When we go before the courts, the law of the land is supposed to be equally favorable to rich

and poor so that there's no opportunity for Lady Justice to peak.

But that's not always the way it is, is it?

There are times when the verdicts in the courtroom are politically or economically motivated.

Now Amos writes, but let justice run down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Now because of this call to justice and righteousness and the theme of justice in Amos, often

the way in which this message is described is as a call to social

justice.

Now, I want to just spend a few moments just with this concept because I can't think of too

many concepts that are more misleading in our contemporary culture than this idea of social justice.

Social justice in the prophets, social justice in Israel had to do with the rule of law and of righteousness in the culture.

It had nothing to do with socialism.

And since Marxist understanding of law, there's been a tremendous influence in our culture

today that equates social justice with social equality or economic equality.

The idea being that you don't have social justice unless everybody in the society has equal possessions and equal finances and so on.

An equal distribution of wealth is considered in socialistic countries as the supreme manifestation of social justice.

And the complaint is if there are inequalities in a culture where there can be a division between

the wealthy and the poor that that would necessarily reveal

a structure of social injustice that needs to be rectified.

Now, again, that's the common way in which you'll read the concept in the newspaper

and in the media today.

That's not the classic understanding of social justice, because classically, both philosophers

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