The Social Justice Religion
This twenty-first century social justice movement, accompanied with vocabulary like “being woke” and organizations like Black Lives Matter, is a separate religion with answers to the fundamental questions religions answer.
By way of contrast:
Who am I?
Biblical Christianity: A human being made in the image of God who is either (a) in Christ and thus at peace with God despite your sins, or (b) in your sins and thus storing up the wrath of God for the day of judgment.
Social Justice Religion: A human being who is either an oppressor from the privileged class or one of the oppressed from the underprivileged class.
What are good and evil?
Biblical Christianity: Good is that which corresponds to God’s character; evil is that which does not and thus breaks His law.
Social Justice Religion: Good is that which reduces the oppression of those who are oppressed; evil is anything which contributes to the oppression of the oppressed.
How can I be made right?
Biblical Christianity: The grace of God in Christ Jesus, applied to you through faith in Him alone.
Social Justice Religion: You may never be made fully right, but whatever justification you can earn is earned through contributing to the tearing down of supposed oppression or inequity.
What is the point of life?
Biblical Christianity: To glorify God.
Social Justice Religion: To tear down oppression and achieve human equity.
The Question of Who We Are
The social justice movement answers who we are as humans by dividing us up into the oppressed and the oppressors. Its posture is that the fundamental divide among us is those who have cultural/societal privilege and those who do not. Christianity, however, maintains that the fundamental divide among human beings is between those who are in Christ and those who are still in their sins. Paul wrote to the Ephesian church that the dividing wall of hostility had been broken down between Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles because both were now one in Christ. Everyone who has been born again to true faith in Jesus has been adopted into a new family, and their fundamental identity is that they are all in Christ Jesus. Since that is their fundamental identity (not their skin color or societal “privilege”), they are fundamentally unified, brothers and sisters, grafted together. When it comes to first order identity, a Christian’s is that he is in Christ. A non-Christian’s is that he is in his sins. Every man is, in Christ’s words, either a goat or a sheep. Either a son of the Devil or a son of God. Either dead in his sins or alive in Christ.
In opposition to the primary identities Scripture gives us, the social justice movement of our day and place looks out at the world and sees those who have power and those who do not. It sees the having of power in this current situation as sinister, and it sees the lacking of power in this current situation as a sign of victimhood. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether one person having more power than another is always intrinsically wrong (the Bible would certainly not say that it is always intrinsically wrong), locating identity in whether or not people have power is neither good nor wise. Chasing power or living to stamp out power inequities will not lead to Godliness or a life well-lived.
What will?
Realizing that one is born a sinner and that Christ Jesus came to save such sinners and offers Himself to you freely to make you the son or daughter of His Father.
The Question of Good and Evil
Not surprisingly in twenty-first century America, this social justice movement tries to identify good and evil without consulting Yahweh, the maker of our world and the universe’s moral lawgiver. Instead, it defines good and evil in terms of what allegedly oppresses the supposedly underprivileged and allegedly benefits the supposedly privileged.
An example of the folly trying to mark out what is good and what is evil apart from God is that this contemporary social justice movement identifies transgenderism and homosexuality with minority racial groups as identities that should be valued and celebrated. Scripture would not have any human being identify as a homosexual or as living in opposition to their biological sex, and it would not have us celebrate or normalize homosexual attraction or activity or men identifying as women or women as men. In trying to categorize good and evil without looking to the One whose character define good and evil, this movement cuts itself off from the fountainhead of morality.
The Question of Being Made Right
This social justice worldview maintains that we can only be made right through societal and governmental change and our individual contributing to that change. Instead of God forgiving individuals and accomplishing their being made right through Jesus Christ His Son, human beings are supposedly obligated to achieve their own justification by supporting the right causes and right groups of people.
This worldview also, in its even purportedly Christian forms, implies that there are certain sins which cannot be washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ. The implication is that to be in the majority culture or to be in the class this worldview identifies as privileged is to be stained by something which Christ’s blood cannot wash away. Even if a Christian social justice advocate were to counter my claim with, “Sin can’t be dealt with until there is repentance,” if I were to ask what I need to repent of, the answer would almost certainly be a vague contention that I was participating in oppression or injustice simply by being in what it deems as the privileged class. There would be no specific Biblical sin named that could then be confessed and repented of. Instead the sin is a vague, multi-generational, corporate sin. It’s hard for me to believe that this is not part of the design of the Marxist underpinnings of this worldview. An evil which can’t be specifically named for an individual to then confess, repent of, and be forgiven is an evil which can always be used as a weapon to extract something from the accused.
The Question of Meaning
When it comes to anointing a point for life, a cause or an end towards which our thoughts and emotions and actions should be pointed, I’ve seen in this social justice movement that what is chosen is this: The dismantling of what are maintained to be human injustices or inequities.
I have seen it in the fervency with which social justice warriors take up the cause. I’ve seen it in the fact that they are often more ready to align with those who deny Christ but support the social justice cause than they are to align with those who are in Christ but disagree with them on social justice. The social justice movement is the true north, and Christianity becomes a subservient belief system that can be maintained when and where it fits with social justice. This movement casts all of life in a drama in which the central plot is equity for those it says are unfairly disadvantaged.
Let me offer a few other closing dangers of this movement.
It implies Scripture is not sufficient. In requiring extra-Biblical language like “white privilege,” “Black Lives Matter,” extra-Biblical paradigms like critical theory, and extra-Biblical tests of fellowship like blacking out one’s picture on Facebook or marching in particular protests, this movement is not content with the Word of God to confront and heal sins or to bring about Godliness and unity in the church. It wants actions, tools, and patterns of thought over and above those which are commanded in Scripture, and it implies many of these are essential for being a just person or society.
It also seems to incubate a mindset or culture of scorekeeping and nurturing grievances. While injustices should be confronted and sins named, it is deadly to allow your mind and heart to begin cataloguing every wrong you feel and focus the lion’s share of your heart, thought, and emotional energy on those wrongs. The most evil injustice committed against the most innocent victim in all human history was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and in His meekness under suffering we have an example of the healthiest human heart. While naming and condemning grave wickedness (such as the Bible defines it), we should not allow ourselves to carry around ledgers in our hearts with a balance sheet of all the wrongs we have suffered, analyzing it hourly or daily, and this secular movement appears to me to be a hotbed for that sort of thing.
Real racial hatred and real injustices, defined by God’s Word and fairly identified and verified, should be confronted and punished. As a contemporary example, if a police officer truly murders a human being, that action should be called, tried as, fairly convicted as, and punished as murder. But this competing worldview does not lead to accurate definitions of sins and crimes followed by fair and just trials, convictions, and punishments. Instead, it fosters the assumption that any individual in the empowered or privileged class is tainted by wrongdoing simply by virtue of being in that class, and it sees any calls for waiting until facts are known or looking at evidence as suspicious.
The social justice worldview attempts to answer the fundamental questions of human life. It functions as a religious worldview. Like all alternative religions, it answers these questions in ways contrary to Scripture. It is hostile to the church and to the wider society, and knowing that God’s ways are always good and true, it is not sufficient for bringing about what it says it desires.