Distributive Justice – The Kingdom Curriculum XVII (7)

Distributive Justice

“And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner….” Leviticus 23:22

In every society there are those who cannot take care of themselves. For one reason or another they are unable to secure or keep a job; they find themselves out on the streets; or some emergency situation befalls them for which they incur sudden needs. Communities have a responsibility to provide for the needy by distributing to them out of the common wealth of the community so that their most basic needs might be met. This is what we call distributive justice and is the final facet in the Biblical jewel of justice.

Not everybody who is not working or is out on the streets qualifies for this privilege. The Bible puts up a hedge around the generosity of the community, lest it be taken advantage of by irresponsible members or outsiders. The Scriptures even require that people in need take responsibility, to some extent, for meeting their needs out of the community’s largesse. The gleaners may not have had property of their own to harvest, but they had to go out into the fields, like Ruth, and gather what they needed from the generosity of their neighbors.

In our day we practice this facet of the jewel of justice in a variety of ways: soup kitchens, clothes closets and used furnishings stores, diaconal ministries in churches, various forms of “workfare.” Governments can easily overstep the requirements of distributive justice when they begin establishing arbitrary standards of wealth and poverty, to tax the one and reward the other through various kinds of redistribution schemes. The principle of distributive justice is Biblical, but efforts at redistributing wealth according to arbitrary standards and criteria can easily abuse this principle and thus tip the balance of justice in other ways.

Hence the need to understand and practice all the facets of the Biblical jewel of justice, beginning with the members of the household of faith.

Reading and meditating on the Law of God is every believer’s duty and privilege (Ps. 1). Order your copy of The Law of God, a compendium of the commandments and precepts of God’s Law, by going to www.MyParuchia.com, point your browser to “Publications,” then click on the drop-down option, “Waxed Tablet Publications.”

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore.

T.M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.