The blog Wilderness Wonderings has the following post… In a recent book entitled Deep Justice in a Broken World: Helping Your Kids Serve Others and Right the Wrongs Around Them, Chap Clark and Kara Powell, as well as other contributors such as John Perkins, explore what it means for youth to adopt lifestyles of service and justice rather than going on service projects. In a recent article in Youthworker Journal, Clark and Powell summarized the distinction made in this book between shallow service and deep justice, which includes the following:
- Service makes us feel like a great savior who rescues the broken
- Justice means God does the rescuing, but often he works through the united power of his great and diverse community to do it.
- Service often dehumanizes (eve if only subtly) those who are labeled the “receivers.â€
- Justice restores human dignity by creating an environment in which all involved “give†and “receive†in a spirit of reciprocal learning and mutual ministry.
- Service is something we do FOR others.
- Justice is something we do WITH others.
- Service is an event.
- Justice is a lifestyle.
- Service expects results immediately.
- Justice hopes for results sometime soon but recognizes that systemic change takes time.
- The goal of service is to help others.
- The goal of justice is to remove obstacles so others can help themselves.
- Service focuses on what our own ministry can accomplish.
- Justice focuses on how we can work with other ministries to accomplish even more.
- Service is serving food at the local homeless shelter.
- Justice means asking why people are hungry and homeless in the first place and then doing something about it.
