For too long, believers have struggled with a false choice. On one side stands power, seen as cold and coercive. On the other side stands love, seen as pure but powerless. This contradiction has left many believers unsure how to engage in political life.
Love cannot be forced. This much is true. The state cannot make citizens love one another through legislation. Acts of love must be voluntary, personal, and sacrificial. A clerk who returns correct change fulfills an obligation, not an act of love. True love gives more than what is required.
However, society cannot function on love alone. Neighbours need more than good intentions. They need clean water, safe streets, fair wages and schools that teach. These things require structures.
They require laws. They require power.
This is where justice enters the conversation. Justice provides the bridge between love and power. Unlike love, justice can be demanded. Unlike love, justice can be enforced. Unlike love, justice applies to everyone regardless of their beliefs.
Justice means giving each person their due. It means creating conditions where people can live with dignity. It means ensuring that the widow receives her change, not as charity, but as her right. Justice does not replace love, but it creates the foundation upon which love can build.
The problem with rejecting power is that it leaves the vulnerable unprotected. When Christians refuse to engage with political structures, they abandon the field to those who care nothing for justice.
The powerful continue to shape laws in their favour while the faithful stand outside, offering prayers but no resistance.
This does not mean embracing every use of power as good. Power corrupts and political power most of all. Nevertheless, power can also restrain evil. Power can protect the weak. Power can establish schools, build hospitals and feed the hungry. The question is not whether to use power, but toward what end.
Love without justice becomes sentimentality. It pats the hungry on the head while leaving them hungry. It speaks of brotherhood while segregated churches sit half empty. It preaches reconciliation while ignoring the economic structures that keep people poor.
Justice without love becomes cold and mechanical. It enforces rights without regard for relationships. It distributes resources without building community. It settles disputes without healing wounds.
The two belong together. Love informs justice about what matters. Justice gives love a way to act in the world. Love inspires the search for fairness. Justice provides the terms upon which people can live together peaceably.
Christians need not choose between being politically relevant and being faithful. They need not abandon their commitment to servanthood in order to engage with power. They need only recognize that serving the neighbour sometimes means working through the structures that shape the neighbour's life.
The path from piety to practice runs through justice. It acknowledges that while the state cannot love, it can do what love requires. It can treat people fairly. It can protect the vulnerable. It can create conditions where love might flourish. This is not a call to abandon the religion. It is a call to take up the work of justice as one way of bearing witness to the love that gave everything for the world.
