Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.
Zechariah 7:9-10
Edward Bleier from 1986 to 2000 was president of a Warner Bros. division that developed basic cable networks such as Nickelodeon, MTV and The Movie Channel. He was credited with achieving record-breaking sales of vintage movies and older television series, shown in reruns, annually surpassing the income those productions had earned when first released. He was an innovator who foresaw industry-changing technologies and the need for fresh content to serve the emerging cable television market. At Warner Bros. Television, he gained a reputation for imaginative but also practical strategic thinking that helped usher in a new television era.
In an interview, Bleier attributed his success to “feeling as though you are doing the right thing, being skillful, delivering, not getting lost in idealism, staying very practical and very quantitative but looking ahead, not backwards.” In another interview the executive said, “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”
To promote social justice, we must be able to look forward, looking across the horizon at a society of equality. It is to view a community where the disenfranchised are welcome and the destitute are ministered to. It is to picture a commonwealth that has escaped the old bonds of racism, sexism, ageism, and socioeconomic constraints.
You and I can become promoters of justice if we triumph Zechariah’s call, “Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.” In answering this summons our endeavors should not be grandiose, for we lack the societal position to do so. Our goals must be modest, as we minister not to nations but to neighbors. In our minute intimate communities, we speak for those without a voice and reach out to those whose have lost their grasp. We accomplish this both as a singular venture and as a Christian mission.
Captain Tim Scott is the pastor of the Salvation Army church where I worship in Florence, South Carolina. His ministry begins after his 5am walk and continues with his answering the phone and reading text messages while sitting on his bed watching the military channel. From distributing food to the economically deprived to sheltering the homeless, his day is one of constant motion. I started worshipping at the Salvation Army for it is a congregation of outcasts. As I am severely autistic, I found no home at the flagship churches of the city where the parking lot have Cadillacs, not shopping carts.
Each Sabbath morning I look around the sanctuary those wearing their Sunday best have mismatched clothes and hair yet to be washed. And I watch Tim as he walks from pew to pew offering a kind word and inquiring how he may be of service. In a few years Tim will retire in silence, absent of statues, though he has built monuments in the hearts of all.
Twenty-four-year-old Helen Keller, the year after she graduated from Radcliffe College, wrote the book My Future As I see It. A central theme in that manuscript is her desire to help those who dwell in the outskirts of society. In the book she promoted the necessity to be sensitive, aware, and understanding. In her desire to help the “unfortunate,” she wrote “I must follow where the good cause leads me, just as a lamp goes with the hand.” In the book she recounts her struggles, her accomplishments, and most significantly how others assisted her. The closing line reads, “I can dream of that happy country of the future where no man will live as his ease while another suffers; then, indeed, shall the blind see and the deaf hear.”