Today I was interviewed by a sociology student who wanted to know more about “social justice.” I was happy to talk to her. My Catholic tradition considers social justice as a central element of faith, public witness, and as integral to Catholic Social Teaching. In our conversation I drew on an article I’d written a few years back: “What the Heck is ‘Social Justice’?” (Sojourners, February 2007).
A starting question when talking about social justice is: What’s the difference between justice and charity?
Justice is the moral code that guides a fair and equitable society. When an individual acts on behalf of justice, he or she stands up for what is right. Charity is a basic sense of generosity and goodwill toward others, especially the suffering. Individual charity is when one responds to the more immediate needs of others — volunteering in a women’s shelter, for example. [See also An Active Faith by Yonce Shelton for more on charity and justice.]
The goal of social charity and social justice is furthering the common good. Social charity addresses the effects of social sin, while social justice addresses the causes of such sins. Brazilian Catholic Archbishop Hélder Câmara famously said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” His phrase indicates the societal pressure to separate charity and justice. The two cannot be separated. It would be like taking the heart out of a body — neither would live for long.
Social charity is sometimes called compassionate solidarity. A church’s decision to buy only fair trade coffee might be considered an act of social charity. It is a communal economic act that addresses the immediate needs of those who are oppressed by an unjust economic system. However, it doesn’t fundamentally change or challenge the unjust structure.
So just what is the definition of social justice?
The principle of social justice, according to Catholic social teaching, requires the individual Christian to act in an organized manner with others to hold social institutions accountable — whether government or private — to the common good. The “common good comprises the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily,” according to Pope Paul VI. However, social justice can become hollow if it is not constantly in touch with real people’s experiences.
How does one “do” social justice?
Social justice issues are determined by “discerning the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3 "and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times."
After the comments then the following article "Social Justice and the New Morality"
By Berit Kjos - May 23, 2010.... are to get your teeth into.
Also another post and comments by AmericanMercenary.
), a careful process of social analysis. First, we listen to and observe the experiences of those closest to the problem. Second, together with those closest to the problem, we look at the context. What’s the history and what are the root causes? Are there political and/or cultural forces at play? We take the expanded information (experience plus context) and examine it in light of biblical values and Christian teaching. What would Jesus do in a situation like this? Third, we ask: What action might successfully make this situation more just? Finally, we take the action and evaluate the results. The evaluation takes us back to step one.
The theology of social justice cannot be separated from the full scope of Christian spiritual and moral development. But theology is always incarnated in the real lives and experiences of people. If it’s too abstract, then it becomes useless to the living breathing walk of faith that every Christian must make.
Rose Marie Berger, an associate editor at Sojourners,
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Comments
daveincny 6 months ago
So this is the Jim W’s, i.e. Jesus’, defacto definition of Social Justice?!? I’m struggling here. . .taken at face value, even with her weak but for-the-sake-of-argument acceptable introduction, Berger rips Matt 16:3 from its context as justification for a group of folks to employ (social) scientific means to take a person’s income, package it with others and give it those the Berge types think should have it instead. . .that sounds more like social engineering than Justice (note the upper case “j”).
Now I’m confused, this is not the “Jesus” I was taught in either my significant RC or Protestant (not to mention Muslim and Eastern religions) exposure. So I thought, perhaps, the comment section can help clear that up. From the insipid, “WWJD”, to the ridiculous Wal-Mart metaphor (why does it seem like pastors come up with such stuff), not only was nothing clarified but nothing touched this one fascinating and antithetical point--Jesus NEVER, ever, took what wasn’t his and gave it away as charity. Consequently, Jesus NEVER, ever, taught his disciples to do that either.
I’m feeling a bit impoverished—can I get some help?
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VineyD 6 months ago
If "social justice" is what Jesus mandates anywhere in the Gospel then I don't understand who Jesus is or what his teachings are about. Jesus dignifies us by making us personally, individually answerable to him.
Didn't Jesus say he preached the good news TO the poor instead of ABOUT the poor? If he did, then I have a hope. If the good news was preached ABOUT the poor instead of TO the poor then I may die in my sins before social justice gets around to lifting the burdens of poverty from me.
