How I’m going to Get My Master’s Degree

What is the difference between compassion and justice through the eyes of a daily practitioner? Continue reading as Paul Luikart, a Housing Coordinator at Breakthrough Urban Ministries, enlightens us…

Rather than go back to school to get a master’s degree myself, I’ve decided to hang around people who are already going to school to get master’s degrees. I will then engage these master’s degree people in conversations. I will ask them really general questions and when they respond with educated answers, I will nod my head slightly, look thoughtfully to the side and say things like, “Yeah, that’s true,” or, “I was thinking that myself.” Every now and then, as I am listening to these master’s degree people, I will scrunch my eyebrows together to non-verbally indicate that whatever it is they’re saying is resonating with me. Then, when they say something like, “Did that not make sense?” I will say, “It did. I’m just thinking. Please. Continue.” Then I will press the tips of my fingers together under my chin and look at them intently. If I smoked, this would be the point where I would take a slow, thought-filled drag. After these master’s degree conversations, I will immediately write down everything they say so I don’t forget it. I will review these notes from time to time. After about two years, the length of a typical master’s degree program, I believe I will have enough knowledge stored in my brain to go to any number of colleges in the Chicago-land area and say to the office types there, “I have enough knowledge in my brain right now for a master’s degree. Where should I pick it up? Or should I leave you my address and you can just send it?” The office types will say, “How would you like your name to appear on your master’s degree?” and I will say, “Paul Luikart, Information Master. And Beast Master.”

I bring this up because a few weeks ago I had a great conversation with my friend Dave who is in school now to earn a master’s degree. Eventually, he is going to be a pastor. He will be a master pastor. Dave has great thoughts and ideas about justice and compassion and what the Church should be doing when it comes to these things. I had kind of pegged justice and compassion as being approximately the same thing, or, more accurately, had not really given much thought to what either of those things really are. I just figured they were one of a number of things on that invisible list a lot of churches have, that list that says followers of Christ should exhibit these traits: justice, compassion, mercy, love, forgiveness, etc. Really, I just assumed these were all basically the same. Anyway, Dave said, “Compassion and justice are two different things. Compassion would be more like a work of mercy that one does because one’s heart is bent toward a particular individual (or group) so much so that one can’t help but do something, more or less in the moment, to help. So, like serving dinner in a soup kitchen. Letting a homeless guy use your cell phone so he can call somebody. Things like that. Justice, on the other hand, would be diving into the systems that create unfair gaps between groups of people, intending to make those systems fair for everybody. So, being involved in community development would be working for justice because it seeks to make a housing system that currently favors those with more money accessible and fair to those who are trapped in things like poverty and homelessness.” At this point in the conversation, I definitely looked off to the side and nodded my head slightly. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” I probably said.

I think compassion is probably the door way to justice. I think performing works of mercy helps people to see the need for justice. (By “works of mercy” I mean “compassion.” I just chose the more Catholic term for it. Works of mercy. I think that’s the term someone of my scholastic caliber master’s degree candidate by proxy would use.) For example, taking a small group from church to serve dinner at a homeless shelter exposes people in that small group to the reality of injustice in the world of homeless men, women and children. That exposure might look like any number of things. Maybe somebody in the small group has a great one on one conversation with a guest at the shelter who, because of a felony on his record, is continually discriminated against when it comes to finding a job. Maybe somebody else in that small group, and let’s say this person is white, has a conversation with a guest who is black and that small group member learns more about what it feels like to be the victim of real, live racism. The point is that when a person performs a work of mercy he is offered the chance to look more deeply into existing systems which may have brought about the need for his compassionate action. If the person never had the chance to perform the work of mercy, perhaps the truth of injustice would never have made itself apparent to him. When that small group leaves the shelter after they finish serving, there’s going to be an inevitable confrontation with injustice in the minds of the group members. That’s uncomfortable, or at least can be, because now each of those group members have to place the truth of injustice somewhere in their own brains. Before coming to the shelter, nobody had to think about it. Of course, decisions about what to do next based on this new knowledge cover a wide spectrum: ¦maybe it means coming back next month to serve again, maybe it means forcing the experience out of their minds, maybe it means a couple of the group members form a housing cooperative and invest in blighted neighborhoods.

The point is, as Christ-followers, I think we are supposed to walk through the door way of our compassion and explore what it means to do justice. (Micah 6:8.) There are probably about a thousand ways to be involved in bringing about justice. I will not list them all here. That’s for doctoral students. I suppose what I can say about it is that doing justice probably requires creativity and an examination of one’s particular gifts coupled with an examination of just what it is that inspires us to compassionate action. Or read my friend Dave’s book about social justice when he finally writes one, which I bet he will do. That will probably have all the answers in it.

Paul Luikart is a Housing Coordinator at Breakthrough Urban Ministries. He works with men and women who stay outside and in shelters to assist them in finding more permanent housing. A big part of the work is addressing issues of injustice in housing systems and being a voice for marginalized people in the city.