Justice is How You Live, 
Not What You Get, in Life

 by Jef Bartow


I believe the best way to approach this spiritual principle is to begin with what most humans consider their sense of justice. The term justice comes from the root just, which has various meanings. Common ones include lawful, rightful, proper, deserved, legally right reasonable, accurate and exact. Less common terms include equitable, impartial, righteous and merited. A great deal of justice in our society is determined by what is either lawfully or morally right.

In our normal sense of justice, we get the cart before the horse. Instead of our laws and legal system being focused on and led by justice, justice becomes what is legally right and dictated by our laws and legal system. Better understanding what justice really is should help set things straight. Instead of it being our legal justice system, it needs to be our justice system, legally applied.

Theologically, Justice is the "sum total of all virtues" which equals "holiness." To St. Augustine, the "light of justice which is the presence of God" becomes the expression of Justice as the expression of the presence of God. Philosophically, "... justice is thought of as apportioning to each particular virtue or excellence its proper sphere." It is the "greatest of excellences" and the source of all virtues.

Aristotle provides a powerful insight into justice. It consists of "treating equals equally and unequals unequally, but in proportion to the relative differences." Another key perspective comes from St. Thomas Aquinas who said: "God's justice is sometimes called doing what befits goodness."


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Other definitions fromWebster's firmly differentiates justice from law. These definitions include "impartiality, righteous, equitable, dispassionate, unprejudiced, principled and proper fitting." How much of our legal system reflects these terms? I would put it in the little to none category. Even within a very wide gap between justice and what is legally right, Spirit still works imperfectly through an imperfect system to bring us our karma to be dealt with. The more we are aligned to Spirit, the more perfectly our karma comes to us in and from the outer world.

Our outer court systems within this country, as an imperfect reflection of Spirit, means that there is a spiritual court system based on the Spirit characteristic of Justice. Actually, Justice as an energy, expresses through these courts impartially, dispassionately, equitably and righteously in treating individual Beings and groups equally among equals, and unequals unequally but according to their relative differences. We have the opportunity to take advantage of Justice through these courts. A great place to begin is the Court of the Christ.

First, each of us has to be willing to stand in Divine Justice in the Court of the Christ. This means standing in the energy of Justice. Subtle, but most important, this means we must be willing to be dealt with first in Justice before anyone or anything else. Through you and in you Justice will be exacted. If you call yourself and someone else into Divine Justice and then refuse to stand there yourself, you will definitely be treated unequally among unequals. If that makes you shake in your boots a little regarding Divine Justice, it should.
On the other hand, standing in Divine Justice will bring you Justice every time, with no exceptions. That you can count on. What may seem unfortunate at times, is that Justice does not always work instantaneously. The wheels of Justice turn at different speeds for each individual, according to their karma and according to the issue. Therefore, we need to maintain a just perspective while in Divine Justice, and afterward. This means we need to maintain a detached, objective, righteous attitude while the light of Justice works. This also means maintaining a "no expectations" attitude toward the outcome of Justice.

I learned to stand in Divine Justice from my mentor. And I learned it imperfectly to begin with. In the beginning, I looked to see what physical outcomes would reflect justice. What I learned was that the physical working out of Justice would many times take years to see. What became far more meaningful was to clairvoyantly watch Divine Justice work in the Court of the Christ and feel it through my being. Seeing it accurately at the level of the Court of the Christ did require taking an impartial, detached, dispassionate and exacting focus.

Second, we need to replace compromise with sacrifice in solving problems. The three main components of spiritual growth include love, wisdom and sacrifice. We are all forced to sacrifice on the Spiritual Path in order to transmute our personal will into spiritual will. A major area for sacrifice is always of one's own desires. When we are really willing to give something up and move on, we transcend our human nature and receive something far greater in return. I conclude that the grace we receive from God is proportionate to how much we’re willing to sacrifice for God.

Regarding our adolescent generation, the way we teach them the power of sacrifice is as role models. We need to show them how to do it by example. I'd be willing to guarantee you that the changes they see in us from sacrifice will be the most powerful way they learn to do it freely themselves. I suggest that we start with the little things in life and work up to the important sacrifices we all must make in spiritualizing ourselves.

Thirdly, finding solutions that transcend the problem are powerfully facilitated by replacing fairness with justice. Synonyms of fair include just, impartial, unbiased, objective and dispassionate. These synonyms go to the definition of justice. Justice is as Aristotle said: "treating equals equally and unequals unequally, but in proportion to their relevant differences." Justice provides the "dispassionate impartiality which creates an equitable or proper fitting of like principles and forms." And importantly, this has little to do with rules and regulations that apply to all. 

If we treat our children with justice, then each is treated equally when the problem is equally shared and each is treated separately based on the relevant differences in the situation for each. To do this, we need to better understand the unique needs and issues for each individual and create solutions based on them. 

This will also go a long way toward solving our global affairs. Each country, peoples, races and cultures will be better helped with justice than with fairness or compromise. That will, of course, require a radically different attitude and orientation from world leaders and our society. It seems pretty easy to see that much sacrifice will be involved.

My question is this: What do we have to lose? Evolution is excruciating. Revolutionary changes and a more radical orientation in loving, sacrificing and communicating our wisdom to those less fortunate than us will accelerate their growth and prosperity while transforming our humanness into spiritual power.