Biblical Perspective on "Social Justice"

After writing blog posts on three cultural ideologies currently plaguing our nation (Black Lives Matter, Defund The Police, and Systemic Racism), I am compelled to examine yet another subject flippantly accepted and defended throughout our culture but seldom understood. There are tremendous amounts of misinformation propagated by our liberal media which are strategically intended to convert the masses into endorsing cultural ideologies which blatantly contradict Scripture. However, I am increasingly convinced as time wears on that far too many Christians simply cannot identify a counterfeit when they see and/or hear it, which unfortunately is the case with social justice as well. It is a difficult subject to discern, for the aroma of social justice seems pleasing to the senses. However, as William H. Young explains in his article, Academic Social Science and Social Justice, its tangled web is far more sophisticated and dangerous than most presume.

"For more than a century, American academic social science has advocated the ideal of 'social justice,' supplanting the founding ideal of justice as equality of opportunity. While often an amorphous term, 'social justice' has evolved to generally mean state redistribution of advantages and resources to disadvantaged groups to satisfy their rights to social and economic equality. Communal sharing by group has replaced individual responsibility and reciprocity as the ethos of social science. Ultimately, social justice can only be realized through a command economy and totalitarian state—which is envisioned by the sustainability ideology to impose economic and social 'equity,' considered in the academy to be synonymous with 'equality.'"

In other words, present-day, social justice reform identifies disadvantaged groups and seeks redistribution of wealth and social advantages to create universal equity (i.e. equal outcomes). No longer is social justice about fighting for equal opportunity which Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement successfully demonstrated in the 1960's through peaceful protests, non-violence, and respectful boycotts. Rather, as David Randall concludes in his article, Social Justice Education in America, social justice of old has evolved into a new breed of radical social justice theory, propagated throughout higher education which categorizes people based on social identity groups, determines oppression based solely on statistical demographic gaps among groups, and ultimately seeks to eliminate privilege.

"What we may call radical social justice theory, which dominates higher education, adds to broader social justice theory the belief that society is divided into social identity groups defined by categories such as class, race, and gender; that any 'unfair distribution' of goods among these groups is oppression; and that oppression can only—and must—be removed by a coalition of 'marginalized' identity groups working to radically transform politics, society, and culture to eliminate privilege."

Therefore, radical social justice requires that advantages and resources enjoyed by a culture's hegemonic order (i.e. perceived social class dominance) must be redistributed to those who do not belong to the hegemony. Presently in the United States, hegemonic order has been unequivocally stereotyped as white privilege and superficially identified as heterosexual, cisgender (i.e. gender identity matches his/her sex assigned at birth), able-bodied, native-born, etc., white males. Therefore, whomever does not identify with any of those attributes is oppressed individually and more importantly as a group (i.e. the more boxes unchecked, the higher the oppression). One of the fundamental problems with radical social justice, though, is it segregates people into subgroups and stereotypes them based on demographics, seeking reparations to remedy grievances which subjectively determine what is just vs. unjust. For example, consider the popular argument presented by Joe Feagin of the American Sociological Association which under-girds the true foundation of the social justice movement:

"As I see it, social justice requires resource equity, fairness, and respect for diversity, as well as the eradication of existing forms of social oppression. Social justice entails a redistribution of resources from those who have unjustly gained them to those who justly deserve them, and it also means creating and ensuring the processes of truly democratic participation in decision-making…. It seems clear that only a decisive redistribution of resources and decision-making power can ensure social justice and authentic democracy."

Keep in mind, based on Feagin's argument it makes no difference whether people have legitimately worked their way from meager and humble beginnings, overcoming numerous obstacles to achieve prosperity through hard work, discipline, determination, integrity and work ethic IF they belong to the hegemonic order (i.e. heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, native-born, etc., white males). From a radical social justice perspective, determining whether prosperity is achieved justly or unjustly is solely based on which demographic group you belong to. Therefore, if you identify demographically with the perceived cultural hegemony, social justice requires your wealth, power, influence, privileges, advantages and resources be redistributed because you gained them unjustly as a result of your hegemony. However, this solves nothing. Rather, it creates unnecessary animosity between people groups, cultivates identity politics, and promotes entitlement to those who do nothing more than bang the drum of radical social justice and demand immediate, never-ending reparations, compensation, and universal acceptance.

However, God's Word offers a far different perspective. "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:1–4). Make no mistake, James speaks directly to the heart of the radical social justice movement in our country, because "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6). In retrospect, it takes an immeasurable amount of ignorance and foolishness to blame others for every disadvantage a demographic sub-group incurs without ever considering the problem might be self-imposed. However, it is far easier to manipulate the emotional sensibilities of others under the banner of victimization rather than accept responsibility and personal accountability for problems (which have nothing to do with oppression) within a subgroup. For example, the unarguable #1 cause of death in the black community is abortion (i.e. over 1,000 murders per DAY), yet the only aspect of abortion radical social justice proponents will champion is providing greater/easier access opportunity for women to legally kill their babies and accept personal responsibility. Moreover, black on black gang violence (for youth, especially) is plaguing inner cities across the United States and further exacerbating prison populations, yet radical social justice advocates demand the decriminalization of illegal drugs and prostitution, and immediate release of all drug-related convictions to solve the problem (and justify sin). However, is white privilege to blame in either of these examples? No. If anything, both can easily be attributed to the +75% rate of fatherlessness in black communities, yet radical social justice supporters refuse to consider any argument which proves some economic challenges and disparities are indeed self-imposed. 

