What are you doing now?

This is the third part of the Justice In the Burbs series. Four young suburban couples are reading through the book and discussing it weekly. Part 1 covered the Introduction and chapter 1. Part 2 covered chapters 2 & 3. This week, we read chapters 4 & 5.
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The question echoed around the group. "What are you doing now?" as related to social justice. I mean, we all cared. Many of us had been on mission trips galore in our younger years. Now, we're all married, most with young kids, full time jobs, houses... what are we doing to further the cause of justice now? For a while, my husband and I were serving dinner downtown every month, but when the leadership changed, we got out of the loop. A couple of us bought school supplies for low-income schools at the end of the summer. Some of us occasionally fill a Yellow Bag. Most are planing on participating in the Weekend of Service in a month. These are all episodic ways to serve- anyone doing anything regularly?

No.

We all care about the cause of justice- that has been evident as we have discussed this book. Helping the poor and marginalized matters to us, but we don't have a block of time in our schedules regularly devoted to a cause. Why not? Here's some of the answers:

• Time - We work 40+ hour weeks, have to keep our own household running, and don't have a spot in our week we see that we can give to a ministry. We're in the suburbs, and many of the ministries are downtown- the travel time to and from the ministry makes the required block of time we need to find even larger.
• Kids - There are 5 kids 5 & under in our group, and another on the way. Many "justice missions" aren't toddler-friendly. Should we find babysitting so that we can serve? Or should spouses not be able to serve together, and the already-limited Family Time be cut down even more?
• Commitment - Particularly honest group members brought this up. Are we ready to make an ongoing commitment to an unknown organization and unknown people? Can we really promise we'll be there every week/month/whenever? As for me, I hate letting people down, so if I commit to something, and know someone's expecting me to be or do something, I have to do it. Can I handle yet another commitment in my life?
• Fear of failure - We'll get to a ministry, and then discover we can't actually change the world, or even a small corner of it. The person whose life we get deeply involved in will continue to make wrong choices, or still can't find a job, and our work will seem for naught. Are we setting ourselves up for failure?
• "It'll mess us up" - The suburbs are safe. We have our issues here, but they're typically hidden behind privacy fences and garage doors, and not talked about in polite society. If we get our hands dirty in the poverty and mess that is Social Justice Work, we'll get messed up. We'll see what really goes on in the world. Our heart may break. We may get cynical. We may get- gasp- liberal. Our perspective will change, and our happy suburban bubble will be popped.

So what was our action point of the evening? I'm bringing dessert to our next meeting on Monday. And we all have some thinking to do. Reportedly, the next chapter addresses the Time issue. The one group member who has finished the book has said it's gonna mess us up. Maybe she's right.

Why the suburbs?

The biggest point of discussion this week centered around why we chose to live in the suburbs. 

I've lived in various suburbs all my life. I was born in the Atlanta suburbs, did a stint as a kid in the closest thing to a suburban community near Honolulu, and finished out my growing-up years in one of the richest suburban counties in the nation, where I still live today.

This suburban life has made me really jaded toward suburban culture, I admit. Really jaded. Surrounded in high school by 16-year-olds whose parents bought them designer clothes and new cars, and in the neighborhood by families with vacation homes and boats and personal trainers and interior designers- I quickly got sick of the shallowness of it all. Faith was described as an intensely Personal Relationship With Jesus thing, and once people "prayed the prayer", their materialistic lifestyle didn't look any different than their pagan neighbors'. Something seems amiss.

So, why do I still live in this suburban community? My immediate answer is "it's close to work". When I was in an apartment, I could walk to work, and now I'm about 15 minutes away driving. But that's not good enough. I mean, I could have moved 15 minutes south of my suburban office, closer to the city, and had the same commute as I now do living 15 minutes north. We chose to live in the suburbs.

We chose an acre of land rather than the small lots of the city. We chose to have the flexibility and independence of each having a vehicle rather than relying on public transportation. We chose the luxury of having grocery stores and drug stores (and Starbucks) on every corner.  We chose to live within bike-riding distance of our sprawling suburban church campus. We had the resources and means to make all of those choices.

Am I comfortable with all those choices? Not entirely, and they're just for this season. The next season of life may take us elsewhere. Others in the discussion like living in the suburbs and enjoy the opportunities that the area provides. Some who grew up in small rural towns voiced concerns about raising their kids in the suburbs- full of great schools and parks and everything a family would want, but missing the Something that a close-knit small town brings. I also voiced concerns with raising our future kids in the suburbs, because I know the culture here better than I'd like, and I'm not sure I want my kids immersed in it.

Some in our group want to read Justice In the Burbs to figure how to incorporate justice into their lives in the suburbs, being unfamiliar with Surburbia and not sure of what that looks like. Me? I'm very familiar with Suburbia, and I'm not sure if it's possible. We all have lots of learning to do!

What is 'justice'?

Lately, I've just been talking about the 'saving change' part of It's Just Change during my No-Spend Month, but I'm still thinking plenty about the justice aspect of what I'm doing. This week, my friends and I started a discussion on the book Justice In the Burbs by Will and Lisa Samson.

The first point that came up generated a lot of discussion- what is "justice"?

Growing up, many of us related "justice" to things like the Judicial System and Criminal Justice. In church, when "love and justice" was spoken of, it was comparing the grace of God to the 'justice' of sending people to Hell. So, in that context, how do we understand Social Justice?

In the book, the Samsons explain justice as mercy, compassion, and fairness. When I've tried to explain why I care about social justice to friends in the past, and the term isn't in their vocabulary, I talk about justice as fairness. Someone pointed out in the discussion last night, 'fairness' can be taken many ways. If everyone begins at the same starting-line and works themselves to where they are today, the system is inherently fair & just, and nothing needs to be done. At the other end of the spectrum, at what standard of living is 'fair'? Should everyone own BMWs?

When using the book's definition- mercy, compassion, and fairness- these misconceptions aren't present. "Justice" is a desire for fairness flowing out of a love for others. This makes sense to us, because we see God's desire for this kind of justice through the story of His people. Over and over in the Old Testament, he tells His people to take care of the poor, widows, orphans and aliens among them. Jesus seemed to have a preference for those same marginalized people on his time on earth. The early church shared with each other to see that no one was needy.

Today, who are the "poor, widows, orphans and aliens" among us who need mercy, compassion, and fairness?

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At the end of September, the authors of Justice In the Burbs, Will and Lisa Samson, will be doing a seminar at our church. I look forward to blogging about the book, and then meeting and interacting with the authors! Also, I've reviewed Will's book Enough at my other blog.