Musings on Social Justice

I am teaching an adult-ed course this week on the topic of "social justice" and the Bible. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, as it is (and should be) for all Christians, and yet this topic is not entirely straightforward or easy to teach in one hour. There is a major surge in religious and Christian dialogue on this topic of social justice, and that's a good thing. But I do have some major concerns about the way in which many Christians try to appropriate the Bible as a manifesto for social justice, ultimately reading it as a guide to saving the world. We cannot forget that the major theme of the Bible (OT and NT) is that people can't save the world, only God acting in his triune self can save the world. And we get to participate in this action, which is an incredible blessing and charge. But the Bible makes it quite clear that no human being is perfect, that this world will not be perfected until Christ's second return, and that we cannot expect any government, social, or economic aid program to solve all the world's problems. I am not saying that we should not give great care and thought to these various institutions and the ways that they can help alleviate injustice in our society; what I am saying is that we cannot put our ultimate hope in these institutions. Only hope in Christ and his re-creating power will not ultimately fail us. Christians must be wise to remember this when we think about social justice.

I caught this quote below from a random blog conversation I was reading, and I thought it was quite helpful. There are statements I would want to flesh out from this quote, but in general I think this man has made some very helpful points.

John Lunt, on http://jimmymccarty.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/dear-gary/

"I do believe that as a follower of Christ I am to love and serve the poor, marginalized and afflicted. However, I do that as a follower of Christ. I’ve made a committment with my time and income to do this. I believe it is key for the expansion of the Kingdom.

I also believe that many believers run the risk of forgetting the Gospel and centrality of Jesus in their desire to see social justice. While I don’t want to shut down “good works” this side of eternity, I want to make sure that we include our faith in an eternity and what that means for people. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul.” We must heal wounds, feed the hungry, take care of widows and orphans and all of these and remain steadfast in the preaching of the Gospel -the whole Gospel.

I don’t think forced redistribution of wealth is a solution. Hearts being changed – that’s the solution and it only comes through Jesus Christ. While industry has certainly been guilty of it’s share of evil… so has government. Fidel Castro and a list of other dictators -were all for re-distributing the wealth of the capitalist pigs… in the end their people suffered as well. Because in truth, it was corrupt and went into the pockets of those in power."