Posts tagged as "justice" - Chris Hardie

When you walk into Shane Eddington's office at the Whitewater Valley Pro Bono offices in downtown Richmond, the scene is a little like something out of a John Grisham novel: the heroic lawyer working away at all hours amid piles of legal documents in a windowless office with just one assistant on staff, trying to help the most vulnerable members of our community who couldn't otherwise afford legal services.  Divorces, custody battles, landlord-tenant disputes, managing the assets of the departed...

In my eighth grade English class, Mr. Sweeney asked us to write a persuasive essay and then deliver it to the rest of the class convincingly. The United States had just sent its military to the Middle East to expel the Iraqi forces that had invaded Kuwait, and that was a hot topic of discussion and controversy. As a part of these events, the head pastor at my church had recently delivered a sermon on what constitutes a "just war." It was a good sermon - contemplative, balanced, and challenging...

The assignment given for my New Testament course was to "write a biblical parable." What I came up with is obviously not a parable in the traditional sense, but I like to think of it as the parable of parables; it is the story of a common theme that runs throughout the literature of the biblical time and that represents a fundamental (or at least well-established) part about how our society tends to work. In that sense it is a story that evokes a deeper meaning from itself when examined closely...

I wrote this in reflection upon a conversation I had with a friend who was heading off for a weekend of protesting against the U.S. Government's "School of the Americas". There was the potential that my friend would be arrested, but there was also the general sense that it would be an exhausting and draining event. I asked her about why she was doing it, and a wonderful conversation ensued. These are some of the thoughts that remain. It's not done yet, thus the weak ending. In every good conversation,...