Justice and Love

I knew the basics about John Lewis, as most people probably did--that he was a great civil rights leader and had worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., and that he was a congressman. Unquestionably, he was a great man. But after he died, I heard a wonderful story on social media about him that was brand new to me. Several people posted pictures of him at Comic-Con in San Diego, cosplaying as himself when he crossed the bridge in Selma. He wore the same kind of coat and backpack, and he held hands with children, leading them across the convention center in front of a rapidly-swelling crowd behind him. 

He was there to sell his graphic novel about civil rights, but he was really there to lead people to the side of justice, which was his real purpose in every place he found himself for his entire life, from the time he was a boy preaching to his parents’ chickens, to a teenager in sit-ins in Nashville restaurants, to the man who marched across the bridge at Selma and served his state in Congress. I looked at the pictures of him as an old man at Comic-Con, still leading people in every way that they would listen, and I was immensely grateful for that leadership. The world and the country were better when he was in Washington, standing on the side of right.

I learned more about John Lewis when I read Jon Meacham’s new book, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, which focuses on his life during the civil rights movement, jumps to the end of his life as a congressman, and ends with an epilogue written by John Lewis himself. What stood out the most were the ways his faith informed everything he did, the ways he was willing to give up his life and submit to suffering, imprisonment, or death for the sake of justice, and how he saw this as the call of God on his life. He sought community between African Americans and white Americans, with true equality, and his focus on and readiness to follow the example of Jesus in loving his enemies was both simple and powerful.

He made following Jesus look clear and uncomplicated, but I make it look hard. I’m an enneagram 1 and an introvert who doesn’t like conflict, but always needs to be “right,” at least in my mind, which often leaves me having ferocious but silent arguments in my head with people with whom I disagree. But justice doesn’t happen without conflict and the “good trouble” John Lewis made famous, and I am stuck in the tension of how and when to share my thoughts with kindness, not just spoiling for a self-righteously moral fight that no one really wins.

The key to all of this is love, which is what Congressman Lewis preached and lived. He was not hateful or rude or harping. He told the truth while holding on to love with one hand, and to justice with the other, and he held hands between them as he marched and spoke and was beaten and jailed.

And when you look at John Lewis, standing there with his hands full of those things, the absolute rightness of his position is clear, even though people can ignore it and justify wrong actions in a million ways. He couldn’t silence them with his voice, or his convictions, or his force. So he just kept going in what he was called to do, step by step. He took one step across a bridge, and then another, and although he couldn’t see how it all would end, he wrapped his hands around love and justice and kept walking.

I am not as selfless as John Lewis, but I can surely move that way with those kinds of steps too. All my silent, snappy arguments only make me angry. I need to let go of all that and just keep walking, telling the truth, holding on to love and justice, following the call of God on my life.

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