Bailey Devinney

Balancing Justice and Love

How does Stassen understand Jesus's ethic of love in the Sermon on the Mount?

Stassen understands Jesus’ ethic of love in the Sermon on the Mount in four themes. The first
being love sees with compassion and enter the situation of those in bondage (or enmity). This to
Stassen means to love thy enemy, Jesus says, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his
sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous,”
emphasizing this point. The second theme is love does deliver deeds, meaning Jesus taught this
is a way of deliverance from vicious cycles of bondage and judgment. The third theme is love
invites into community with justice, freedom, and a future. This to Stassen is shown through
Jesus’ teaching to make an enemy a part of your community. Lastly the theme of love confronts
those who exclude is mentioned by Stassen. Jesus shows this in the Sermon on the Mount
through teaching, “We cannot be morally perfect, but we can be all-embracing by doing loving
deeds toward our enemies, in the grace of God, who does loving deeds toward God’s enemies. In
doing that, we are participating in God’s grace, as God’s children,” (Stassen, p. 342).

How does Stassen understand Jesus to have thought about the demands of justice? 

Stassen first brings up Jesus’ Confrontation with Injustice and another four themes, the injustice
of greed and justice for the poor and hungry, the injustice of denomination, the injustice of
violence, and the injustice of exclusion from community. Through these four themes Jesus taught
many lessons including, Jesus died for all our sins, even injustice. One of the main reasons they
wanted him executed was because he confronted the powerful injustice. When we recognize his
concern for justice—for an end to unfair economic arrangements, unjust dominance, unjust
violence, and unjust exclusion from community—we are forced to reconsider our whole
understanding of what Jesus was proclaiming and teaching. We can't help but assume that if he
was so devoted to justice in his own setting, we should be just as concerned about it in ours.
Stassen takes this and argues that when people witness true injustice, they then become aware of
how valuable justice then is, (p. 655). And when we see how Jesus battled for justice and died
when the powerful, he was challenging for their injustice plotted to assassinate him and the
disciples betrayed him, we have even another extremely compelling incentive to repent and
follow him, (Stassen, p. 655).

How do both Cardinal Bernadine and Immacule Ilibagiza balance justice & love as they
seek to follow specific instructions of Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness in Matthew? Are their
stories in tension with what Stassen writes about justice & love? 

Both love and forgiveness are major themes in these tales. I wish to concentrate more on
the Immacule narrative. She had a battle that the majority of people could only read about and
never genuinely go through. His message of forgiveness is initially challenging to understand
because everyone reading would instantly identify with her and understand how they felt. I
believed that Immacule ought to have been enraged and out for her family's blood, but she
responded to the pain she had to endure in a very different way. She gave her entire attention to
prayer and the hidden things. She survived, I believe, because of the prayer.
Immacule stressed to me that people often overlook the fact that prayer should also be
used to express gratitude to God for good times rather than just for terrible ones. Prayer during
difficult times can help a person connect with God and remain rooted in him, but prayer during
good times transforms how a person's heart loves and influences others. His experience is
entirely consistent with Stassen's assertion that Jesus wished for us to love one another
unconditionally. Jesus wanted us to learn this lesson through the act of forgiving others because
Immaculee remained rooted in God throughout her trip and even managed to find a solution
without attempting to change other people's hearts.

How does Cone seek to correlate justice & love, and what does it mean for Cone to be a
follower of Jesus? (Cone just died recently, but I think his work is still important for
discussion.) 

Cone's thesis has several excellent points. Understanding that Jesus, depending on where
he was born, was not a white man in the Christianity we studied today is characterized around
the premise that it is misconstrued to fit a power narrative. If Cohn's research are accurate, then
the gospel can be completely understood for black people.
The white people has historically and continues to oppress the African American races.
The white race has always held the majority of power in America, and because of the lack of
representation from those it is being forced upon, the law is being moved in that direction. Cone
says that the goal of black theology is to liberate, empower, and enlighten the African American
race to comprehend that they are not inferior to any other race and that justice and love are
related to one another. For Cone, being a follower of Jesus entails being able to relate to both the
crucifixion of the Savior and the lynching of black people.
It's amazing how these two symbols and events may be equated because Jesus taught us
to accept suffering for standing up for what we believe in, and many black people have
historically faced persecution and even death for advocating for freedom and equality. A person
must be able to relate to the weak, struggling, homeless, and hungry people of society in order to
fully be with Jesus. Earthly resources, however, are valued far too highly for such to be the case,
as doing so would eliminate a level of authority and inevitably lead to equality.