I’ve been thinking recently about injustices and how we respond in love to them. There’s a part of my humanity that wants to avenge injustice at the cost of acting in love. And while we need stand up for injustices and fight to see them overcome, I still believe it can be done in a loving and just way.
This especially applies in matters of relationships. Love always covers. I came across this quote on Valentine’s Day from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love." Sometimes, the best way to cover injustice is by loving those who are suffering under it. That can mean standing in a silence with a friend. It also can mean saying you don’t understand why this or that is happening. Love covers injustice when it is extended unconditionally to the individual. Unconditional support of those suffering under injustice produces healing and restoration in the soul and in turn opens up new opportunities for injustices to be overturned.
When I’m encountering those who are operating outside the realm of love, I try to remember to be kinder than necessary, for everyone we meet is fighting some kind of battle. People virtually always have a reason to do what they are doing. Often those reasons are invisible to those on the receiving end or those on observing from the outside. So we need to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Legalistic, judgmental standards that appeal to doctrine and the rightness of one’s position, at the expense of relationships, are neither right nor just nor loving. The fruit of that functioning is death to anything good that could come out of a bad situation.
Gandhi said, "Where love is, there God is also." Release love daily, and you'll find God daily in new ways. He is there, even if in the shadows, waiting to see how we activate and release his ideals. It’s a better strategy to see God in everything rather than to try and figure it all out. Embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly and you’ll find new strength in new ways. Your virtue can then be restored.
Nietzsche said it this way: "The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us." You can only reframe the nonsense of your life when you gain a new and higher perspective. That’s why Jesus of Nazareth always taught people to live according to the standards of heaven. Only then can our earth be transformed and our hearts satisfied. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they’ll be filled,” he said. That’s a promise for all of us.
Transforming love helps us make sense of the nonsense by gaining an eternal, broad perspective rather than a temporal one that gets us lost in the minutiae of who’s right and who’s wrong. It shifts us out of the blame game of self-justification and into a place of inner peace and self-control. It allows us to reshape the circumstances instead of being shaken by them. Inner peace will with time produce outer calm because greater is love within us than the chaos in our world.
The Buddhist wisdom scriptures aptly declare:
Arouse your will, supreme and great,
Practice love, give joy and protection;
Let your giving be like space,
without discrimination or limitation.
Do good things, not for your own sake
But for all the beings in the universe;
Save and make free everyone you encounter,
Help them attain the wisdom of the way.
The wisdom of the way reminds us that we need each other, in spite of the risks we find in relationships. Leo Buscaglia said, "We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death."
Today, no matter whatever injustice you face, choose love. Choose right relationships. Choose growth. Choose life. It’s the best way to live and you might even end up loving life along the way.
(c) 2008 Jonathan D. Benz. All rights reserved. Use only with permission.