The poor are always with us, said Jesus, so I'm glad he gave me the Good News to sustain me in case I am always to be in this situation. As for the banker, businessman or boss who may directly impact my material life, I pray that they are a Christian, and that they go to hear a sermon, I pray that the minister is like Jesus and shows him that the Good News is personal NOT social. I want the well-to-do to feel as personally responsible for their behavior as I am. I hope that the text comes from the letter to Philemon. Why Philemon? Because I don't want "my master" to think he needs to wait for government structures or social custom to pave the way for his conduct toward me. I want him to personally consider the impact that he can have on God by treating me justly, kindly. Proverbs 19:17 puts it this way: The man who is kind to the poor lends to Yahweh: he will repay him for what he has done. "17 Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD,"
and he will reward them for what they have done.
Jesus speaks to us as individuals --the rich AND the poor-- to be brothers in fact.
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daveincny 6 months ago in reply to VineyD
There are 3 things I like about your comment, a) it is rich in philosophical possibilities; b) it flows with the Biblical narratives; and c) it strikes me it came from your personal experience.
I may be wrong, I hope I'm wrong, but judging from the content of Wallis' and his disciples articles/commentaries, they act more like Pharisees than Christians.
I can't yet grasp the notion of Jesus imposing a tax of 30% on his disciples, let alone Caesar, giving it to the "impoverished" group of his choice and calling that justice--social or otherwise. Again, I may be wrong, but your comment gives me hope.
Flag VineyD liked this
This to me sounds like a lot like social engineering !!
More rebuttals
Global War on Christian Values - Part 2 (Part 1 & 3]
Social Justice and the New Morality
By Berit Kjos - May 23, 2010
http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/010/2-social-justice.htm
"I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the [legal] safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice." Fredrich August von Hayek [1]
"In this book [Rules for Radicals] we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace.... This means revolution.'"[2] Saul Alinsky
“'To be a leader means to be able to move the masses.' Hitler’s aim was first to move the masses and then, having pried them loose from their traditional loyalties and moralities, to impose upon them (with the hypnotized consent of the majority) a new authoritarian order of his own devising."[3] Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
"...do not be conformed to this world...." Romans 12:2
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During the turbulent sixties, I finished nursing school, married Andy, trekked around the world with him for eight months (about $7 a day), then had two babies. Wanting to use my training, I offered to help at a "well-baby clinic" in a nearby black community. With my infant in a basket, I took my place at the examining table.
Some months later, I attended a community meeting important enough to merit the protective presence of the revolutionary Black Panthers. In awe, I watched its well armed warriors for "social justice" line up on each side of the hall. We, the white volunteers, listened to the organizer's angry words about capitalism, racism, social injustice and radical change. They didn't want our presence any more, so we were told to stay home and raise support for them in our white communities.
I didn't question their values that day. But a few years later, as a "born-again" Christian, I began to wonder. By then, I had been thoroughly exposed to the spiritual bleakness of liberal theology, its transformational agenda, and its hostility toward Biblical Christianity.
I had learned that the vision of "social justice" is infused with deceptive dreams. Promising economic equality, its well-trained "organizers" would destroy personal incentive, undermine family values, twist God's Word, and breed dependence and poverty for all but its elite leaders! There wouldn't be much wealth left to spread. Yet the lie survives -- even in today's churches.
A major advocate for this agenda is Jim Wallis, a member of the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He founded the left-leaning magazine, Sojourners, which promotes an idealistic view of "social justice." Its February 2007 issue gave us a glimpse of its position:
"The goal of social charity and social justice is furthering the common good. Social charity addresses the effects of social sin, while social justice addresses the causes of such sins [inequality, capitalism, free enterprise, etc.]. Brazilian Catholic Archbishop Hélder Câmara famously said, 'When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.'”
"Social charity... doesn’t fundamentally change or challenge the unjust structure. The principle of social justice...requires the individual Christian to act in an organized manner with others to hold social institutions accountable... to the common good."[4]
Do you wonder what they mean by "common good"? What can we learn from Venezuela? Or Greece?
The Roots and Results of Social Justice
Neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels, the leading change agents behind communism and contemporary socialism, showed compassion for the poor masses that supposedly justified their agenda. Their form of "social justice" was simply their excuse for tyranny. In letters to Marx, Engels referred to peasants as "bumpkins," "a barbaric race," "frightfully stupid," etc. Marx described them as "degenerate rabble."[5] Both despised Christianity and its moral values.
