It Wasn't Me!

We see that there is natural justice or common courtesy. This is the ideal and if we were all angels it would work out. Unfortunately there are malicious people in the world and we have to find a way to protect ourselves and others in our communities. That is why it is necessary to have legal justice. It reinforces natural justice. In the same way fire is hot everywhere you go, natural standards of justice are the same everywhere in the world. There are variations in how groups of people form them into written laws and so legal justice varies between communities. Legal justice is intended to reinforce natural law but it is hard to cover every situation and motive through written law and so there can be instances of legal justice violating natural justice.

There are instances where we perceive an injustice wrongly and some violations are unintentional. Mistakes and intentions have to be taken into account to help us avoid running around feeling slighted unnecessarily and also to avoid feeling guilty about things that couldn't be helped. And when it is a legal matter, it is important to penalize the guilty to the fullest extent and to give grace to those who hadn't intended to cause harm. It is important to understand that a person can be the cause of an injustice but not be at fault. We sometimes feel guilty for things that happen because what we did initiated a problem but the reality is that it couldn't be helped. But a malicious person will always claim it wasn't intentional so this causes all kinds of grey areas.

It is true that unjust acts that are done on purpose need to be resolved in some way. If the intent is obvious and someone takes responsibility, a resolution can come much easier and healing begin.  A voluntary injustice, an act of a person’s will, has different causes that we will go into later. There are times when an injustice wasn't an act of the person’s will. We certainly blame a person who is voluntarily unjust and want the situation made right. If a person didn't mean to do it, the act may be unjust but it might not be considered an injustice. We will look into the different situations we get ourselves into without even trying. Maybe it will help those of us who have a high sense of justice not to be so hard on ourselves and give us food for thought toward those we want to judge..