Questions of Justice in Dundee

It was good to head over to Dundee to spend the evening with Dundee University Christian Union. They had organised a ‘potluck’ style dinner at Dundee West Parish Church on the edge of the campus, and invited me to speak about the subject of justice. The CU drew a good crowd together, for an enjoyable evening.

When I spoke, the approach I took was to argue that the only way we can make sense of justice or gain a solid grounding for pursuing it, is if there is a God to whom we owe moral duties and that good and evil are real. I pointed out that we have a longing in us to pursue justice which requires some explanation. Where does that come from, if we are all just the product of blind random chance. It’s presence makes far more sense in a Christian view of the world, which better explains us.

I was sure the extent to which the crowd were fully tracking with me the whole way when I was speaking, but the Q&A was really good. There were several questions which were thoughtful and clearly from a non-Christian perspective – so it was great o engage with those folks. Most of the questions didn’t focus on objections to my talk, but on application and the pursuit of justice. That was an interesting direction that the conversation went which I perhaps had not anticipated, so I think I’ll adjust the talk when I am working on this topic next.

Some of the best moments for me in the evening were two of the conversations I had at the end of the night. One chap picked my brains for almost three-quarters of an hour! He’s only been a Christian for a few months and had many, many questions. So it was really good to work though some of those with him. Then a young Muslim lad came over, he had lots of questions about justice. It became clear as we chatted that his whole framework was based upon works and performance, and that all my answers were grounded in the ideas of forgiveness and grace. It was a very illuminating fifteen minutes for us both and really highlighted the wonderful news of the gospel of Christ.

Many thanks to the great students at DUCU who invited me!