence. Thus to the degree human experience, which is the working-out and unfolding of history, reflects a deliberate effort to incorporate justice, it celebrates the Creation, which perforce is also the will of God, since God is the very principle of creation.

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fers to the "materialistic and economistic thought" (17) that dominates the discourse and concern of societies everywhere, he is making clear that the accidentals, or material objects, of everyday life are all too often taken for granted. The television, the lawnmower, the soccer lesson, the job--these are instrumental methods of creating human satisfaction. But all too often--and far too soon, in the course of any given life--instrumental use of the material world fails to satisfy, even (or especially) when such use is successful. Again and again, human beings are thrown back to contemplation of their mortality and to the question of their own relevance in the world. They find themselves forced into contemplation of the intangible--that is, spiritual--attributes of meaning. For "meaning" is itself intangible, and for meaning to achieve anything like strength, it points in the direction of the individual's contemplation of his or her position in relation to God. 4. If spirituality is more important to human experience than materialism, why should economic globalization create moral obligations? In some ways, Laborem Exercens can be read as a subtle commentary on the moral problems that material abundance creates for those who be

Category: Philosophy - J