"Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning." (Joseph Heller, Catch-22, from Chapter 8 'Lieutenant Scheisskopf ')
Justice, injustice, and the aching arbitrariness of it all is a central theme of Catch-22 [1] -- summed up powerfully in Chapter 39, which finds the protagonist Yossarian (a WWII bombadier) wandering through the streets of Rome, hopeless and helpless in the face of human tragedy and suffering:
The night was raw. A boy in a thin shirt and thin tattered trousers walked out of the darkness on bare feet. The boy had black hair and needed a haircut and shoes and socks. His sickly face was pale and sad. His feet made grisly, soft, sucking sounds in the rain puddles on the wet pavement as he passed, and Yossarian was moved by such intense pity for his poverty that he wanted to smash his pale, sad, sickly face with his fist and knock him out of existence because he brought to mind all the pale, sad, sickly children in Italy that same night who needed haircuts and needed shoes and socks. [...] all the shivering, stupefying misery in a world that never yet had provided enough heat and food and justice for all but an ingenious and unscrupulous handful. What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? […] On the other side of the intersection, a man was beating a dog with a stick like the man who was beating the horse with a whip in Raskolnikov’s dream. Yossarian strained helplessly not to see or hear. […] At the next corner a man was beating a small boy brutally in the midst of an immobile crowd of adult spectators who made no effort to intervene. […] The man kept knocking him down with hard, resounding open-palm blows to the head, then jerking him up to his feet in order to knock him down again. No one in the sullen, cowering crowd seemed to care enough about the stunned and beaten boy to interfere. The child was no more than nine. […] The screaming, struggling civilian was a dark man with a face white as flour from fear. His eyes were pulsating in hectic desperation, flapping like bat’s wings, as the many tall policemen seized him by the arms and legs and lifted him up. His books were spilled on the ground. ‘Help!’ he shrieked shrilly in a voice strangling in its own emotion, as the policemen carried him to the open doors in the rear of the ambulance and threw him inside. ‘Police! Help! Police!’ [...] Mobs… mobs of policemen—everything but England was in the hands of mobs, mobs, mobs. Mobs with clubs were in control everywhere. (Joseph Heller, Catch-22, from Chapter 39 'The Eternal City')The Old Testament prophet Isaiah is similarly eloquent and anguished about the broken, desperate realities of human existence and action/inaction:
For your hands are defiled with blood
and your fingers with iniquity;
your lips have spoken lies;
your tongue mutters wickedness.
No one enters suit justly;
no one goes to law honestly;
they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies,
they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.
They hatch adders' eggs;
they weave the spider's web;
he who eats their eggs dies,
and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched.
Their webs will not serve as clothing;
men will not cover themselves with what they make.
Their works are works of iniquity,
and deeds of violence are in their hands.
Their feet run to evil,
and they are swift to shed innocent blood;
their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
desolation and destruction are in their highways.
The way of peace they do not know,
and there is no justice in their paths;
they have made their roads crooked;
no one who treads on them knows peace.
Therefore justice is far from us,
and righteousness does not overtake us;
we hope for light, and behold, darkness,
and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
We grope for the wall like the blind;
we grope like those who have no eyes;
we stumble at noon as in the twilight,
among those in full vigour we are like dead men.
We all growl like bears;
we moan and moan like doves;
we hope for justice, but there is none;
for salvation, but it is far from us.
For our transgressions are multiplied before you,
and our sins testify against us;
for our transgressions are with us,
and we know our iniquities:
transgressing, and denying the Lord,
and turning back from following our God,
speaking oppression and revolt,
conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.
Justice is turned back,
and righteousness stands far away;
for truth has stumbled in the public squares,
and uprightness cannot enter.
Truth is lacking,
and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. (Isaiah 59:3-13)
I have little to say about social justice; even if I had the words, I have forfeited the right through my own inaction. In those moments when I have been brave enough to momentarily open my eyes and ears, I have heard of failed asylum seekers who are practically still children being sent back to war-torn countries where their families have been murdered and persecuted -- processed by 'the system' with no room for compassion or even, it seems, common sense. And I've heard of criminals who, having mercilessly destroyed lives, are apparently allowed to continue on their lawless rampages even after every 'appropriate authority' has been informed. No-one intervenes; no explanation is given. Where is the logic? let alone the the compassion! And as for 'truth has stumbled in the public squares' -- how aptly that describes the media...
A couple of chapters on in Isaiah... the hope of justice, of restoration:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,750 years later Jesus explicitly applied these words to himself, speaking in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth at the start of his public ministry (Luke 4:16-20). Restoration has begun...but it is immediately and painfully evident that it has not yet been fully realised. There is lots about the 'now and not yet' of God's Kingdom that I don't understand. But I do think there is a reason why the church is called the 'body of Christ' (e.g. Romans 12:5-8) and I suspect it has at least partly to do with the active bringing of justice and healing to the world as we currently encounter it, in his strength and love and by his prompting. [3] I know people who are engaging with this calling in bold and obvious ways. I am not one of them. That is probably not ok.
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour...(Isaiah 61:1-2a)
[1] It was love at first sight. The first time I picked up Catch-22, I fell madly in love with it. [2] (I concede that much of what I read may be considered an 'acquired taste'...but not this. I'd recommend it to near anyone!)
[2] I awoke, the morning after first posting this, in a state of mild amusement/embarrassment at the realisation that I recently (publicly) compared someone I know to this book. Whilst I see no need to disguise my sincere affection for the people I am blessed to have in my life, I would like, just in case, to reassure any of those then present who may one day read this that there is no need to be concerned by any unfortunate syllogisms you might find yourselves constructing! (I do not consider a riff on the novel's opening lines to be a true premise…)
[3] An excellent bit of N.T. Wright on what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. See, in particular, the section entitled 'The Church and its Purpose'.
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