Brad asked:

A question about justice.

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I venture the belief that most people entertain a sense of justice. How often do we hear the
expression: "I think that this is unfair?" Or; "What right have they to do that?" We seem to have an
inbuilt awareness of an imbalance or injustice in a situation. As observers we can somehow see that
if Tom gets five sweets and Mary gets four, there is an imbalance or unfairness about the situation. In
one way, then, it seems that justice/ fairness is about balancing things out. Many of us, even just as
observers, can get highly emotional at something that is glaringly unfair, particularly when there is
nothing we can do about it. Basically, most of us, then, seem to be conscious of a rapid response to
what we perceive as unfairness, so confident are we about this basic awareness of injustice/ justice
that we feel entitled to act at once to put things right or make our feelings known.

Like morality in general, of which justice is an important ingredient, there is a suspicion amongst
some philosophers that it is part of our mental make-up, something not actually taught us by
experience or indoctrination, but, in a Kantian perspective, is a transcendental property. As you may
be aware, Kant presented us with the notion that although we are aware of objects in a world outside
the confines of our minds, by way of phenomena presented to us by our senses. We interpret this
given objective knowledgein terms ofsubjective knowledgewhich we possess a priori, in other words
knowledge not given to us by our senses, but intrinsically present in the mind, which includes as well
as moral awareness things like cause and effect, and time and space. The addition of this subjective
knowledge to the sensual knowledge we receive enables us to build up mind/ mental constructs.
Thus the popular notion that the mind conforms to objects in the world is reversed and, according to
Kant, objects conform to the mind. Thus when we observe an event involving fairness and
equality,that event becomes inbuilt into a mental concept constructed in the light of justice.

Despite the fact that we may be intrinsically aware of what is just and what is unjust, this does not
prevent our concept of justice being over-ridden by stronger emotions, such as desire, greed,
revenge, misplaced sympathy, bias, favoritism, etc. Most of us are very good at providing excuses for
unjust actions, but however good the excuses, the actions remain unjust. For example, in the light of
current knowledge the Iraq war appears to have been unjust. The initial objective was supposed to be
the desire to rid Saddam of weapons of mass destruction, it begins to seem that there are, and never
were any. Yet a mass of propaganda was supplied to justify the action, However, whatever excuses
are produced the basic injustice remains. The fact that a monsterous regime has been destroyed
does not alter the premise that the USA and Britain went into Iraq to locate and destroy weapons of
mass destruction; using a separate argument in hindsight does not remove the injustice of the action.
It is unfair to accuse someone of something they have not done, even if that person is a monster.
This seems to be at least one fundamental property of what we regard as justice, and begs the
question for the absolute. If Kant is correct, then there is little reason to doubt the existence of
absolutes, absolute morality including absolute justice seems ostensibly to be undeniable. However, if
Kant is not correct this does not mean that an alternative argument cannot be provided for the
existence of absolutes.

To come to the main point of your question, we can in the light of what has gone before conceive of
the possibility of equal justice for everyone. After all, if justice is absolute then it applies to everyone
and to every event. However, we must bear in mind what has been said before, our concept of justice
can be over-ridden by emotions and feelings. To use examples from those previously mentioned,
take the case of a person on a limited budget who cannot restrain the desire to purchase an
expensive object which, if they do, will bring financial problems for the family. Their true sense of
injustice to the family would probably be overcome by excuses and the probable conclusion; "If I had
not purchased this, then I would be unjust to myself." This would, as well as desire, include
selfishness. A person taking more than his/her share of a rationed provision, even though they know
that it is unfair, is submitting their sense of justice and fairness to greed. I am sure that you can refer
to cases where it is obvious that injustice has been done by carrying out acts of revenge, revenge can
grossly over-compensate for perceived injustice, to such an extent that injustice becomes the result of
revenge. Usually, cases of favoritism and bias are self evidently unjust, whilst misplaced sympathy for
a cause or person can often be seen to be irrational and deliberately unjust.

Possibly, in all the cases of human failure and weakness injustice is the one most obvious to us.
Despite our excuses the sense of an injustice we are responsible for stays with us by way of
conscience, no matter what reasons and excuses we provide for ourselves, there remains the uneasy
awareness that our action was unjust. What most of us are afraid of admitting is a feeling of regret,
the reasoning and excuses are there to suppress this feeling.

