Whenever I now approach Scripture, I’m amazed at how much it has to say about justice. This awareness grew in me through our preparations for last year’s “Arts Festival for Justice.” As a local student group of GEU (the IFES movement in Guatemala), we organized this festival as a public one-day event at our university. We invited the student body to come and express their view of justice through the arts (literature, drama, music, photography, etc.), while ourselves preparing artistic presentations from a Christian worldview.

God led us in a learning process as we prepared for the festival. Corruption and injustice are the daily bread in our country. Some time ago, we invited students to ask God a question. Many responses were related to justice issues, e.g. ‘Doesn’t the lack of justice in our context speak of an indifferent or non-existent God?’ We were shocked to realize that even in the light of such a reality, we had a very shallow idea of biblical justice.

We plunged into the Word of God and in a very exciting journey found transforming truths and more hard questions. We found a just God, tremendously interested in justice. We found the whole human race and ourselves guilty, unjust, inclined to do wrong. We found hope for humanity in a unique sacrifice that justifies, redeems, restores and transforms us from serving injustice to becoming bearers of justice in our time today – whilst hoping for the day when justice will be complete.

As a part of our preparation, we also visited some of the injustices in our city. One image has stayed with me, from a visit to the Guatemala City dump: a single mother living with nine children in a four square meter house; scavengers searching in the trash for food or something they could sell. And in the midst of it, us having a Bible study on how God sees Hagar and has mercy on the downtrodden.

The insights we gained through Scripture inspired us to create a number of artistic presentations for the festival. One of these was a play based on Romans and the theme of justice which some staff from COMPA Mexico wrote and helped us prepare.

Around 650 students came to the festival and more than 100 students contributed with artistic presentations. We are so thankful that the university gathered enthusiastically around a theme on which the Bible has so much to say. Art was a great vehicle to communicate biblical truths and address questions about God, us, and the world. We praise God, for his Word brings true life and hope to our lives, to the university, to our societies.

Jhonny Corado (jhonnycorado(at)hotmail.com)
Art student – GEU Guatemala; coordinator of the Arts Festival