lifeasmission

Jesus and (Social) Justice

June 14, 2007

2 things compel me to take a stab at a post bearing this title.

First, the other day I was listening to a message being given by a Bible teacher that I have a tremendous amount of respect for. He was seeking to share with his congregation a version of the gospel which weds the ideas of salvation and what we often refer to as social justice – things like ensuring people have access to clean drinking water, fighting the war on aids, and addressing local and international poverty. He was talking about the unfortunate reality that the church in large measure has abdicated responsibility for caring about issues like this in favor of a gnostic version (my expression not his, but the point is the same) of the gospel whereby salvation has primarily to do with where I go when I die. He talked about the way in which Christians often stop at writing checks to organizations which address issues like those mentioned above and he asks, “Why do those groups get to have all the fun?” The message seemed to be that it is these organizations and not the church who are doing the true work of God in the world. In one way I am inclined to side with this point, but in another way I don’t think he said enough.

Second, I was reading a chapter in Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s latest book, Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends this morning which addressed “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” an ideology endorsed by the United Nations regarding things like the freedom and equality of all persons, everyone’s right to things like life, liberty, their own security, and protection against discrimination. David G. Thompson, the author of this particular chapter, goes on to note criticisms of this declaration from conservative Islamic people who “dispute the very idea of humans holding autonomous rights as contrary to Allah’s absolute authority,” postmodernists who see it as an act of “Western intellectual hegemony,” and East Asians who hold to more “communitarian values.” (108) The author then goes on to say, “Despite the UDHR greatly furthering its laudable goals of protecting the oppressed and unmasking their oppressors, the document fails to substantiate what it claims; we are not told why humans have the rights the document ascribes to them.” (108)

In response to both the message mentioned above and David’s question just noted I want to say — The why really, really matters!

I recognize and applaud, as I hope any follower of Jesus would, the efforts of any organization striving to meet peoples basic needs, free them from oppression, and fight things like hunger, poverty, and disease. I think it’s wonderful that countries would come together from all over the world and affirm in one voice that people cannot be treated like garbage or discriminated against. To me, things like this reassure me that God is still active in the world and that conscious or not, people still recognize that there is such a thing as right and wrong, good and evil.

But…

These things are not ends in and of themselves. For the Christian, these things find their end in their glorification of God in Jesus. They attain their true significance when they are understood as God’s actions (not mankind’s) in the world meant to display God’s mission of the healing, reconciliation, and restoration of all things. If we fight the war on poverty and actually get to the point where everyone’s basic needs are met, but don’t recognize and repent of the sin which got us there in the first place, that battle has not truly been won. In fact, we’re probably much worse off as we will be inclined to see ourselves as the source of all that is good and right.

People do not posses rights because of their intrinsic worth, which is all the UN can ever say. Rather, people are valuable because they are made in the image of their creator, something only the Church can say. Justice (social and otherwise) ought to be manifest in the world not because people deserve it, which is the basic stance of secular organizations. Instead, justice ought to define our existence because a just God desires it for his creation, something only the Church can say and witness to.

It’s not that the Church needs to take back causes of social justice – it’s that the Church needs to recapture a vision of salvation which entails the advancement of God’s justice in the world.

It’s not that the Church needs to advocate for human rights – it’s that the Church needs to answer the why question regarding the value of humanity.

Everything Jesus was, did, and is has to do with God’s justice in the world (by the way, we fool ourselves when we think that there’s a difference between personal and social justice – it’s one of the many false dichotomies of modernity, but that’s another post altogether).

To embody and do justice in the name of Jesus is the unique calling of the Church in and to the world.

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Posted in: Jesus, church, justice, postmodernity, preaching/teaching, western culture