The histories of politics and religion are full of injustices, as is the history of law, which is there to
detect and punish injustice. The interpretation of justice in law leaves a lot to be desired. Where we
would expect to find justice for all, has often been seen to be just the opposite. The failings of bias
and revenge have often seen to be present in the so-called justice meted out. Wealth and position in
society have always been seen to influence justice, so has corruption in the organisations which exist
to uphold law and order. The present obsession with 'political correctness' often swings the alleged
injustice from one side to the other. The present rather unfortunate habit of lenient sentencing creates
a great sense of injustice in victims and the relations of victims. This also follows from the now rather
common practice of seeming to dispense justice to the criminal at the expense of the victim.

Unfortunately, societies do not search for absolute justice, but are prepared to set the parameters
within the alleged desires and preferences of the nation, establishing the subjective rather than the
objective. As man makes laws to suit himself, justice is usually biased in favour of the ruling class.
Most nations, then, present an artificial justice, which fortunately we are often equipped to detect and
compare with the perceived absolute. It is in this light that the increased dominance of capitalism in
an increasing secular world, strikes fear into the hearts of genuine moralists.

We are dealing here with a very extensive and complex subject, to do it justice we would require to
write a book. To briefly demonstrate some of the complexity involved, where it is difficult to decide
which of two opposing concepts is justified, take the parable from the New Testament, where a
farmer desiring to harvest his crops employs a group of men early in the morning at an agreed wage.
Later in the morning he hires more men at the same wage. After lunch he repeats the process, and
just two hours before it is time to stop work he takes on more men at exactly the same wage. On the
face of it there appears to be something very unjust, and this is quickly pointed out by the men
employed early in the morning; Why should men employed for only two hours get the same wage as
those who had toiled all day? The farmer's reply is that there is no injustice because this is the wage
the early starters agreed to, they were quite happy to believe that they were being paid a reasonable
wage until they learned that everyone was being paid the same. The farmer pressed the argument
that having agreed what they believed to be a reasonable payment for the day's work, whatever he
arranged with the others had nothing to do with them, and in no way affected their agreement. The
early workers might claim that the farmer deceived them, if he had told them what he intended they
would probably not have accepted, to them the farmer had acted unjustly/ unfairly by not revealing his
intentions. I leave you to make your decision on this in the light of absolutejustice.

John Brandon

Patti asked:

Where if anywhere in the Bible does it tell us that it is against Gods/ Jesus or the Church to gamble? I
was hoping that you could answer that and also if it is also a sin to tattoo your body. This would help
settle several family discussions.

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I can find no prohibition on gambling anywhere in the bible, in fact hardly any mention of gambling at
all. It gets a bit of a passing mention in the obscurities of Joel 3.3, Obadiah 1.11 and Nahum 3.10, but
not pejoratively. Jonah was chosen by a lottery, the soldiers gambled for Jesus clothes of course, and
the disciples cast lots to choose a successor to Judas, but that is about it. The Roman Catechism
(s2413) says that "Games of chance, or wagers, are not in themselves contrary to justice. They
become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his
needs and those of others". Of tattooing, there is nothing, but one bit in Leviticus (19.28) "Ye shall not
round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. Ye shall not make
any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you", but this refers to the ancient
custom of people deliberately injuring themselves as a mark of sympathy when a relative died, not
decorative tattooing. You might care to look at http://www.axxent.ca/~gennaro/Tattoo_History/where
it is suggested that many early Christians had religious tattoos. The catechisms, the Fathers and the
Doctors of the churches, however, are silent on the matter. So, the question is really why so many
churchmen from Augustine to Wesley have prohibited gambling and looked down on skin decoration?

I'm afraid the answer is probably that, if your group take all their moral cues from a single, written,
authority, and you know that that authority is so complex that few, if any, of your followers can
understand it, then there is a nasty temptation to claim that all your personal prejudices can be
justified by it. So, if you gamble honestly and modestly or have your lover's name incised on your
arm, I see nothing at all in Christian doctrine to suggest you might fall out of favour with God. The
shades of Aquinas and Luther, though, might not be so pleased.

Glyn Hughes