Tag Archives: social activism

Christianity and the Social Order (Part 5)

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In part four of our series on Christianity and the Social Order we explored how Christians will by their existence and day-to-day activities indirectly influence this order. In part five we will pursue the question of whether or not, given the inner nature of Christian faith, some public policies are to be preferred over others. This issue needs to be clarified before we can address the legitimacy of Christians attempting to influence the social and political order directly.

An Introductory Reminder

Many Christians take for granted their right and duty, guided by their faith, to exert through political means a moral influence on the social world in which they live. The only debatable issues are what policies, parties, and candidates are most likely to shepherd society to be more like the kingdom of God envisioned by Jesus. They vote, make campaign contributions, place political stickers on their cars, and run for office—all without asking themselves whether Jesus’s moral teachings warrant or even permit their efforts. I designed this series to examine this unexamined presumption.

Christian Preferences for Public Policies

Believers live in many different forms of political order. It is possible to be a Christian in any of them. My question here is this: beginning with the inherent nature and logic of the Christian faith, are certain public policies to be preferred over others? We are not yet ready to ask whether or not Christians—as individuals or as the institutional church in reliance on Jesus’s teaching—may attempt to influence the state to institutionalize their preferred policies.

The Kingdom of God

Christianity envisions a perfect community, which serves as the ideal by which it measures all other communities, including the church. Jesus taught us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). For Christianity, the ideal society involves universal justice, peace, unity and love of neighbor and love of God grounded in unanimous acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as Lord. Paul explains that the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus aims at Christ’s universal lordship:

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11).

Christians long for the coming kingdom and would prefer that it come sooner rather than later. However, I can detect no reason to think that Jesus or the early church expected the kingdom of God to be realized in its fulness through ordinary political means—war and legislation. It will be God’s work and will arrive only at the end of history when God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Christians should of course prefer that all people freely embrace the values of the kingdom, and in living as light in the world and preaching the gospel, they work toward this end. Given the nature of the kingdom, however, Christians should know better than to attempt to establish the kingdom by political means.

State Church

It seems to me that no Christian should want the state to establish Christianity as the official state religion. Many evils flow from such arrangements: religious persecution, widespread hypocrisy, and the politicization of doctrine. But I think the most basic Christian arguments against church establishment are that the individual act of faith must be free and Christian behavior must arise from sincere love. Legal coercion or worldly advantage are destructive of faith and love.

State Persecution

I don’t see how a Christian could prefer to live under a state that is actively hostile to Christianity. We are called to endure persecution if we must, but we are not obligated to seek it. Surely it is better from a Christian point of view to live in a situation where we can believe and practice our faith freely and share it with others without fear of state persecution.

Freedom of Belief and Practice

The logic of Christianity supports neither coercing people to practice Christianity nor persecuting them for doing so. It seems rather that Christians should rejoice to live within a society where one is free to practice Christianity, some other religion, or none at all.

Next: May Christians argue in the public sphere of a secular state for their preferred public policies? If so, how?

Christian Stoic or Social Justice Christian?

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The Stoics

Like all philosophical schools in the ancient world—Platonists, Epicureans, Academics, et al—the Stoics sought the truths, attitudes and conditions that would facilitate a good human life. They observed that such negative emotions as fear, desire, and anxiety are generated by thoughts about attaining or avoiding that over which we have no control. Clearly, these negative emotions are incompatible with the good life. The best life is one of undisturbed contentment with the gift of existence in our inner being wherein we are always in the immediate presence of good things that cannot change. For the Stoics, there is only one thing and one place over which we have control, that is our own free will. It is the only thing that we can have purely by willing it. The external world, including our bodies, operates under other laws over which we have no immediate control and to which we must adjust. And the free will of other human beings is completely beyond our control because it is totally under their control. To banish negative emotions, we must refrain from desiring to control that over which we do not have immediate and total control. Stoics determine to accept the flow of the events that happen in nature as their lot. These external events cannot threaten or even touch the inner world of free will unless we allow it to do so.

Social Justice Christians

There is a kind of Christian ethics that in effect proposes that we ought to remain in a state of discontent and outrage until we right every injustice done in the world. And because we cannot accomplish such radical changes in the world by appealing to the free will of others by doing good, speaking truth, and setting good examples, these same Christians resort to using force: intimidation, insults, rudeness, disruption, legal action, and, yes, even violence.  Apparently, these social justice Christians think that the coming of the kingdom of God depends on our human efforts to establish their ideal political order that includes everybody, believers and non-believers, saints and sinners. They turn the Stoic understanding of a good human life inside out. What matters most are the external conditions of life: equal access to bodily pleasure, equality of material goods, equality of social respect, and equality of external freedom. Because this level of control over the external social, political, and natural order is impossible, these social justice Christians ensure that everyone is angry, unhappy, fearful, and offended all the time. Not a happy life.