How, then, did socialism survive? Why is it spreading?
Dr. Thomas Sowell gives us a glimpse of its roots. In his article "Race and Resentment," he wisely connects this phenomena to a universal condition: our corruptible human nature:
"Recent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students beating up Asian American students. This is especially painful for those who expected that the election of Barack Obama would mark the beginning of a post-racial America....Perhaps you remember Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron." It magnifies the destructive leveling needed to create a collective society of equals whose achievements offend no one:
"Many of our educators, our intelligentsia and our media -- not to mention our politicians-- promote an attitude that other people's achievements are grievances, rather than examples. When black school children who are working hard in school and succeeding academically are attacked and beaten up by black classmates for 'acting white,' why is it surprising that similar hostility is turned against Asian Americans, who are often achieving academically more so than whites?...
"The same phenomenon is found among lower-class whites in Britain, where academically achieving white students have been beaten up badly enough by their white classmates to require hospital treatment.
"These are poisonous and self-destructive consequences of a steady drumbeat of ideological hype about differences that are translated into 'disparities' and 'inequities,' provoking envy and resentments under their more prettied-up name of 'social justice.'"[6]
"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.... Nobody was smarter... [or] better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General [H-G].
"... the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away. It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times.... Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains."[7]
Hate and envy serve as driving forces behind socialism. By idolizing the leader (Hitler forced churches to hang his picture over their altars), popularizing solidarity, and inciting rage toward dissenters, socialist dictators have gained unthinkable power. Learning from Soviet triumphs, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf,
"The first task of propaganda is to win people for subsequent organization.... The second task of propaganda is the disruption of the existing state of affairs and the permeation of this state of affairs with the new doctrine..."[8, see note]That new doctrine would free the masses from all Biblical morality. Depravity would replace modesty, honesty and integrity. As an angry young revolutionary, Marx admitted that his aim was not to improve the world but to enjoy its corruption:
"With disdain I will throw my gauntlet full in the face of the world,The Marxist Meaning of Social Justice
And see the collapse of this pygmy giant whose fall will not stifle my ardor.
Then will I wander godlike and victorious through the ruins of the world
And, giving my words an active force, I will feel equal to the Creator." [9]
Having endured the terrors of the Soviet gulag (prison) system, author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tried to warn the West. In his Foreword for a Russian book by Igor Shafarevich titled, The Socialist Phenomenon, he explained that,
"...socialism (at least at first sight) turns out to be a glaring contradiction. Proceeding from a critique of a given society, accusing it of injustice, inequality and lack of freedom, socialism proclaims [and produces]... a far greater injustice, inequality and slavery!...Igor Shafarevich's book includes a section titled "Socialism is the expression of the quest for social justice." It highlights the conflict between the alluring myth and the harsh reality of social justice:
"In the most popular work of Marxism, the Communist Manifesto, one of the first measures of the new socialist system to be proposed is the introduction of compulsory labor."[10]
"Since it is unquestionably true that appeals to justice and the condemnation of the defects of contemporary life occupy a central place in socialist ideology, this question must be formulated more precisely: Is the aspiration for social justice the goal and the driving force of socialism or is the appeal to this aspiration only a means to achieve some other goals?What kind of social justice is that?
"...in the socialist doctrines themselves, at least, we should uncover compassion for the sufferings of the victims of injustice and the impulse to lighten their burden. Yet this is precisely what is lacking!...
"At a time when 'bourgeois philanthropists' such as Dickens and Carlyle were fighting against child labor, the... [Communist] First International adopted a resolution composed by Marx: '...In a rationally organized society, each child from the age of nine ought to be a productive worker.'"[11]
Shafarevich lists four basic socialist principles that show the stark contrast between American freedom and socialist tyranny:
1. The Abolition of Private Property.
2. The Abolition of the Family.
3. The Abolition of Religion.
4. Communality or Equality.[12]
Freedom: The Opposite of Social Justice
In contrast to socialism, the authors of America's Constitution sought genuine freedom for all. It was incomplete, but by 1865, countless thousands had given their lives to free the slaves. By law, all would share the benefits of the First Amendment in our Bill of Rights:[13]
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."t, unless God intervenes, we may soon lose those legal rights. The hollow hope of a more perfect world -- in this case, a tyrannical collective -- has captured the hearts of idealistic Americans as well as revolutionary change agents.
