deconstructing justice

Words have a strange way of being repeated and repeated and repeated until they cease to have any meaning at all. They become built into familiar linguistic structures until we don’t even notice they’re there, the way we stop noticing bricks or tiles or air. These words become an accepted part of social reality requiring no thought or speculation, and as a result they become nothing more than shapes when written or sounds when spoken.

A word that has begun to approach this construction into emptiness, I think, is “justice.” Over the last nine months we have witnessed the growth of an incredible movement against police brutality, the mass incarceration of black Americans, and other manifestations of white supremacy in our society. But while we see what this movement is against, there are times when it’s difficult to see what it is for. There’s an easy answer, of course. Justice.

Justice for Trayvon Martin.

Justice for Michael Brown.

Justice for Eric Garner.

Justice for Tamir Rice.

Justice for Walter Scott.

Justice for Freddie Gray.

No justice, no peace.

But what does it mean?

Would an indictment and guilty charge against the police officers have been enough? It would have been something. It would have been a step. But even if a legal precedent for holding police officers accountable had been set, that only would have been snuffing out a single flame in a forest fire. Communities would have celebrated, the powerful would have patted themselves on their backs, advocates for “colorblindness” would have seen no reason for the new precedent but be gladdened by their belief that the angry protesters have been mollified, and the momentum of the movement would have been lost with too little gained.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I’ve seen this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. posted several times in recent months, and it says to me that the crawl towards this ideal of “justice” happens in a start-and-stop manner but is ultimately inevitable. And I believe this. I believe that “the renewal of all things” that’s told of in the Bible will happen and that we must take an active part in making it happen. We must be the hands of Jesus that grab hold of the arc of the moral universe and bends it towards justice.

But what does that mean?

This word that has been repeated into oblivion must be rediscovered. Like Babel we have to stop constructing it into a static fixture of our social landscape and deconstruct it, turning it into something less knowable, something that demands our attention when we walk by it. But even now I’m building false worlds with my words that have no decipherable meaning when brought into the material world we live in. But it’s precisely this deliverance of an unknown world into this one that we have to strive for.

I have hope for this deliverance, but not because of some kind of complete picture of how it will look. My hope does not stem from a knowledge of solutions, but from a need for them. In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire argues: "Hope is rooted out in men's incompletion, from which they move out in constant search--a search which can be carried out only in communion with others." Because there must be change, I am driven by hope to join others in search of it.

As a teacher-in-training, I hope to join others in education. I hope to learn from other professionals I work alongside, from the students I'm told are to learn from me, from the families they go home to, from the communities in which they live. Schools have the potential to become spaces of co-construction and deconstruction, of personal and communal development, and sites of social change.

As a Christian, I hope to join others in communities connected by faith. The Spirit of God brings powerful change and healing and freedom to individuals in varying ways, and the interconnection of these stories can lead to powerful change and healing and freedom on a larger scale. If I am claiming to usher in the world God is creating, I must do so with others claiming to do the same.

And then there's this space, the barely-explored platform of social media, where communities form and expand in ways never before possible. I hope to join with others here. So although you may know me, let me introduce myself. My name's Elijah Eiler. I'm a student, seeker, teacher, and now I supposed I'm a blogger. I hope that your words and actions in your various contexts can teach me something about my own, and I hope I can offer something useful to you.

Ultimately, I hope for justice. Not because I know what it means or looks like, but because that's the word that's been assigned to this unknowable end I hope to work for. I hope to offer words that build up and tear down, that are built up and torn down by others, that take part in this slow, start-and-stop bending of reality into a world that is intended, a world that is needed, a world that is just.