Justice is so easy even a five-year-old can do it.

It took me a long time to figure that out. Even though I’ve spent the better part of a lifetime committed to the idea of justice, determined to live for justice, I really couldn’t define it until last year. My latest journey toward better understanding why Jesus loves justice began roughly last March when I was asked to sit on a social justice panel at the 2006 Urban Youth Workers Institute (UYWI), and the moderator told the panelists he would begin by asking us to define it.

"Cross the street," I thought. "This could get ugly."

When we were kids, people called us little devils. So when we grew up, we called ourselves Satan’s Sinners. – Cochise, founder and president of Satan’s Sinners gang; incarcerated since December 1993; incarnated since January 1994

It was a typically hot and humid July afternoon in New York, but about to get hotter. Several dozen members of a Manhattan storefront church were gathered in a housing project courtyard when two men passed, hissing and mocking and gyrating in front of the preacher. On their backs, gang colors proclaimed “Satan’s Sinners.”

I went to see U2 at the Staples Center on November 2, in Los Angeles. Regrettably, it’s my first U2 concert.