Our children and youth are especially vulnerable. Public schools are training them to think collectively through the mandatory use of the dialectic process. Subjective opinions and feelings replace objective facts and certainties, and compromise becomes a habit. Few children are prepared to stand firm on God's "offensive" moral values.
In other words, America is trading her moral foundation for a changeable set of amoral values that can be twisted in any which way by today's trained facilitators and capricious leaders. Please remember this warning:
God tells us to live by His standard for justice. He has given us clear guidelines to follow them: help the needy, share our resources, and comfort those who hurt with His wonderful promises. The Old Testament prophet Micah summarized it well:
That's a far cry from trusting a socialist government to rule our families, assign our activities, monitor our choices, prescribe our beliefs, and redistribute our possessions.
We live in an imperfect world, and a spiritual war is raging all around us. America may never be the same, but those who know God have a place of refuge. And in the midst of it all, we will -- by His grace -- continue to share His joy, comfort, mercy and resources.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 October 2009
http://randomthoughtsandguns.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-hell-is-social-justice.html
What the hell is "Social Justice"?
Social Justice is a buzzword for the left in the US. What it really boils down to is the redistribution of wealth. Even wikipedia has a section article on social justice. The sad part is that the ideas of social justice are already found in our society. Allow me to quote from wikipedia (which is not a scholarly thing to do, but what the hell this is my blog and I'm not always going to be scholarly).
Social justice is a term, generally applied by the left, to describe a society with a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution, policies aimed toward achieving that which developmental economists refer to as equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.
We already have progressive taxation, and a welfare state to redistribute income (social security, medicare, medicaid, etc), and the Kelo vs. New London decision has shown that Government can take any property that they want (although the redistribution of property in that case wasn't to the poor and needy). We have strict laws on equal opportunity, and we already have high schools and universities lowering the graduation requirements for minorities to make the "equality of outcome" a reality.
But none of this is what a Leftist means when they talk about "social justice". What they really mean is taking MORE from those who already pay the most to GIVE to those who pay the least (or nothing at all). In the book God and the Welfare State by Lew Daly (what is it about guys named Daly always being on the left?) he writes "In 2000 the top one hundredth of one percent of the income scale- a mere 13,400 households- had nearly as much income as the entire 100 million people at the bottom. These evils scripture makes plain." Lew also writes about Americans living in "barbaric poverty" and in "extreme poverty". Being rich isn't evil, being dishonest to get rich or richer IS evil.
I'm in Iraq. From here to the end of my days I will have an entirely different opinion about "extreme" or "barbaric" poverty. As a side note Lew Daly picks at the scriptures that condemn evil rich men, and ignores the righteous men that God has made wealthy. He ignores the apostles arguing about Mary washing Jesus' feet and perfuming them with expensive oil, saying amongst themselves that it should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus taught "the poor will be with you always." The Bible DOES teach to be charitable, provide for the poor, the orphan, and the widow, but it is a personal command to each believer AND a command to the church structure. NOT a command to a secular government. While the free market can put people into poverty, it is also the vehicle by which people work their way out of poverty.
The more I read about Lew Daly the more frightened I become of the "Religious Left" who have ideas here is Lew Daly discussing another book Unjust Deserts:
Most people do not consider inherited wealth or property to be something people really and fully “deserve” to enjoy, even if they are legally entitled to it. We never think the rich heir really “deserves” to be rich. At the same time, we tend see the wealth and income people get from the market as something that’s “deserved”—because the market, we assume, usually rewards people in rough proportion to their contributions. The problem with this is that a significant portion of what people get from the market has nothing to do with what they individually contribute. Take away the inherited knowledge we use in our work and daily life, and productivity will go way down along with income. So in accounting for the knowledge we inherit we have to ask ourselves if we are so much more deserving than the rich heir lolling about on daddy’s estate. Obviously what we add is important and has something to do with the differing economic benefits people enjoy, yet the difference between what the high-tech CEO contributes and what the janitor who cleans out his waste basket contributes is ultimately very small compared to the share of everyone’s gains that comes from inherited knowledge.
