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There was once a church I used to visit when I was younger. It stood on a hill—old, dignified, and peaceful. The priests would always remind us that the altar was sacred, that truth was spoken there, and that confession cleansed the soul. But one Sunday, the sermons changed. The new priests began preaching about the sins of their predecessors—how the old clergy failed the people, how they allowed wrongdoing to flourish, how they must be held accountable for all that was lost.
The congregation applauded these sermons of moral renewal. The priests were hailed as brave men of reform. Yet, while the flock was busy praising their courage, few noticed that the same priests were quietly turning the donation box into their private treasury. The bells still rang, the candles still burned, but the faith that once made the place holy had turned into a stage of selective repentance.
That church, I realized, is what justice has become.
There are times I wonder if justice in this country has truly turned into a liturgy of convenience. A ceremony performed not to enlighten, but to distract. Like a confessional where one admits only what no longer matters, while hiding the sins still being committed. The pattern is familiar: condemn the past to absolve the present. Preach virtue while secretly bargaining for power.
We have made justice a ritual of appearance, a sermon rehearsed for applause. The pulpit has become political; the altar, opportunistic. Those who claim to seek truth do so with motives wrapped in incense and prayer, but the smoke hides more than it reveals. The faithful crowd, believing in the holiness of accountability, do not realize they are witnessing not redemption—but performance.
The painful irony is that people still want to believe. They cheer when an old sinner is publicly shamed, thinking righteousness has prevailed. But behind the church doors, new sins are being planned with even greater precision. It is not justice that moves the institution—it is strategy disguised as sanctity.
And perhaps this is where our confusion lies: we have lost the difference between justice and justification. Justice is the act of righting wrongs, of cleansing not just memory but conscience. Justification, however, is the craft of twisting morality until the guilty sound virtuous. Justice requires humility; justification demands eloquence. One is truth, the other is performance. In our age of political and moral theater, justification has stolen the robes of justice—and now preaches in its place.
This is how societies lose their soul—not through heresy, but through selective holiness.
The tragedy is human at its core. When people see that justice only punishes yesterday’s sinners while today’s thrive unchallenged, faith in fairness fades. The ordinary citizens—the believers, the victims, the weary—lose hope that truth can ever stand on its own feet. They stop confessing, not because they are guiltless, but because they no longer believe that forgiveness is real.
The farmers displaced by greed, the whistleblowers silenced by fear, the families mourning victims of power—they become the silent congregation, praying in shadows while the choir above sings praises to those who corrupt the hymns.
I have always believed that justice must be guided not by convenience but by conscience. Yet conscience today feels like an abandoned chapel—empty, echoing, and waiting for someone brave enough to light a candle again. Those who speak of truth often do so only when it will not cost them comfort. They condemn old sinners loudly while secretly kneeling beside new ones. They preach penance for others but keep their own confessions locked in silence.
If justice were a church, it has become one where the holy water no longer purifies—it only perfumes. The statue of fairness still stands at the entrance, but the inside is filled with echoes of self-serving prayers. The priests still preach about sin, but only the sins that won’t endanger their donations.
I think often of that church on the hill. It still stands, its doors open, its choir singing the same hymns. The people still come, arguing about which priest sinned first, and who should be punished most. But no one dares to ask if the offering plate has ever truly been clean.
And so it is with justice. We celebrate the trial of the fallen while ignoring the coronation of the corrupt. We mistake noise for virtue, sermons for sincerity. We have grown comfortable with selective morality, believing it to be faith.
Justice has become that old church—once sacred, now defiled by those who claim to protect it. A temple that condemns the old thieves from the pulpit while blessing the new ones at the altar.
When the aim of seeking justice is no longer to reveal truth but to conceal it—when its sacred rituals become tools of deceit—then justice itself becomes the new sin. And at that moment, the courtroom becomes the confessional of hypocrisy.
The saddest part is not that corruption thrives, but that it has learned to kneel, to pray, and to call itself righteous. And while the people bow their heads, thinking their leaders are praying for redemption, the real prayer being whispered is not for forgiveness—but for power.
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