Social Justice: Liberalism, Biblical or not that Simple? (Pt 4)

This is the fourth part of the blog series on social justice and the gospel.

As We Address the Depravity of Injustice We Cannot Overlook the Doctrine of Depravity

Often in the social justice conversation there seems to be an implicit negation and naiveté about the doctrine of total depravity and original and ongoing sin. This is flushed out in a few ways. The first is by reducing racism and oppression to be a problem explicit to one race or ethnicity or nation or economic bracket (implicitly or explicitly). The reality is that injustice and racism is not a white problem nor an American one but a human one that exists in all kinds of people always with no exceptions. The reality is that injustice and racism is not a white problem nor an American one but a human one that exists in all kinds of people always with no exceptions. We cannot talk about injustice (implicitly or explicitly) as if it is something that exists exclusively or mostly in one kind of person. Secondly, we cannot naively assume that addressing injustice and making changes of equality in the midst of various social inequality would in actuality change the issue. Wherever people have opportunity, resources and ability, human sinfulness will always use it wrongly and sinfully. Changing systems and kinds of people in certain places of influence and reach will never fix the problem of injustice, it will only rearrange it.

Another facet of the misunderstanding of the doctrine of depravity is the implicit innocence that is often claimed by the wronged or those taking up their cause. The injustice conversation sounds like there are mass amounts of innocent people who are being victimized by a sinful majority. Romans 1, 2, and 3 would beg to differ. We are both victims and victimizers at all times. There is no “us and them” when it comes to innocence, only us and God. The injustice conversation sounds like there are mass amounts of innocent people who are being victimized by a sinful majority. Romans 1, 2, and 3 would beg to differ. We are both victims and victimizers at all times. There is no “us and them” when it comes to innocence, only us and God! Let me be clear in saying that there are—in the truest sense--no innocent victims but only mass amounts of perpetrators who are equally guilty before a holy God. None of us suffer the effects of the fall unjustly as in Adam and in ourselves we are all justly evil and worthy of punishment. Let me also be clear in saying that simply because injustice is a human problem amongst the oppressed and the oppressor it does not mean that we do not address and deal with injustice. Let me also say since ultimately there are no innocent victims only guilty culprits before God that it does not mean that we never see societal wrongs as needing to be corrected. Injustice is not limited to people in power nor to certain races or groups of people, but it is always existent in all. So be careful to approach injustice with this “us and them” simplification. This sense of innocence and self-righteousness that accompanies the social justice movement is deeply misplaced. At the end of the day, we address injustice and deal with it as guilty sinners deserving of wrath not innocents who can in some way distinguish ourselves. The oppressed are just as evil as the oppressor as you deal with the wrongs of the oppressor. What is missing from the social justice conversation is that those most offended by injustice and oppression seem to have a tone that would seem that they do not have racism, injustice, and oppression in their own hearts. Total depravity as a human issue gives us a low ground to see and speak on these things with a realistic and humble perspective on them. I think there would be a lot more humility and charitable discussions if we held to the tenants and implications of the doctrine of depravity amongst fallen image bearers.

We Cannot Exchange the Personal Prosperity Gospel for the Corporate Prosperity Gospel to Address Injustice

