The Relationship of Justice and Community

by | Nov 17, 2024 | Ethics

Title image Woman staring out of window longing for community

What is justice? Restorative leadership is an approach to leading that focuses on healing relationships, rebuilding trust, and creating positive change through inclusive and collaborative practices. Once restorative leadership is introduced, a natural follow-up question is: “Restored to what?” Explaining that the restorative leadership model is rooted in restorative justice doesn’t answer the question either. That leads to a deeper inquiry, “What is justice?” I’ve been wrestling with that question for a while. In some ways, I feel like Justice Potter Stewart who famously said of obscenity, “… I know it when I see it.”1 But for me, it might be more accurate to say, “I know it when I feel it.”

Justice is often modified–criminal justice, social justice, economic justice, and so forth. Narrowing justice in this way may be helpful for assessment and problem solving, but whenever justice is qualified, it necessarily represents something less than justice wholly. My frustration has been in trying to define justice in this way, as an end in itself. I’ve reached a point where I am thinking that justice is not an aim to itself, that it must be anchored is something more broadly, like community.

To understand this complexity, consider the moral dilemma presented in The Lord of the Rings with Gollum’s story. In his quest to possess the golden ring—an artifact so corrupting it resembles a radioactive force, destroying all who come near it, Gollum committed numerous crimes, including murder. When Frodo accepts the burden of destroying the ring to protect the community, Gollum continues to pursue it relentlessly. Despite Gollum’s criminal past and treacherous nature, Frodo chooses to show him mercy, a compassionate stance that stands in stark contrast to other characters like Sam, who distrusts Gollum and advocates for harsh justice. Ironically, it is during a final fight with Frodo for possession of the ring that Gollum falls into molten lava, taking the ring with him and inadvertently saving all living beings from its destructive power.

It feels just—Gollum’s actions, driven by his own greed, led to his reward.

While Gollum’s fate may seem just in the moment, what happens when we examine it through the lens of broader community? Assuming that criminal justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, and sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts, check–criminal justice is accomplished. Anchoring criminal justice in justice more broadly by removing the modifier “criminal,” still feels just. But what if justice is anchored more broadly into community.

The Concept of Community

The concept of community refers to a group of people who are connected by shared experiences, goals, values, interests, or geographical location. It is characterized by mutual relationships, interaction, and a sense of belonging among its members. It is where completeness, wholeness, harmony, and the flourishing of all creation happens. There is a field of study that has its own theories of community that should be consulted. For the limited use of this post, I freehanded some first principles of community that integrate social, relational, spiritual, and group dimensions.

  1. Wholeness and Completeness: Community invites a state of wholeness and perfection, where nothing is lacking and all relationships are restored. This encompasses not only personal well-being but also societal health, justice, and equality of opportunity.
  2. Peace and Harmony: Community invites peace—not just the absence of conflict but the presence of right relationships and reconciliation. It fosters harmonious relationships among individuals, communities, and even with the environment.
  3. Reciprocal Engagement: Community invites engagement with others as members would like others to engage with them. Rather than something received, reciprocal engagement is the obligation to treat others rightly. It involves treating people with fairness, defending the vulnerable, and working to rectify imbalances of power. It emphasizes doing what is right and creating structures that promote equality of opportunity.
  4. Reconciliation: Community invites mending broken relationships between people, within communities, and with God. It involves healing past wounds, restoring trust, and building bridges across divides.
  5. Community and Mutual Care: Community extends beyond the individual. Members of a community bear responsibility for one another, promoting mutual care, respect, and love.
  6. Flourishing and Well-Being: Community invites everyone to thrive in all aspects of life—physically, emotionally, spiritually, and materially. It aims to create conditions in which all people can reach their fullest potential.
  7. Stewardship and Creation Care: Community invites a harmonious relationship with the environment. It calls for caring for the earth and ensuring its health for future generations, recognizing that human well-being is intertwined with the well-being of creation.
  8. Love and Compassion: Community invites love and compassion for others. This principle calls for extending kindness, empathy, and generosity toward all people.
  9. Healing and Restoration: Whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, Community invites healing and restoration. This can include personal transformation, reconciliation with others, and systemic change to address injustices.
  10. Holistic Peace: Community invites peace that permeates every aspect of life. This principle highlights the interconnectedness of all things, meaning that peace in one area (e.g., personal, social, environmental) affects and is affected by peace in other areas.

These principles collectively reflect a vision of community that extends far beyond the absence of conflict, emphasizing a state of thriving, harmony, and justice within oneself, relationships, communities, and the world as a whole.

The Relationship Between Justice and Community

Alabama Judge Joseph A. Colquitt, who serves as the Chairman of the Alabama Sentencing Commission, suggests that

It is vital that we do not succumb to oversimplifying a complicated process and accepting easy answers. In this complicated area of law, solutions that sound simple are invariably based upon limited information or faulty assumptions.

Anchoring justice in community still leads to the conclusion that Gollum was treated justly in many ways. Frodo did extend him grace and repeatedly invited Gollum to be a part of community. But his end was not wholly just. Justice is not complete because Gollum is no longer a part of the community. Throughout Gollum’s story there were moments that evidenced that he had the potential to be a community member, to make reciprocal investment. He confronted the darkness in himself, he aided Frodo and Sam in their journey, he did serve an ultimately good end.

Creative Tension

So, maybe creative tension should be a component of community. By creative tension, I mean the dynamic friction between what we imagine our community to be and reality, which drives us to grow and improve as individuals and as a community. Maybe we have to acknowledge the messiness of it. Acknowledging that we imagine Community perfectly but that it isn’t perfect. That Community is striving for justice and recognizing that it is worth striving for but that we just cannot perfectly get there. This so-called creative tension2 can be a source of energy that drives positive change in the Community.

Perhaps we can also acknowledge that when we oversimplify complex issues or reach for easy answers, we are actually avoiding the creative tension that is essential for building communities. This avoidance prevents us from engaging in the difficult but necessary work of addressing challenges that shape the kind of communities we aspire to create. Embracing complexity and resisting quick fixes, though uncomfortable, allows us to participate in the transformative process that builds community.

Brandon Blankenship
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  1. Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). ↩︎
  2. So-Called by Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and more modernly explored by by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline. ↩︎