We’d like to retire that word [redistribute] from the political vocabulary because you can’t redistribute something that is already highly socialized, and wealth and income in the “era of knowledge-based growth” (whoever ends up “owning” it) is indeed highly socialized. Most importantly (and more to the point), individual productivity is increasingly dependent on what can only be described as a collective good, a common inheritance of knowledge. No one deserves to benefit from this common inheritance more than anyone else, by moral definition, because it’s not created by any individual. So, to the extent that inherited knowledge (“technical progress in the broadest sense,” as Solow termed it) is increasingly driving economic growth, the fruits of knowledge—the wealth being generated by knowledge—should be more equally shared. Wealth that is commonly created should be equally, or at least more equally, shared.
His basic premise is that we inherit knowledge and it is a "communal" inheritance and therefore any fruit of that inheritance should also be a community asset. This is fundamentally wrong from a biblical perspective, Jesus taught the parable of the three stewards, each given a talent. One earned a profit of 9 talents and was rewarded, on earned a profit of 4 talents and was rewarded, and the one who stored the talent and only handed back what he was given was punished. Warren Buffett acknowledges that his wealth is largely a matter of being in the right time and place, but that is true of EVERY person who has earned wealth, from Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates (although I believe Gates earned his wealth in a much more moral manner than Carnegie). Steve Jobs contributed to the market a very modest idea, a "user friendly" computer. The idea that the bulk of their personal wealth really belongs to all of us is asinine. I may benefit from the same "common knowledge" but I didn't DO anything with it other than advance my military career.
The position that we all deserve a piece of someone else's success because we all have the same education is patently bizarre.
Posted by AM at 02:50
4 comments:
Ted Amadeus said...
I call it socialistic injustice, because it stems from the idea that "white, European planet-plunderers" and "rich dead white men"(i.e: the Founding Fathers) are evil, and therefore, their descendants must be punished through excessive taxation, frivolous lawsuits &c to bankroll the lazy and unproductive of today for alleged crimes their ancestors are deemed "collectively responsible" hundreds of years ago.
If it sounds like a freaking scam to get politicians re-elected, that's because that's really all it is (you won't find this definition in any revisionist history written today, but it is nonetheless, the case).
October 2, 2009 8:53 AM
Karl's said...
Comrade.
Everyone knows that the "Brain workers" should lead the the people in their heroic march to socialist justice and the new world order.
This can only be done be weakening the social mores of the forces of reaction and social justice is a useful tool.
The concept of social justice, comrade,implies that the social order of the imperialist is UNJUST and once we can reeducate the masses to accept that, we can prescribe the "Change" needed to correct it.
Yours in socialism
Comrade Karlski.
October 3, 2009 9:11 AM
DirtCrashr said...
As an cultural anthropologist I have to say there's NO such thing - the way Humans are organized prevents that from ever occurring - but it's a useful foil for despots and people with a redistributive agenda.
October 7, 2009 12:55 PM
Alan J. said...
No matter how you dress it up or slap a fancy label on it, this kind of SOCIAL JUSTICE, or economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation (theft by government), income redistribution (theft by government, again), or even property redistribution (theft by government, one more time), is still based on the foundation of taking by the majority from the productive individual. It's still Might Makes Right and the mob rules.
Policies aimed toward achieving equality of outcome can only result in poverty and misery for all but the elites; i.e. the rich, the famous, the party connected, and the approved. Note that to be a member of one of these groups, you MUST first hold the correct ideological persuasion – as any dissenters will be summarily destroyed by character assasination.
Equality of opportunity, in other words true Liberty and Justice For All, is dependent on how much access the average citizen has to the Four Great Powers of Mankind that our Founding Fathers intended for us.
Allow me to quote from Mac Johnson, “The Founding Fathers systematically democratized the powers of society through the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They democratized the power of law through the right to vote. They democratized the power of wealth through the right to private property (since repealed by environmentalists and courts). They democratized the power of ideas through the right to free speech (since repealed by McCain/Feingold). And they democratized the power of violence (or the capability to commit it) through the right to bear arms (since repealed by "gun control").
