No state, politician, or social media platform is an actual threat to the Christian message, but rather it is the internal Biblical illiteracy and presence of compromise that convolutes the Gospel. -Christisthecure.org
What is Social Justice? It is a term that is getting used quite a bit lately both in the world and, unfortunately, in the Church. According to the United Nations report, “Social Justice in an Open World”, un.org:
“Social Justice is not possible without strong redistributive policies conceived and implemented by public agencies… a progressive taxation system… and strong fiscal, monetary, economic and social policies. The truly Marxist principle –“from each according to his capacities, to each according to his needs” would only prevail [with] a world government with an enforceable mandate to ensure equality and Social Justice: in the distribution of income, in the distribution of assets and in the distribution of health services and social security…”
According to Harvard philosopher John Rawls, quoted in the above UN report: the principles of Social Justice… “provide a way of assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation… Social and economic inequalities, for example, inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society…. All social primary goods—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self respect— are to be distributed equally… Undeserved inequalities call for redress, and since inequalities of birth and natural endowment are undeserved, these inequalities are to be compensated for.“
In other words, Social Justice is redistributive justice, meaning that a powerful, centralized government sees to it that there are no inequities in terms of income, wealth, authority, or benefits in society. Regardless of where you started in life, the decisions you have made, how much education you have, how hard you have worked, how much you have risked, or how much you have saved, under Social Justice, the government sees to it that everyone has the same outcome.
In stark contrast to Social Justice: “When people don’t take responsibility for their education, their behavior, their actions, their lives, success eludes them. When their lives are uncomfortable because they took no responsibility for them, because they were told not to, it’s really easy for someone to come along and say, “It’s not your fault your life is uncomfortable; vote for me and let me make it comfortable for you.”” -Rachael Hoffman
During the last presidential campaign one political party, aired a cartoon campaign advertisement in which they said that a vote for their ticket was a vote for Social Justice. In the opening scene we were shown 8-10 heads peering over a wooden fence. The next scene showed the other side of the fence. Some of the cartoon figures were very tall and were standing on the ground. Some of the figures were much shorter and needed boxes of various sizes so that they could be high enough to look over the wall. The point being, no matter where an individual or group started in terms of ability, work ethic, race, sex, gender, education or any other factor, if elected, their administration will see to it that everyone will have the same outcome. Social Justice is administered differently for each group, ensuring equity of outcome instead of guaranteeing equality under the law. This is the essence of Social Justice.
However, as you read through the Bible you will discover that God’s justice knows nothing of Social Justice. In fact, God’s justice expressly forbids favoritism of any kind. James 2:1 God’s justice is based on God’s perfect character. God’s justice judges all people individually and not by the group, race, gender, nationality, economic class etc. that they identify with. When rendering judgment, justice does not follow the popular crowd’s opinion, show partiality or favoritism to either the poor or the wealthy. Justice never accepts bribes to render favored decisions. Justice does not grant payoffs for votes. Notice what the Bible commands.
It is wrong to show favoritism when passing judgment; when attempting to right wrongs. Proverbs 24:23
Do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to the poor in a lawsuit. Exodus 23:2-3
Judge carefully… no injustice or partiality or bribery. 2 Chronicles 19:6-7
Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. Leviticus 19:15
Do not distort justice; do not show partiality… follow justice and justice alone so that you may live and possess the land the Lord is giving you. Deuteronomy 16:19-20
God made everyone equal, in his image, God created mankind in his own image… male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27. God made everyone equal as one race, From one man he made all the nations. Acts 17:26,
In contrast to the Social Justice that seeks to judge people differently based on artificial categories, such as race, gender, income, etc., every man and every woman is to be judged equally by the God’s law. As strange as it may sound to folks today, the Biblical idea that everyone is equal before God’s law literally changed the world bringing order, prosperity, health and true compassion.
