Biblical justice is a celebration of discipline

The Just Life is very much an approach to justice issues through spiritual development and self-giving discipleship — viewing a truly “just life” as the ultimate expression of a Christian’s engagement with the world we find ourselves in.

Studying the spiritual disciplines is a great place to start your journey. One of the masters at articulating the disciplines is Richard Foster and his book “Celebration of Discipline” is one of the best…

Foster’s insight is so in tune with the vision of The Just Life that we thought it might be enlightening to share some of Foster’s maxims on the discipline of service:

The divine priority is worship first, service second. Our lives are to be punctuated with praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, Service flows out of worship. Service as a substitute for worship is idolatry. Activity is the enemy of adoration.

But in service we must experience the many little deaths of going beyond ourselves. Service banishes us to the mundane, the ordinary, the trivial.

Self-righteous service comes through human effort. It expends immense amounts of energy calculating and scheming how to render service. Sociological charts and surveys are devised so we can “help these people.”

True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside.

True service is free of the need to calculate results.

True service is indiscriminate in its ministry.

True service ministers simply and faithfully because there is a need.

True service is a lifestyle.

True service can withhold the service as freely as perform it.

True service builds community. It quietly and unpretentiously goes about caring for the needs of others. It draws, binds, heals, builds.

Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness.

Joyous hidden service to others is an acted prayer of thanksgiving. We seem to be directed by a new control Center — and so we are.