The Four Great Powers of Man: Law, Money, Thought and Violence were thus divided among the people and not reserved exclusively to the connected, the rich, the approved, and the enlisted. That's the basis of our Republic. That's America. And that is, apparently, a total surprise to liberals.
"Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another...patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality. Bless those who persecute you.... Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." Romans 12:9-15
The next article in this series will deal with rising global education system and its anti-Christian standards.
See also Global War on Christian Values - Part 1: Unity in an Anti-Christian World?
Creating Community
Smiling at Socialism & Scorning the Bible
Washington's Farewell Address, 1796
What it means to be a Christian
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Notes:
1. Fredrich August von Hayek, Economic Freedom and Representative Government (1973), http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek
2. Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, p.3. www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm
3. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p.41.
4. Rose Marie Berger, "What the Heck is ‘Social Justice’?" Sojourners, February 2007. Also available on this page: http://blog.sojo.net/2010/03/24/what-the-heck-is-social-justice/
5. Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon, p. 224. http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
6. Thomas Sowell, "Race and Resentment," May 04, 2010.
7. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., "Harrison Bergeron" at www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
8. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Cambridge: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1943), 582. Note: "Nazis declared support for a form of socialism that is to provide for the nation: economic security, social welfare programs for workers, a just wage, honour for workers' importance to the nation, and protection from capitalist exploitation. Nazism, however, rejected class conflict-based socialism ...." (Wikipedia, footnote 18: Joseph W. Bendersky, A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945., p. 40.) See also Hitler was a Socialist
9.Richard Wurmbrand, Was Marx a Satanist? (Diane Books, 1976), p. 24.
10. Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon, p.xii (Foreword by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) at http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
11. Ibid., pps. 220-221, 223.
12. Ibid., p. 195-196.
13. Human nature, apart from God, is vulnerable to every kind of evil. The "Emancipation Proclamation" didn't end racism and persecution, for absolute perfection is impossible among imperfect human beings. As God's Word tells us, "The heart is deceitful above all things..." (Jeremiah 17:9) But with His Word and Spirit as our life's foundation, peace and love can become a reality.
"He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8
"... if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God....[He] will cause you to be defeated before your enemies.... He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him..... Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies." Deuteronomy 28:15, 44, 47-48 (more)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition...." 1 Corinthians 10:11
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/03/jesus_was_a_nazi_and_sos_your.html
Johnny
March 14, 2010 8:10 PM
Reply
Mr. Ebert,
I have refrained from commenting on blogs and
mostly they are just a shouting post but your provacative title begs for a response. You have falsely framed the phrase "social justice". In all due respect to Mr. Wallis, nowhere did Jesus ever dictate to the Roman government or the Jewish religious body to use the power of the state to feed the poor, clothe the naked, to care for orphans and widows. Jesus appealed to the "INDIVIDUAL" who, from a change of heart in response to follwing Jesus, would do these things.
The state can't act in love as the state use "coersion" via the sword or the AK47 to implement it's policy. Jesus lived in a day of slavery but never spoke out against it. He lived in a day of oppressive misogeny and never spoke out against that. Greed, violence, poverty, disease, ignorance were rampant and there was no such thing as a middle class. In His day either you were an owner or a slave and Jesus never addressed this. Instead He called for His FOLLOWERES NOT THE STATE to live out His principles which then changed the world.
I even heard advocates of "social justice" claim that Jesus was a socialist! This so far from the truth. Would any socialist say "the poor you will always have with you"? Jesus said that. Would any socialist use free market capitalism terms such as interest and investments when describing the way of God's kingdom? Jesus did.
I respect the goals of most liberals but unfortunately their worldview misses the mark. The falleness of man makes utopia impossible. As a biblical Christian this does not mean give up. It means for me to love my neighbor directly not via the government. It means for me to donate a portion of my money (that the government hasn't forcefully confiscated) to help the poor that I know personally or a charity that I beleive in. Give a homeless man food when he asks, etc.
Mr. Ebert you are barking up the wrong tree here. Beck is rather forceful in his comments but he is spot on.
Roger Ebert:- I don't know if Beck cares about the politics of your church or pastor. If they favor social justice, he's against them. If he had made your argument, we could discuss it sanely. But he didn't.
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