There seems to be a consensus among many evangelicals that are repulsed by the idea that Christianity can be reduced to a pragmatic means to personal wellbeing and prosperity. We have, with a unified voice, emphasized that Christianity is about the glory of God, redemption, God Himself, conversion, discipleship, holiness, and perfection through weakness and that it is not about having a better life. Ironically, however when someone moves from making Christianity primarily or essentially about one’s best life now to having one’s best world now there seems to be acceptance that claims to be biblically legitimate. So, to make Christianity all about personal prosperity and the removal of personal adversity is unbiblical on an individual level, but when Christianity becomes about making our world the best it can be in the present, it becomes an orthodox confession of the whole counsel of God....Christianity is about the glory of God, redemption, God Himself, conversion, discipleship, holiness, and perfection through weakness and that it is not about having a better life. Ironically, however when someone moves from making Christianity primarily or essentially about one’s best life now to having one’s best world now there seems to be acceptance that claims to be biblically legitimate. Let me say emphatically that any kind of Christianity that makes either personal or public, private or corporate life in the now being ideal as the essence and emphasis of Christianity is wrong. Your “best world in the now” is not a viable solution for the “best you in the now.” Christianity is not about your best world in the present any more than it is about having your best life in the present. The religious obsession with the best world and the best life in the now is the very old and ongoing Satanic lie (Matthew 4:1-11). Temporal, now emphatic Christianity of any sort is contrary to the very essence of the gospel’s exclusive and specific eschatological hope (Philippians 3:19). The goal of the gospel for the individual or the societal whole in the present is not a temporal utopia in the present, but rather faith-fueled Christ centeredness to the glory of God in the midst of all the present disappointments and contraries (Romans 8:28-30). The constant contrast in the book of Revelation between the church and the world is that the world seeks to create heaven on earth while the Saints seek to await heaven in the New Jerusalem. Now emphatic Christianity in any form is simply unchristian; Christianity can be now engaged without being now emphatic. The idea that we can be hopeful about the state or veracity of our faith based upon how personally positive our life is or how corporately hopeful society is, is nothing less than a subtle way of giving us a greater confidence in the state of horizontal affairs rather than the invisible, vertical ones in the heavenly, Christocentric throne room (Colossians 3:1-3). Our hope is not in the state or change of things temporal becoming presently better but in the hope of the gospel in the eschaton (Romans 8:24-25; Colossians 1:5,6). The church trying to recruit Jesus to be essentially or primarily a temporal alleviator in society is no different than the perversions that we see in the prosperity movement with the individual. Jesus died to make your neighborhood better is no different than Jesus died to make your personal life better. So, as we seek to in the now love our neighbor in the now as we should, we cannot reduce Christianity to be a best world now religion.

The Already and Not yet Must Be Distinguished in the Social Justice Dilemma

In the social justice conversation there seems to often be a confusion and mixture of the Kingdom of God that has been inaugurated in the present and will be consummated in the future. The idea being that the eschatological elements of the visible Kingdom in its consummation state somehow becomes the biblical basis for the redemption of societal ills to be the present charge and burden of the church to incarnate in its societal surroundings. The Kingdom of God in the end is not some spiritual reality but a very holistic and embodied one and so we must now, in the present, bring these implications to bear on the temporal elements of society (so the logic goes). Simply because the Kingdom will one day be holistically consummated in all the tangible elements of society does not mean that it must be so in the present. That is like saying since I am resurrected in the already spiritually and one day will be resurrected physically, therefore in the present I must seek and expect my body to be void of the physical effects of the fall and embody aspects of its glorified future in the present. Paul is clear that our temporal existence is falling apart as our spiritual existence is being renewed (2 Corinthians 4:16-17). This means that the already of spiritual renovation does not mean that the not yet of holistic renovation will be realized or actualized in the present. Paul is clear that our temporal existence is falling apart as our spiritual existence is being renewed (2 Corinthians 4:16-17). This means that the already of spiritual renovation does not mean that the not yet of holistic renovation will be realized or actualized in the present.Paul says that this inner renovation is going in the opposite direction of our outer dilapidation. This is the error of the charismatic movement that often sees the eschatological elements of our redemption to be necessitated in the present simply because they are a part of the broader picture of redemption (since it will happen then it will and should now). Paul however talks about the renovation of temporal embodied realities to be fully realized eschatologically not presently (Philippians 3:20; 1 Corinthians 15:20-57). The Kingdom in the future in its holistic realities does not necessitate its realization in the now. As a matter of fact, Paul says that our bodies and all creation grown and long for shalom in the unseen that will come (Romans 8:18-25). Paul’s point in Romans 8 is that our present positional experience of the Kingdom and redemption does not go hand and hand with seeing it translated into temporal realities. There is a paradoxical dynamic between the fullness of positional and spiritual realities in the now and the holistic, temporal, embodied realities of the now that find their fulness in the future. The Kingdom of God being inaugurated in the present does not necessitate its eschatological elements to be materialized in our bodies nor our societal contexts. Please understand that I am not saying that since the holistic realities of redemption await us in the consummation of our redemption and the Kingdom that there is no basis for a holistic sense of spirituality and loving neighbor in societal realms. The consummation of the Kingdom of God and our redemption does effect and inform our temporal existence (1 Corinthians 15:29-33). The already does not mean that we must, should, and will experience the holistic elements of the consummation, in fact we are promised that our temporal existence, both personally and societally, will perpetually corrode and worsen (Matthew 24; 2 Corinthians 4:16-17). The not yet does not mean that we must demand and expect the church to bear the burden of materializing the not yet in the now. That is Jesus’s job in the consummation not ours in the inauguration (Revelation 21). We must not separate the already from the not yet, but we must distinguish them and not confuse them. The Christian’s hope for shalom is not in the church charging its context and culture with the gospel but in its expectancy for the consummation where Christ will bring all the temporal elements of our bodies and our world into subjection to the positional realities of Christ’s accomplishments (1 Corinthians 15:20-28). The same error that leads Christians to struggle with assurance due to the ongoing sin of their remaining unredeemed humanity in the already but not yet is the same error which leads them to doubt God’s Kingdom and redemption due to the ongoing effects of un-renovated society in the already but not yet.

