I recently began to write a post on social justice and young evangelicals. Instead I'll summarize my point and save you some time. I think it's great that Christians of my generation have taken huge steps toward helping and caring for the poor and the oppressed in our world. On the other hand, it seems to me that too many of these Christians have turned helping the poor into the gospel itself. Many have come to believe (though they may not say it this way) that alleviating suffering by feeding the hungry is the end goal of Christianity, and I think that's a huge mistake.
Rather than writing a long post on this topic (which, as I said, I originally began to do), I've decided that it will be much more worth your while to read a much better writer and thinker than me. Kevin DeYoung recently finished up an 8-part series on poverty and social justice. In each post he focused on a single passage of Scripture that is commonly used in the social justice discussion (except the last post, which is a summary/wrap-up/conclusion).
I've linked to all 8 posts below and would strongly encourage you to check them out if you're at all interested in this topic (none of them is too long).
If you don't want to check them out, I'll give you my own SUPER brief summary of his 2 main conclusions in the final post:
1. Don't undersell what the Bible says about the poor and social justice (In other words, helping the poor is a very important thing for Christians to do).
2. Don't oversell what the Bible says about the poor and social justice (In other words, "the alleviation of poverty is simply not the main storyline of Scripture").
Passage #1 (Isaiah 1)
Passage #2 (Isaiah 58)
Passage #3 (Jeremiah 22)
Passage #4 (Matthew 25:31-46)
Passage #5 (Amos 5)
Passage #6 (Micah 6:8)
Passage #7 (Luke 4:16-21)
A Brief Wrap-up
(For those who just can't get enough, below are four more related posts that Kevin had written earlier and are not part of this series but deal with the same theme.)
Moral Proximity
Leviticus 19
Leviticus 25
The term "social justice"
I have heard people say, how can people eat the "Bread of Life" if they don't have bread in their stomach? Valid human logic, sure, but I tend to think along the lines of...If people have the "Bread of Life" bread in their stomach becomes a lot less important. Still important but bread in the stomach will never be bread that gives life. At least not the life promised to us by the guy who died for us. What is more important to YOU. I mean really. Anyway, I have not read yet what you've linked, but I will...I will.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you've definitely got the point. I mean, if our generation succeeded in curing cancer and AIDS, and completely rid the planet of hunger, oppression, and disease, but did not spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, would we really have accomplished ANYTHING AT ALL? Not if we believe in anything more than this world.
ReplyDeleteI think it's sad that social justice is both over and under sold so much. There really shouldn't be a dichotomy between between people that, like you said, think it is the whole gospel and people that ignore the whole concept. I think both are very wrong... and dangerous. I also think they react against each other, making both "sides" more extreme. Also, some people love to champion 'social justice' without studying what it means. I think mishpat encompassing more than feeding the poor, and it's relationship with tzedek can't be ignored.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I wasn't trying to be cryptic with throwing the Hebrew out there, it's just faster than defining the words, and I assume anyone following comments on the topic won't be annoyed by that. :)
ReplyDeletePam, I'll have to come back and re-read your comment after taking Hebrew this fall. Because right now I have no idea what you're talking about... but you certainly SOUND super smart. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. I agree with you about the false dichotomy thing. As soon as I hit the "publish" button on this post I worried that I would come across as some form of Super Conservative who would rather preach hellfire and brimstone to an emaciated child on the street instead of giving him a piece of bread to eat. I hope that's NOT how it comes across!
It's been awhile since I read it, but DeYoung's post about the term "social justice" is a good one because oftentimes different people mean it in totally different ways and it can be confusing and lead to arguments.