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From Punitive Justice to Unitive Justice

From Punitive Justice to Unitive Justice

Last updated on: September 8, 2016 at 10:00 am by Robert Atkinson

From Punitive Justice to Unitive Justice 2016-08-31T11:33:45-04:00 Robert Atkinson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The way we understand the evolution of justice is to follow the progressive release of Divine revelation. The purpose in the direction of justice is to evolve a moral code that meets the needs of each period in history.

Humanity’s evolution, as a whole, has moved through stages where individuals and families were the primary unit of consideration, to where tribes were, to towns and cities, and eventually to nations. Now, the emerging global community – taking in the entire human race – is the necessary unit of consideration.

The means to apply a code of justice has similarly kept pace with these changes. We now need a system designed to implement global justice.

From a distance, we can see that there has been an evolution of justice throughout the history of civilization. Before any codification of laws, in relatively homogenous communities, oral tradition sufficed.

As communities grew, expanded, and interacted, greater measures were needed to separate right from wrong. With each passing millennia, there has been a greater certainty about what to do with acts of injustice. The arrow of time has carried with it the means to build ever more equitable social contracts, leading in our time to the need for a universal justice system.

Justice is the unifying force expressed in every dimension of reality. The higher purpose of justice is to maintain unity. The Baha’i writings affirm, “Justice is a powerful force. It is… the standard-bearer of love and bounty… The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men.”

Everything – consciousness, religion, and justice, too – evolves toward wholeness and unity. Our understanding of, and ability to carry out, justice increases and expands with each and every social advance we take toward oneness.

As our circles of unity become wider and wider, the effects of justice carried out become deeper and deeper.

With the punitive system of justice we have lived by for many centuries now, we have not been able to experience the fullest effects of our growing circles of unity. The ‘eye for an eye’ and a ‘life for a life’ system, along with endless extremes of unbridled war and genocide, have created the need for restorative justice, as well, which adds generations on to the process of achieving true justice.

But as our consciousness is now evolving to a level of maturity, we desperately need a unitive system of justice, designed explicitly to maintain unity on all levels, and built upon the standard of compassion, respect, and equity for all human beings.

Recognizing justice as a force for unity requires seeing through the eye of oneness. Shifting our consciousness this way allows us see the whole first, rather than give preference to any of its parts.

Love and justice added together results in unity right away, rather than needing to restore another injustice later on. Justice as a force for unity is the greatest need of our time because world unity is necessary for our very survival.

There is a hidden wholeness to all of existence that a system of global justice has to take into account. The 1993 Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions made this clear: “We are interdependent… opening our hearts to one another, we must sink our narrow differences for the cause of world community… We commit ourselves to a culture of non-violence, respect, justice, and peace. We must strive for a just social and economic order, in which everyone has an equal chance to reach full potential as a human being. Let no one be deceived, there is no global justice without truthfulness and humanness.”

I would only add to this, there is no global justice without the recognition of the oneness of humanity. Carrying out global justice today based upon this oneness and interconnectedness will actually help achieve the purpose of justice: establishing unity in diversity, the most practical need of our time.

Justice is the Golden Rule in action, choosing for others what we would choose for ourselves. Today more than ever we need champions of justice, equity, kindness, and unconditional love, who see these virtues in every single human being. This, on ever-expanding levels, is the only thing that will result in global justice built upon the spiritual principle of oneness.

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