Instead, they are interdependent. Systemic transformation facilitates personal transformation. Personal transformation promotes systemic transformation. Both must be pursued together to produce real social change. Similarly, the demands of justice and mercy are often felt to be in tension with each other.
Justice requires building and rebuilding just communities.
Communities are united by ties of trust, compassion and mercy. And so justice requires mercy. Often the goal of individual empowerment seems to be in conflict with the task of cultivating recognition of individuals' interdependence. Individual's independence is thought to undermine the interdependence which brings communities together. Dependance on the community in turn seems to weaken the individual.