The problem is radical social justice advocates are determined to hide the fact that what they really covet is equal outcomes, not simply equal opportunity, which elicits a victim mentality under the umbrella of unconscious bias and systemic racism as described by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in a March, 2017, Wall Street Journal interview on the Cultural Roots of Campus Rage.

"The left… has undergone an ideological transformation. A generation ago, social justice was understood as equality of treatment and opportunity… Today justice means equal outcomes. There are two ideas now in the academic left that weren’t there 10 years ago. One is that everyone is racist because of unconscious bias, and the other is that everything is racist because of systemic racism. That makes justice impossible to achieve. When you cross that line into insisting that if there’s not equal outcomes then some people and some institutions and some systems are racist, sexist, then you’re setting yourself up for eternal conflict and injustice."

Haidt's assessment is incredibly profound for many reasons, but mainly because there are distinct differences between equality before God, equality of opportunity, and equality of outcomes. For example, the U.S. Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Notice how equality before God and equality of opportunity are both exemplified as justice, but equality of outcome is NOT because our founding fathers never sought social justice as defined by the leftist, liberal generation of today. "He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor" (1 Corinthians 3:8). They intended a capitalistic economy of competitive supply and demand which relies upon free markets controlled primarily by private asset/business ownership to determine price, incomes, wealth and distribution of goods. Government control was meant to be minimal and non-intrusive to maximize individual potential and opportunity for its citizens. The challenge is that radical social justice theory demands equality of outcomes, which is impossible to achieve without essentially replacing capitalism with socialism to maximize government control and ensure equal outcomes across an entire country's population. In other words, no one goes without in a socialistic economy and no one has more resources or advantages than anyone else. Socialism creates neutrality by destroying social classes and the perceived hegemonic order. However, it also surrenders personal freedoms for government control and suppresses individual opportunity. It is an age old debate between capitalism and socialism which conservatives and liberals have been waging for years, but is easily identified in the crucible of radical social justice which pits equality of outcome (finish line) vs. equality of opportunity (starting line). In other words, generally speaking...

Keep in mind, the goal of radical social justice, per Dr. Voddie Baucham, Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Zambia, in his lecture, Defining Social Justice, is as follows: 1. Identify disadvantaged groups (not minorities); 2. Assess group outcomes; 3. Assign blame for disparate outcomes; and 4. Redistribute power and resources in order to redress/rectify those grievances. The problem is radical social justice assumes cultural disparities are the result of intentional, racially-motivated oppression, requiring reverse-oppression and racism to remedy the problem. Therefore, in order to cure social justice, the perceived hegemonic order must be suppressed and eventually eradicated to pave the way for minority equality, feminism, women's rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. However, disproportionate demographic results are not necessarily evidence that discrimination truly exists. For example, consider the following parable Jesus told:

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last" (Matthew 20:1–16).

Notice that all laborers were given the same opportunity to work and earn a wage when hired with no discrimination present whatsoever. In no way were the first laborers not given full disclosure on what compensation they would receive for an honest day's work. Therefore, they accepted the opportunity given without reservation. It was not until the end of the day when those who worked far less received equal compensation that the first laborers expressed their displeasure for not receiving more compensation than what they were promised. Their focus shifted from equal opportunity to equal outcomes, and the selfishness of their hearts was exposed. "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18). Therefore, we must ask ourselves the following questions. Were all laborers given the equal opportunity to work? Yes. Were all laborers given equal outcomes in compensation? Yes. Therefore, what is the problem? Is this example not radical social justice personified? Yes. However, is it fair and just? It depends on who's perspective we're considering. Would the outcome be fair and just if the laborers who worked 11-hours were white and those who worked 1-hour were black? What if the demographics were reversed? Would radical social justice advocates feel the final outcome was fair and just if the 11-hour laborers were black and the 1-hour laborers were white? Keep in mind, equal opportunities do not always lead to equal outcomes, but when they do, are they fair and just or conditionally subjective?

Undoubtedly, what is inherently flawed in today's social justice debate is the role equal outcomes play in shifting the narrative from preventing injustice to victimization. Therefore, socialism seeks to even the playing field so that none go without, but it also stifles creativity and a pursuit of excellence because it perpetuates mediocrity. There is no motivation to excel above and beyond if the end-result is exactly the same. Moreover, Scripture teaches it is fruitless to pursue social justice from a worldly perspective because loving the world and pursuing worldly passions is meaningless apart from God. "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:15–17). Keep in mind, it is imperative we immerse ourselves in God's Word to filter out worldly passions which seek equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity, so we all can aspire to fulfill the calling God places on our hearts. Therefore, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:16–17).

Make no mistake, equality of opportunity based on our equality before God should be the sole focus of social justice reform in our country. However, that is simply not the case based on current political trends and social propaganda from left-wing, liberal activists who are perpetuating greater dissension and division between demographic subgroups rather than reconciliation and partnership. For far too many people leverage social justice incorrectly to perpetuate white guilt, cast judgment on others' religious beliefs, and demand free handouts. Consequently, far too many people have been taught to believe they are victims—indoctrinated with this false narrative their whole lives. Therefore, the only way to appease their demands is through concessions and reparations, even though doing so only exacerbates the problem further. The Bible states plainly, "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10b), because "the soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied" (Proverbs 13:4), and "in all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty" (Proverbs 14:23). Therefore, let us guard ourselves from the false narrative of radical social justice theory our culture seeks to desensitize us with by replacing our social media exposure with greater time spent in God's Word. For only then will the scales of deception fall so our eyes can recognize false narratives when we see and hear them, enabling us to speak truth in love to those who abuse social justice endeavors by demanding equal outcomes.