America weeps.

Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. Five Dallas police officers. The first two men were killed by law enforcement officers, the last five killed trying to secure a protest based on the first two deaths.

America searches for solutions. Struggling with words to grapple with such a time as this, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said, “We as a city, we as a country, must come together and lock arms and heal the wounds we all feel” (via The Washington Post). Paul Ryan has called on us to stand on our common values and our shared humanity. Twitter is aflame with cries of disgust, outrage, and variations of Rodney King’s immortal words, “can’t we just all get along?”

We look at a fragmented culture and a polarized electorate. We long for unity, commonality, and the ties that bind. We yearn for justice, for equal treatment before the law. We pray for peace and reconciliation.

I fear that our search will be in vain and that our prayers will go unheeded. We have eschewed the things that might bring unity and we have prized the behaviors and beliefs that atomize. We have built a world that thrives on individualism and an economy that caters to our unique whims and we are surprised that community is fleeting. We have erected an intellectual edifice that insists there can be no truth outside the self, and we are shocked that laws are applied subjectively, randomly, and that the system “might be rigged.” We hope for love to stand against hate, but we have only honed a self-love designed to fill our own needs.

There is hope. There is unity. There is truth. There is justice. But these exist in a land we fear to tread, contained in a book we prefer to ignore, spoken by a God we have turned into ourselves. Unity will not come through the state. Truth cannot flow from the lips of a lying politician. Wisdom does not reside in social media. Love does not hinge on feelings of warmth or the earnestness of a hashtag.

We, as believers, must be plain. We seek to influence the world, but we must begin with the understanding that the world’s problems cannot be solved with the tools of a depraved culture. We cannot socially engineer our way to human flourishing, nor can we utter the cloying words of care and concern if they are segmented from the truth of God’s gospel.

There is Good News. There is a balm in Gilead. We must love as Christ loved, unconditionally even when others do not deserve it, but that love must be connected to the gospel or it is at best a half-measure. We as believers must build bridges across the divides that separate us. Our wounded culture can find solace at the foot of the cross but we have to show it the cross and usher it into the presence of God. Every day. With every action. With every word. When our world pulls us apart–racially, socially, politically, ideologically–we must resist that tug and fight for unity, but not on secular terms. There is no unity in class or color or party. There is but one unity that endures and that transcends our tribes and tongues. It is within the body where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, black nor white. To look for unity elsewhere may be fleetingly successful but doomed to disappointment.

Love, though, is how we as believers interact with the world. It is our calling to love our neighbor as ourselves. But love will not fix the law. Love will not alter the systematic unfairness that too often defines our courts. Justice is the answer. Justice is, at minimum, the rewarding of the good and the punishment of the wicked. Justice is impartial. Justice does not favor based on the things that distinguish us from one another. Justice, like death, should not be a respecter of persons. The rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, the advantaged and the oppressed, should find fairness in our land.

We, as a people, should dedicate our public lives to the pursuit of justice. We should strive for a ruthless application of fairness and a monstrous commitment to impartiality. We must understand that without justice, there truly can be no peace, because without justice, there is no comfort or assurance that truth will prevail or that right will be done.

For justice to matter, we must see it through, even when it pinches our own self-interest. An objective application of the law will mean that sometimes we will win and at others we will lose. It might mean our pet policies or ideas suffer, or that our own preferences go unheeded. Justice cannot be employed when it only suits us, but it must go to the truth as it finds it.

We too often think of love and justice in tension, but they work hand-in-hand. We can strive for both love and justice. They are not mutually exclusive. We love our neighbors and we govern in fairness.

Our culture has made it clear during the past few years that we, as orthodox believers, are not terribly welcome. However, our culture cannot define our actions. We can still love and seek justice, all with the goal of exposing our culture to the cross and the truth, love, and unity it will find there. This is who we are. This is the body of Christ. This is what we do in the face of this past week.