Launch shows how hard it is to ignore a personal story of injustice
Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
The telling of a young asylum seeker’s journey from Afghanistan at the launch of a justice book has poignantly illustrated the rationale for its publication.
Co-editors Joanna Darby and Nathan Brown with ADRA Australia CEO Mark Webster at the launch of Do Justice. Credit: Saskia Brown.
Rahmat, an 18-year-old Hazara, fled to Pakistan with the surviving members of his family after the Taliban came to power. He worked to support his siblings but growing persecution of minority groups saw him engage a people smuggler who organised what would become an almost fatal journey to Australia.
“My hope for my family, and for all people who seek asylum, is to be safe,” he told those attending the launch of Do Justice: Our Call to Faithful Living at Avondale College of Higher Education. “I’ve lost my mother, my father and my close relatives; I don’t want to lose the rest of my family.”
Rahmat is now a Year 12 student at Prescott College in Adelaide. He also works at McDonald’s so he can send money to his older sister, who is also studying. “Our country needs more Rhamats,” said Brad Watson, a senior lecturer in international development studies at Avondale and the organiser of the launch. “We need more brave, intelligent, articulate, hardworking, moderate, loving and decent people in our country.”
It is difficult to ignore a personal encounter with injustice, said Signs Publishing book editor Nathan Brown during the dedication. “It’s confronting. Responding with compassion is the first step towards doing justice.”
This Micah 6:8 theme, from which the title of the book is drawn, is “simply the answer to the question of what God requires of us,” said Nathan. We like to answer the question in such complicated ways, he added—he would later criticise some within the church for arguing against prioritising justice—“but doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with your God is the essence of what it means to live as a follower of Christ.”
And it begins in the heart and in the mind. “When we talk about doing, we’re not just talking about how much money you’ve raised, how many campaigns you’ve supported or how many mission trips you’ve made,” said co-editor Joanna Darby. “We’re talking about a whole way of being.”
Joanna spoke of being encouraged by the book’s 27 contributors, who include worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church vice-presidents Lowell Cooper and Ella Smith Simmons, academics Chris Blake and Kendra Haloviak Valentine and ministers Ty Gibson and Dwight Nelson. “We can’t say people don’t care because there are many passionate, experienced, working-all-over-the-world-for-justice people who do care. I’m hopeful many more Christians will become less apathetic.”
One of the 27 is Mark Webster, who launched Do Justice in his role as chief executive officer of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Australia—the ADRA network has purchased more than 5000 copies of the book for distribution through its offices around the world. “We all have an inherent sense of justice,” he said. “The problem is our justice-sensing equipment is biased—we’re quick and sensitive to injustices against us but slow and insensitive to injustices against others.” Addressing the latter, he noted, involves making one of only two choices. “If the choice is, ‘I’m not going to do anything,’ then you’re supporting injustice. The other choice, of course, is, ‘I may not be able to do everything, but I will do something.”
Do Justice: Our Call to Faithful Living, a companion to Manifest: Our Call to Faithful Creativity, is available from Adventist Book Centres or from hopeshop.com for $24.95.
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Do Justice does just that: Mark Webster reviews Do Justice: Our Call to Faithful Living
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