Examining Our Thirst for Social Justice

Doug Wilson:

You have a button in front of you, placed there by a helpful genie. But instead of giving you the standard three wishes (and why doesn't anybody ever wish for ten wishes?), the genie has limited your options.
If you push the button, the real income of all the "have-nots" in the world will double overnight. Their health care will be twice as good as it is now, their disposable income will be twice as large, their houses will be twice as nice, and so on. But another consequence of pushing this button will also be the fact that the "haves" will see their prosperity increase ten-fold. They will all be ten times richer, thus enabling them to swank around all day.
To spell it out, this means that the divide between the rich and poor will widen, but will do so in a way that leaves the poor undeniably better off.
This is your ethical "dilemma," and part of your test is whether or not you even think of it as a dilemma. Would you refuse to push that button out of hard principle? Would you push it, but with a guilty conscience? Or would you, like me, push it while whistling a cheerful air, with your hat on the side of your head?
If you would not push it, or if you would push it reluctantly, then that urgent yearning for social justice that you feel all the time in your gut is not compassion at all, but cancerous envy. It is evil. It is a deadly sin that must be mortified. You don't love the poor at all -- you hate the rich, and you want to use the poor as a club. And why would this malevolent genie want to take your precious club away?

HT: Chris Gensheer

Rightly Directed Rage

What Jerry Sandusky did was a horror. If that was my boy who came home with wet hair, and had been brutalized in that way, I am not confident that I would be able to restrain myself from calmly killing Sandusky in the middle of the night. Slowly. I am not trying to be funny. If that were my son--God help him.

Now--brothers and sisters--that horror we feel is right. The thirst for personally executed revenge is not right. But the revulsion, and thirst for justice, is right. We would be wrong not to feel it.

But the horror we feel over this is not only appropriate, it is also a glimpse into the horror of our own sin. I am not leveling out all sins. Some are worse than others. But the revulsion, the rage, that we rightly feel toward that sick man is a picture of the repulsiveness of our own sick rebellion against an infinitely beautiful One, and the rage he would be right to direct toward us.

That desire for an hour, just one hour, with Sandusky in a sealed off room with nowhere for him to run, and the rage that I would like to pour out on him, is a glimmer of the rage that ought to be poured out on me by my Creator. And was poured out on his Son.

I am more like Sandusky than different from him.

God help me.

He did.
Dane Ortlund

Fair Is A Four Letter Word

“That’s not fair.” 

It’s a child’s first sentence, perhaps a senior’s last, and it makes many appearances in between. So who would have thought that fair is a dirty word? It should never be spoken within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Heaven; it is never spoken there. You have to leave the throne room before it can be muttered.

Fight injustice not fairness

We know salvation is not merely about personal security, but it carries with it an obligation to stand against oppression. “Fair” wants justice, which, we would think, is a good thing.

Fairness usually takes aim at perceived injustices against ourselves. The danger is, we are better about identifying true injustices when they are against others than when they are against ourselves. When it is about me, a slight becomes an injustice. That is, you took my toy, and that was an egregious wrong, and I want revenge . . . I mean fairness.

Though we might be clumsy in our concerns for justice, we are right to pursue them. When we talk about fairness, however, we are actually speaking about something different from injustice. Fair, to us, is not so much about injustice as it is about symmetry. We want the pot divided evenly.

Don't sacrifice relationships in pursuit of your perception of "fair"

The other day my wife and I were out for dinner and her portion was bigger than my own. Maybe this wasn’t an injustice, but this, of course, was unfair on two counts. First, the portions should have been even. Second, if you take into account the portion-size to weight-of-the-eater ratio, and realize that I outweigh my wife considerably, then fairness meant, if there was going to be a larger portion, I should have it. Yet I was patient. I waited until dessert and took a big spoonful of her white chocolate ice cream. Life then returned to its harmonious balance, though it almost cost me a couple fingers.

Look around. Any time you hear the word fair you will find broken relationships and other forms of nasty fruit. Guaranteed. In other words, during our fine dinner, I was actually turning away from Jesus Christ to utter some profanity – “this waiter should know better; this isn’t fair” – while my wife continued on her normal course of sanctification, except for when she tried to stab my hand.