You would not want to live in a world without truth, where “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Judges 17:6 because, this inevitably devolves into either anarchy or totalitarianism. The powerful take control as the UN advises. If justice is different for everyone, if justice is a moving target, there can be no justice. That is why Lady Justice is depicted with a blindfold. She judges everyone equally, under God’s law. Notice what Isaiah 5:20 has to say to Critical Theorists when they teach that there is no such thing as truth: Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil; That put darkness for light, and light for darkness; That put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
As we have seen, Social Justice actually undermines true justice by redefining good as evil and evil as good, and by definition showing favoritism. Social justice destroys God’s created order and inevitably, if unchecked, always leads to chaos because Social Justice demands the breaking of each of the Ten Commandments. Briefly looking at each of God’s Commandments in order: Social Justice; 1. ignores God and 2. denies and replaces God’s Revelation of Truth, 3. which leaves man to make his own truth, and as such denies 4. God’s blessings calling them, instead, privileges. 5. Social Justice mocks honoring parents, and rejects injunctions against 6. murder, 7. adultery, 8. theft, 9. lying, and 10. coveting what other people have. Having rejected God they conclude that all of these laws were invented by the oppressor class and are designed to keep the oppressed under control.
Compare this to the civil rights advocates of the past generation such as Martin Luther King who said in “A Testament of Hope” “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools” remember, Critical Theorists, are Neo-Marxists: They do not want people to live together as brothers. They deny the existence of objective truth and are seeking revolution. They camouflage their true intentions by using the catch phrases such as social justice, black lives matter or racial justice; phrases that, on the surface everyone absolutely should agree with. Christians agree, of course black lives, made in the image of God, matter. Of course, equal justice for all is a necessary and noble goal. But Social Justice and racial justice, as Critical Theorists define them in their books, on their websites, and in UN reports, do not mean what naïve or uninformed Christians think they mean. Lucifer, the great counterfeiter, and his followers use these terms to call for the overthrow of all the categories of the oppressor, including family, gender, religion, and governments. Well meaning Christians must beware, hidden behind those phrases is an agenda that foments resentment and opposes God’s Word.
The popular religious system known today as [Critical Theory] is an attempt to combine the revolutionary Communism of Karl Marx and the language of certain passages in the Bible that make it sound as if the Bible preaches Communism’s bloody revolution and socialism… re-education, top-down state planning, the abolition of private property, run by elite. There can be no compromise here. It is either faith in God or faith in man. It is either Christianity or Marxism. These two deeply religious systems are at war with each other. Anyone who attempts to put these two systems together is either self-deceived or a conscious agent of the Communist; either ignorant or evil. Gary North, “Liberating Planet Earth” (This excellent book is now free as a PDF at: garynorth.com)
Christians should not give financial support to such institutions. Let me explain. Our son Jon died of cancer ten years ago at age 27. During his illness and after his death we supported the Susan G. Komen Cancer Research Foundation with donations and walks for the cure, until we discovered that Komen donated a set percentage of their contributions to the Planned Parenthood abortion mill. Fighting cancer is a good cause but we could not donate time and money to an organization that supports the murder of children. Similarly, fighting racism and injustice, in all of their forms, is the duty of all Christians, but it should not be done by supporting organizations that hate and destroy.
As John Lennon sang over 50 years ago in the Beatles song denouncing Revolution:
If you want money for people with minds that hate,
All I can tell you is brother, you have to wait.
And if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao,
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.
To achieve their ends, the followers of Social Justice, including BLM, try to create disunity by, among other things, teaching that the sins of the past have never been and perhaps, can never be, atoned for. However, the Bible insists that individuals are to be responsible in answering for their own behavior. Being responsible for our own sins is a great enough burden to bear. God teaches that we are unable to take on the responsibility for the sins of other groups, including the sins of previous generations.
Individuals are not to be held responsible for the sins of their ancestors unless they are continuing to perpetuate those sins. The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.” Ezekiel 18:20
In other words it is actually both unjust and sinful to look at the actions of past generations, for the purpose of holding their descendants, people alive today, responsible for the behavior of their ancestors.
Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin. Deuteronomy 24:16
This is not to deny that past generational sins do not have repercussions in the present, particularly when the present generation continues to commit those sins. Past sins do reverberate into the present. However, vengeance belongs to God, Romans 12:19, not to Social Justice Warriors. Instead, God has commanded everyone generally, and Christians in particular, to seek true justice:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
God’s Word, from beginning to end teaches everyone to practice justice and mercy. God’s Word demands care for the poor and needy, Proverbs 14:31, and as James points out, requires care for those who, for what ever reason, cannot care for themselves. James 1:27 God’s Word is truly remarkable. We are to overcome hate with love. And not the love of fuzzy feelings or barren intellectual consent, but love in action.
Additionally, the Bible teaches that no individual or group (do not follow the crowd, Exodus 23:2-3) is above the law. In fact, even the King was not above the law. He could not be a law unto himself and do whatever he wanted. In Ancient Israel the King was to keep a copy of the law and read from it daily. Deuteronomy 17:18-20 Further, the law was to be read in its entirety every seven years to all the people. Deuteronomy 31:10-11
In fact, God also established a series of checks and balances to safeguard his law, establishing a just government in a fallen, unjust world of sinful humans. The checks and balances insured that no one could claim either superiority or victimhood to unjustly seize power: The King was to rule by following God’s law. Prophets were sent by God to remind Kings, Priests and Judges of the law. Priests were to speak for God, teaching the truth. And independent Judges were to judge impartially on the basis of the law. God’s design of checks and balances has been incorporated into the laws of many of the nations around the world, particularly since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 and accelerating in the 1500’s at the time of the Reformation.
Allowing the concentration of absolute power in the hands of a supreme ruler or an elite group in a centralized government, as the Neo-Marxist promoters of Social Justice Theory call for, is dangerous because, as we see over and over again throughout history, man is no longer good but prone to all manner of evil. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Jeremiah 17:9
Power easily corrupts sinful men. Absolute power is always a deadly recipe for human disaster. As God points out, when supreme rulers have unchecked power no evil is beyond their reach. Genesis 11:6 No one is safe. When seen in that light, going back as far as Genesis, the various world languages and the various nations of men are understood to be a blessing of God designed to slow the growth of tyranny. And as pointed out above, God established checks and balances to limit what would otherwise become unchecked evil.
God reminds Christians that before they became Christ’s servants they walked according to the world’s standards, Ephesians 2:2, judging between each other using differing weights and measures depending on the circumstances Proverbs 20:10. But Christ teaches us that we should no longer judge people by differing standards as Critical Theory and Social Justice demand. God even threatens that if we use unjust standards to judge others then we shouldn’t be surprised when God judges us by our unjust standards. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Matthew 7:2 We might be tempted to treat others unfairly, to our own advantage, but how would you like it if the tables were turned and God judged you by the standard that you judge others?
It is a well established, recurring Biblical principle that for a functioning and just society, everyone, meaning every individual, is to be judged equally under the law.
Indeed, we are now and should always all be equal before the law, for true justice to survive. Because of the sacrifice of Christ, uniting all believers into one family, for the Christian, There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. Galatians 3:28
The Bible is clear that for the church the path to unity is to emphasize what we have in common in Christ, not differences in ethnicity, economic status, or positions of power. Our identity as Christians is in Christ alone. We are one body. Critical Theory tries to solve racism by emphasizing differences. Scripture solves racism by emphasizing unity. Scott Aniol
Having been shown mercy and granted salvation, of all people, it is Christians who must weep with those who weep, Romans 12:15, and bind up the broken hearted, Isaiah 61:1. We must lead the way and stand most firmly for true justice for all peoples and for all of creation. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. I Peter 2:9
Christians are commanded by God to be people who are sensitive to injustice, discerning as to the reasons behind inequality, and seeking to right wrongs, always upholding justice for everyone. Never placing our hands on the scales of God’s justice to skew the outcome as Social Justice demands.
Because everyone that we meet is made in God’s image we are to treat everyone with respect and compassion. We are to always be generous, thinking of others more highly than ourselves. Philippians 2:3
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
C.S. Lewis, “The weight of Glory”
Return to “And Justice for All”