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Chine McDonald – 25/06/2019

Thought for the Day

Good morning,

Football: it's a funny old game, capable of igniting passions, raising nations' hopes and crashing their dreams. The FIFA Women's World Cup currently being played in France is no exception. Over the past few days, some of the most dramatic moments of the tournament have come from decisions made using the Video Assistant Referee (VAR).

England's victory over Cameroon on Sunday saw unprecedented fiery scenes from the losing side, while a controversial decision to award Germany a penalty was met with disappointment from their opponents, Nigeria. VAR is intended to reduce human error and subjectivity in football decisions. You could say that fans love it when decisions go in their favour and hate it when it goes against them.

Nevertheless, I think each of us recognises that feeling of incensement - the inescapable and all-consuming feeling of injustice; that something just isn't fair.

I've been thinking a lot about justice since watching Ava DuVernay's four-part Netflix film When They See Us - which tells the story of the so-called Central Park Five - a group of boys from Harlem wrongly convicted of the brutal rape of a jogger in New York's famous park in 1989.

As a mother, my heart broke for these young boys, now exonerated men, and the scale of the injustice dealt to them.

It is difficult to reconcile this idea that such an injustice could happen in our world. It seems so unfair.

And yet we see injustices every day. The world is full of them. I can live with dodgy and seemingly unjust decisions made during sporting contests.

What I can't live with is the injustice of people serving time for crimes they did not commit. Or the injustice of 26 people owning the same as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of our world.

Or the injustice that the world's poorest communities are suffering the worst effects of climate change because of the emissions from wealthy countries like ours. It's why I'm joining a march tomorrow to urge our politicians to do more about it.

Because I don't believe we were ever meant to feel at ease with injustice; it's this feeling of dis-ease that compels many of us to act, to protest, to march, to do something to redress the balance.

I think the anger I feel over injustice can be a righteous reflection of the imago dei - the image of God - within us.

Christianity paints a picture of the kingdom of God - a future in which the world is turned right-way up - where the justice that flows from the character and essence of God reaches its fulfilment.

As Martin Luther King once said - echoing Amos in the Old Testament - "We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

That's a world I'd love to see.

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