The danger is, we are better about identifying true injustices when they are against others than when they are against ourselves.

The problem with all this? There is no symmetry in the Kingdom of Heaven. Instead, God’s Kingdom is completely lopsided. God has done it all. He pursued, loved, forgave, blessed and promised a lavish inheritance. We can never meet God half-way, and we should stop trying.

Thank Jesus for imbalance

There is a kernel of something right in fair. In a close relationship, if one person always receives preference, the relationship becomes strongly hierarchical rather than mutual. The result is something less than a genuine relationship. In such situations we might speak out because of our interest in unity, but we do that in humility and gratefulness as we remember the unbalanced nature of real life.

If we keep in mind the story of the ungrateful servant in Matthew 18:21-35 we will see the asymmetrical kingdom. Jesus, the most asymmetrical human life was never angry when he was violated and abused. He always loved first and loved more, and he always will. Be thankful for imbalance.

by Ed Welch

An Interview with Tim Keller on the Gospel and Justice

Kevin DeYoung interviews Tim Keller about his new book Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just [also coming as a Kindle eBook].
I found Keller’s explanation of “asymmetrical balance” to be helpful:

I believe that making disciples and doing justice relate (not exactly) but somewhat in the same way that faith and works relate to one another. We would say that faith alone is the basis for salvation, and yet true faith will always result in good works. We must not “load in” works as if they are an equal with faith as a salvation-base, but neither can we “detach” works and say that they are optional for a believer.
Similarly, I would say that the first thing I need to tell people when they come to church is “believe in Jesus,” not “do justice.” Why? Because first, believing in Jesus meets a more radical need and second, because if they don’t believe in Jesus they won’t have that gospel-motivation to do justice that I talk about in the book. So there’s a priority there.
On the other hand, for a church to not constantly disciple its people to “do justice” would be utterly wrong, because it is an important part of God’s will.
I’m calling for an ‘asymmetrical balance’ here. It seems to me that some churches try to “load in” doing justice as if it is equally important as believing in Jesus, but others, in fear of falling into the social gospel, do not preach or disciple their people to do justice at all. Both are wrong. A biblical church should be highly evangelistic yet known for its commitment to the poor of the city.

You can read the whole interview here.
You can also read the first chapter of the book online.
Justin Taylor

How Do We Work for Justice and Not Undermine Evangelism?

How do Christians work for justice in the world and not undermine the centrality of evangelism? Mike Wittmer responds today.


Everything hinges on how we answer the question, “Why justice?” or “Who is justice for?”
We fight for justice in part because we want to stop the perpetrators of evil and violence. This is why the most satisfying part of a Chuck Norris movie is the last ten minutes, when the smirking gangster takes a boot to the face.
A better answer, especially for pacifists, is that we seek justice to help the victims of oppression. We care about the widow being scammed by a conniving contractor and we grieve for children who are forced into prostitution or maimed to enhance their begging.
But the best—and only Christian—answer is that we seek justice not only to pay back the perpetrators and to rescue the oppressed but because we love Jesus Christ. No one weeps over injustice like Jesus (nor has anyone been treated so unjustly), and he has been taking names for a very long time. Unlike Chuck Norris, who returned each week to battle new bad guys, Jesus will return to settle things once and for all. He will “set the world to rights” (see N.T. Wright), for his words will become swords that “strike down” evildoers and he “will wipe every tear” from the eyes of his suffering children (Rev. 19:15; 21:4).
We are committed to justice because it matters to Jesus. But if we fight for justice for Jesus’ sake, we will never be satisfied with justice alone. We will not rest until every perpetrator and victim bows before his name, the returning King who gave his life so every unjust person who repents and believes in him may live forever.
This requires evangelism, and it flows naturally from the Christian passion for justice. If justice is primarily about Jesus, we will eagerly tell others about their need for him. If we forget Jesus, it won’t be long until we also lose our passion for justice. For without the promise of his glorious return, really, what’s the point?
Gospel Coalition