Justice vs True Justice

I have been doom-scrolling through FaceBook, but not looking for random topics. I seem to be more focused on the instances where individuals are being pulled off the streets, detained and deported without any legal recourse. This causes my heart great distress. It activates a sense of justice within my body-mind to exact my own ideas of justice to deal with the situation. My ideations go to the Avenging Angel, of how I would deal with the people I feel are wrong for doing this. But a part of me also feels that that is just using violence to counteract violence. Is this what I / We consider justice to be? There must be a more “human” or “humane” way to approach this whole situation.

So, I put the following query to ChatGPt the other day “Justice. Using as much of a response in my voice and as deep as you possibly can with the response, I am currently working the concept of justice and seem to have some conflation of justice with avenging or vengeance. In a sense I have the world's view of justice which is retribution, but I feel justice is not that. Using Jim's voice what could you say to me that would help clarity what justice seems to be in society and what true justice is?”

This is the response it gave me:

Jim, I hear you right in the heart of something holy here. You’re standing in that liminal zone between the conditioned collective psyche and the deeper soul-sourced knowing that’s starting to rise up through the cracks. That crack, between the world’s justice and soul’s justice, is the place where revelation happens. So, let’s sit together right there for a moment.

The world’s view of justice, as it’s commonly lived, is based on an equation: someone did something wrong, and therefore they deserve punishment. It’s often transactional. “You hurt me; you must hurt too. Then the scales will be balanced.” But that kind of balancing doesn’t actually restore anything. It often deepens the wound. What we call justice in our society, through the courts, prisons, public opinion, is mostly retribution wrapped in the illusion of fairness. It is vengeance painted with the brush of civilization. It seeks to control, to deter, to punish, but not to heal.

And that is where true justice begins to diverge.

True justice, when felt from the deep soul, from the ground of being, has a very different aim. It doesn’t seek to punish, it seeks to restore. It seeks to make whole what was broken, not to break more in the name of fairness. It arises not from the clenched fist of “righteous anger,” but from the open palm of clarity, groundedness, and compassion.

From this deeper lens, justice is love moving through structure. It’s love expressing itself in systems, in boundaries, in consequences, but always with the aim of restoration, of realignment with truth. Not as revenge. Not as payback. Not even as deterrence. But as a sacred process of reconnection, to self, to others, to the larger field of life.

You can feel the difference in your body. One kind of justice tightens. It coils, sharpens, prepares for the blow. The other softens but strengthens. It stands, unwavering, not needing to lash out, because it knows the soul does not heal through shame, it heals through truth seen, felt, and lived.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with anger or with the impulse to respond to wrongdoing. But when we confuse justice with vengeance, we allow our pain to dictate our principles. And pain wants company. True justice doesn’t serve the pain, it listens to it, honors it, but responds from a deeper place.

I’d ask you this, Jim: Can justice be an act of love in motion?

Can it be the fierce love that says “what happened matters,” and also says “we are not reduced to our worst moments”? Can it be the clarity that holds people accountable, but not in order to destroy them, in order to offer them the possibility of transformation? Even if they refuse that possibility, can we still act from a place of justice that is not poisoned by the very harm we wish to correct?

Justice, in its sacred form, is never about making others suffer. It’s about realigning what has gone off-course. It's the force that remembers wholeness and insists on truth, not for punishment’s sake, but for the integrity of the whole.

 So maybe the old image of the scales of justice is still useful, but not as “equal pain for equal pain.” Instead, imagine those scales trying to come back into balance not by putting more weight on the other side, but by tending to the original fracture. Maybe the scales tip toward healing, toward truth, toward the dignity of all involved.

And maybe real justice begins when we stop asking, “How can I make them pay?” and start asking, “What would help restore the dignity of everyone involved, including the one who caused harm?”

That kind of justice is messier. It’s slower. It won’t sell headlines. But it’s the justice that’s aligned with the sacred, and I think that’s what your soul is remembering.

You're not conflating justice with vengeance because you're confused, Jim. You’re doing it because that’s the air we’ve all been breathing. But I see that you’re now learning to breathe a deeper air, the air of the soul, where justice is not about retribution, but about revelation. About relationship. About repair.

That’s the justice worth serving.

And I know you do.