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November 18 - December 21, 2020
Jesus warned some of his opponents that their identification as Jews would not save them, saying, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9).
This is not only dehumanizing—it is atomistic.
The groups we belong to shape us. They do not define us.
This biblical idea created the West, and none of us can fully imagine the dystopia that would result if we discard it in favor of the dehumanizing idea that individuals don’t exist, and that people are reduced to mouthpieces, drones, or avatars of the groups that define them.
In this fraught cultural moment, we need to emphasize what unites us, not what divides us. Let’s follow the examples of Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, who led healing movements that brought wounded nations together. They sought to unite people around our common humanity.
Ideological social justice can only divide because it has no basis for unity. It can only segregate us into competing tribes, pitted against ...
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the more victim boxes you can check, the greater your experience of oppression.
Ideologies that draw the good vs. evil line between different groups are not just wrong, they are dangerous. If this group is good, and that group is evil, it is very easy to dehumanize the “evil” group. This is what happened in Nazi Germany with the Jews and in communist nations with “capitalists.” It happened in Rwanda in 1994, when the Hutu-led government, fueled by an ideology of hate, launched a genocide that left as many as a million Tutsis dead in just one hundred days.
Railing against an entire [group] of people . . . ultimately means rejecting each and every individual in that supposed category, regardless of the personal experiences or human sufferings any one of them might have endured as an individual. . . .
Why should one person’s immutable characteristic cancel out their entire experience as an individual human being? How is that not the essence of bigotry? How is that not pre-judging and de-humanizing a person?11
they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm,
ideological social justice destroys civil, humane society, replacing it with hatred, division, and tribalism.
Our fundamental problem is not “out there” in oppressive societal structures. Our problem is “in here,” in our foolish, darkened hearts.
Let’s tear this world apart and build a better one.
More often than not, social justice champions are seeking not a peaceful social transformation that begins inwardly with humble repentance and the regeneration of sinful hearts and minds. Like Hathaway, they want nothing less than a revolution. And the revolution they champion is based on the patterns established by the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions.
mainstream social justice tactics include compulsory reeducation and indoctrination (often called “sensitivity training”), innuendo, contempt, threats, shaming, silencing, and mob actions.
In an interesting departure from democratic tradition, [social justice revolutionaries] don’t try to win the other side over. They only condemn and attempt to silence.
In the zero-sum world of social justice power struggle, there is no “live and let live” tolerance. No win-win, or even compromise. No place for forgiveness, or grace. No “love your enemy.” No “first get the log out of your own eye” introspection. There is only grievance, condemnation, and retribution. Bigots, haters, and oppressors must be destroyed.
injustice isn’t a social problem. It is a moral problem.
Unjust and oppressive human systems, structures, institutions, laws, and norms are symptoms, not the disease. The disease is sin.
The solution is inward heart and mind transformation through the gospel, leading to outward, societal transformation.
“Evangelism is the major instrument of social change. For the gospel changes people, and changed people can change society.”19
Social justice’s ethic is based on grievance and a desire to blame others for the world’s problems.
Social justice, like Marxism, rejects the idea of an objective, transcendent, universal morality. It asserts that human beings are autonomous—laws unto themselves.
many white people are simply jumping on board the new moral bandwagon, publicly announcing to everyone that they are on “the right side of history.”
The pressure to conform is immense, particularly in places where the social justice worldview is the unquestioned paradigm (university campuses, corporate boardrooms, and urban centers on both coasts). Those who fail to jump on the new moral bandwagon are branded immoral—unenlightened, hateful, and bigoted.
“Woke” social media mobs roam the internet on the lookout for the slightest moral slipup. Say the wrong thing, or donate to the wrong cause, or associate with the wrong people, and you might be banned on social media, lose your job, or even your reputation.
We are morally obligated to care for truly oppressed and victimized people. However, the Bible doesn’t define victims or oppressors in the same way that ideological social justice does.
Jesus sought out and forgave Zacchaeus, a hated tax collector and traitorous agent of the powerful, cruel, and oppressive Roman Empire. He befriended Nicodemus, a powerful member of the Sanhedrin that eventually condemned Him to death.
Any form of justice not grounded in God’s law will result in injustice, for it is based on fallen human reason.
“Truth has been redefined as a social construction,
For social justice ideologues, the very notions of objective truth, reason, logic, evidence, and argument are viewed as weapons employed by oppressors to maintain their hegemony.
Robert Tracinski says this appeal to emotion is “specifically designed to make rational analysis of the issues look . . . positively immoral.”
In true Orwellian fashion, ideological social justice reduces truth to power. Whoever has the power to impose a dominant narrative has the power to define “truth.” When objective truth is abandoned, narratives thrive.
Frankly, with the new social justice intersectional hierarchy, if you are a white male, you are presumed guilty.
Without this Judeo-Christian commitment to objective, knowable truth, there would be no university. Nor would there be modern science, nor journalism, nor the study of history. There would be no liberal democracy, for without truth, government becomes an exercise in raw power.
Truth is known through a combination of Divine revelation supported by the proper use of our God-given capacity for reason and logic, evidence and argument.
“Lady Justice” wearing a blindfold, which points to the hard-won truth that justice must be impartial and not a respecter of persons.
Biblical justice is committed to discovering truth about guilt or innocence based on actions and behavior, not on membership in a so-called oppressor group.
we must question popular cultural narratives out of a commitment to follow facts and evidence wherever they lead.
In the worldview of ideological social justice, authority is conferred, not by wisdom, age, position, or experience—but by victim status.
According to The Atlantic, this is all part of “a new moral code in American life”—victimhood culture.
This tactic works, in part, because most people rightly sympathize with victims, particularly in a society shaped by a biblical worldview that sees compassion for hurting people as virtuous. Social justice ideology, however, like a parasite, feeds off of our good and necessary compassion for true victims while twisting it to the advantage of favored groups.
In the worldview of ideological social justice, power is zero-sum.
The goal of the social justice revolution is to dismantle oppressive structures and transfer power and authority to victims. Victims only win when oppressors lose. That’s how it works.
“grievance studies scholarship is the Bible and the Hadith of Social Justice.” It is their sacred text, the ultimate authority.
how does the Bible respond to the social justice notion that ultimate authority resides with victims? As Christians, we can agree that there are many victims of injustice and oppression in our fallen world, and they deserve justice and compassion. However, we disagree that we must confer moral authority on people who claim victim status, allowing them to define what is real, based on their subjective “lived experience.”
Rather than holding onto grievances in order to claim victim status, we are to keep “no record of wrongs”
Marxism and social justice are totalitarian, for only one human institution is seen as powerful enough to purge the world of evil and lead to utopia: an all-powerful state. Institutions that contribute to disparities—the family, church, private enterprise, and any other human association—must be expunged and replaced by an all-encompassing state.
In Marxism, the state replaces God.