The Church Is Not an Institution of Redemption but a Redeemed Institution

Often times in the social justice conversation there is much terminology about the building of the Kingdom as being a vital part to informing the Christian’s pursuit of justice. Their accusation to those on the other side of the conversation is that they lack a broader kingdom mentality of Christianity that involves the various societal spheres that surround the church. Many in the social justice movement see the church as one of many parallel Kingdom components where God is progressing his Kingdom agenda. The idea is that the Kingdom of God is something that the church builds beyond the confines of itself in its surrounding institutions and so much of the social justice advocates arm themselves with this perspective of the Kingdom. Let me in a very rapid fire way define the Kingdom of God as it is biblically stated. The Kingdom of God is Christ Himself and in this age is not institutionally visible (Luke 17:20-21). The Kingdom of God is something that we are passively transferred into pertaining explicitly to Christ’s person and work (Colossians 1:13-14). We receive the Kingdom of God as we hear its proclamation rather than achieve it as we do its exhortations (Mark 1:15). The Kingdom of God is invisible and grows by God’s monergistic sovereignty not man’s activity (Matthew 13:33; Mark 4:27). The Kingdom of God is about the proclamation of forgiveness of sins in Christ and His cross and about the body of Christ which is the community of the cross (John 20:21-23; Matthew 16:18). The Kingdom is coming into the now in the church that is in union with the King (Ephesians 1:20-23). The Kingdom of God is heavenly where Christ is presently and physically seated and not so much where our surrounding contexts are and how they are (Hebrews 12:22, 28). The Kingdom of God is being heard in the proclamation of the gospel and being revealed in the teachings about the King’s person and work not being perpetually created by the Christian’s moral advancements in the world (Acts 28:30-31; Acts 8:12). The Kingdom of God is being heard in the proclamation of the gospel and being revealed in the teachings about the King’s person and work not being perpetually created by the Christian’s moral advancements in the world (Acts 28:30-31; Acts 8:12). The Kingdom is definitively built by God and is coming to us rather than being progressively perpetuated by us (2 Samuel 7:11-14; Matthew 6:10). All these verses tell us definitively that the Kingdom of God is not an ongoing project of the church in the world but a definitive project of God through Christ in the church. The Kingdom is not something we build but we are the Kingdom that is built by the King in His works. The church is not an institution to redeem institutions, but it is a redeemed institution. The Kingdom of God in the church is not about becoming co-redeemers with Christ in our various societal endeavors but it is about witnessing to what our redeemer has built in and through Himself. The second the church defines itself as an instrument to redeem institutions rather than the institution of the redeemed it subtly seeks to move Jesus from His place and center to make space for itself. We should love and serve and contend for our neighbor when it pertains to issues of societal justice, but we should never do so as co-redeemers but simply as the redeemed. We are not redeeming society, we are loving society as the redeemed. We should seek to be engaged and active in various societal gaps but should never define that engagement as being the perpetual Kingdom building project that Jesus has left unto us. The Kingdom of God has been inaugurated in Christ’s person and work in the church not in our societal engagement in the world. A salvation that is about Christ’s works while seeking to hold to a Kingdom that is about our societal actions in the common spaces of humanity is to wrongly separate the nature of the King’s work (monergistic) with the King’s domain. The King’s work is based upon and confined in Himself and the King’s domain is also based upon and confined in Himself. We can talk about and encourage action and engagement in the societal realms pertaining to issues of justice without calling it some kind of humanistically propelled perpetuation and ongoing establishment of the kingdom.