Why I believe in Social Justice – Part II

Yesterday (see http://hnkconnect.com/viewpoint-why-i-believe-in-social-justice--part-i) I started my response to Glenn Beck, who has encouraged, nay, insisted that all Christians leave any church that preaches “social justice,” claiming that such teaching has the sinister influence of communism and socialism. Actually my concern is not about Glenn Beck. After all he has a right to his opinions and this is a free country. My concern is that all my Christian friends who swear by him (even those who don’t swear) will believe him on this point.

Beck can pontificate all he wants on politics, this being a democracy and all. But the minute he starts talking theological, well, then he is moving into my turf. Furthermore, he is a Mormon. I really don’t have too much concern about that, generally. I know some of my friends would be aghast if a Mormon won the Presidency, but as most of our presidents in the past century have been nominal Christians at best (the most obvious exceptions being Bush Junior and Carter), then I suppose a good Mormon is not a problem. But what does a Mormon TV personality understand about the preaching of Jesus and his Church?

I understand what he is saying. He’s saying that what he and others consider liberal social justice is not the kind of Bible the average church goer reads or wants to have preached from. Passages like, well, we’ll wait on that. And his biggest concern is that, even though the Bible is filled with passages about justice written long before Beck and Communism appeared, somehow the whole concept is wrong because supposedly the Communists have taken over the justice neighborhood.

For months now, I’ve had one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis on the home page of my website, http://hnkconnect.com. In case, you haven’t seen it, the quote comes from The Problem of Pain (1940): “The Marxist thus finds himself in real agreement with the Christian in those two beliefs which Christianity paradoxically demands – that poverty is blessed and yet ought to be removed.”

Does the fact that Lewis says he agrees with Marxists on at least this significant point mean that he also is a Marxist? Hardly. As I wrote a few weeks ago in another blog posting, just because Communists brush their teeth does not mean that brushing your teeth is wrong. Even the bad guys (Communist and otherwise) have some great ideas and do wonderfully good things. And the good deeds that bad people do are still good.

I, for one, am not going to stop preaching a social gospel and I hope the rest of the Church doesn’t either. For far too long in the twentieth century, the Church avoided or twisted strange meanings out of timeless biblical passages as they avoided people of different skin color and waited for the Federal government to do what the Church should have done long before in integrating this society. The fact is that if the Church had not supported slavery and segregation, neither would have survived long in this “Christian” America.

Then after the government broke the back of segregation, the Church awoke to the disgrace of abortion – and found its social justice voice once again. I say, once again, because in the nineteenth century, the American church, especially the evangelical church, yea, verily the evangelistic and missions church of Charles G. Finney and others that followed him were on the forefront of movements such as the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, child labor laws and the crushing monopolies of big business. Finney’s converts (and rabid atheists) were the ones who fueled the anti-slavery movement. And those kinds of movements, my friend – anti-slavery and anti-abortion – are social justice.

What does “social justice” mean? We’ll take a look tomorrow in the next posting at some of those subversive passages Beck doesn’t want us preaching. [You can find it tomorrow at 2GC@PDX or on Facebook.] But for now, let me state it in plain English: Justice is central to God’s vision for His earthly creation. Check out Isaiah 42:1-9, where the prophet says that God will put His Spirit on His servant and that servant will bring justice to the nations. Then Jesus came fulfilling that very prophecy. Justice means doing the right thing in restoring righteousness to all individuals and human systems. The systems part is where the “social” comes in. Some people don’t mind the “individuals” part of that preaching, but tell me where in Scripture does God abdicate judging what groups of individuals and nations do?

To be continued…