The Christian Stoic

There are, of course, great differences between Stoic metaphysics, cosmology and theology and the Christian view of God, creation, salvation, and providence. Jesus’s teaching concerning God’s providence and against the need for anxiety, however, bears some resemblance to the Stoic doctrine of limiting our concern to the place where we have immediate control, our free will. Jesus tells us to trust and align our wills with God’s will. Also, neither in Jesus’s teaching nor in the rest of the New Testament is there the slightest hint that Jesus’s disciples ought to seek to remake the world into a social justice paradise by political means. That day is an eschatological hope dependent completely on God’s power. To attempt to control the world in the name of God in a way only God can produces only tyranny and rebellion. The only community in which there is a little hope for an approximate realization of the kingdom ethics taught in the Sermon on the Mount is the church, that is, the community of those truly converted to Jesus Christ in their inner being. But history demonstrates that this kingdom community has never become a concrete reality even in the church, the community divinely commission to become such. Much more is it a vain dream that it will be realized in a society of the unconverted!

What is the Christian Stoic to do? First, we must understand that apart from God’s grace in the Holy Spirit our free will is not free in the most radical sense, that is free to know and love the true God above all things. Only God can make God present to our minds so that we can know and love him in this way. But given God’s grace, we can love God in return for his love for us. In loving God above everything else we live free from anxiety about all those things over which we have no control. Moreover, we know that the God who loves us possesses power to control all things for our good.

Christian Stoics know they cannot right every wrong and transform the world into a social paradise. This task is not under their power and therefore is not their job. Their main job is, with the help of God’s grace, to allow themselves to be transformed into the image of Christ. From that transformed inner world they can turn outward to do good, speak truth, and love neighbor and enemy. God may use their good works and words to transform others.

Christian Stoics refuse to be unhappy because the external world does not submit to their control. We have come to know that our primary task in life is purification of our own souls. That in itself is a dauting task and the work of a lifetime.

Is God Always on the Side of the Oppressed?

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In my previous essay I recounted my failed search for the Social-Justice Jesus. In reading through the Gospel of Matthew, I did not find a social revolutionary protesting systemic injustices or an advocate of the economic interests of one class in preference to another. Jesus was not a royalist, democrat, republican, anarchist, or a libertarian. In fact, I did not find Jesus preaching a worldly sociopolitical order at all. What I found was Jesus’s indictment of the greed, envy, lust, pride, and idolatry that corrupt every world order. And these vices find their home in every human heart.

Superficial Plausibility

Before I subject the assertion that “God is always on the side of the oppressed” to criticism, let’s consider its superficial plausibility. Interpreted in the most generous way I can imagine, the statement could be saying that God judges justly between the victims of injustice and their persecutors. God always rules in favor of the victim and against the perpetrator. Or, just as in a natural disaster, first responders help the worst injured before attending to the walking wounded and unscathed, God attends to those with the greatest need before he turns to those who need less. The former act embodies the principle of equal justice and the latter the principle of just proportionality or equity.

Liberation Theology

Unfortunately, those who assert that “God is always on the side of the oppressed” cannot be interpreted as merely asserting God’s justice and equity. That God favors the oppressed was a central claim of Latin American Liberation Theology, a creative fusion of Christianity and Marxism that became popular in North America in the 1970s. In the form I see it most often today, it replaces the economic categories of Karl Marx with those of race and gender.

“God [is]”

In the assertion that “God is always on the side of the oppressed,” we find at least four significant components that need to be clarified: (1) “God,” (2) “always,” (3) “on the side of,” and (4) “the oppressed.” Let’s assume that the “God” spoken of here is the God of the Bible, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must not, then, derive our picture of God from our own subjective ideals or a cultural image of a liberating power. We must, instead, examine the narratives and teaching of the Old and New Testaments. I do not have space here to construct a complete picture of the God of the Bible. But I think such a study would conclude that God is faithful, just, knowing, and merciful. God judges justly between the victim and the perpetrator of injustice. But there is more to consider.

“Always”

To say that God is always on the side of the oppressed is a bold claim, and I think it goes too far. Does “always” mean under all conditions, thoroughly, and in every respect? Even if an individual is treated unjustly in one respect might they not in other respects be guilty of sin, of injustice, greed, hatred, envy, lust, etc.? Is God a mere partisan who overlooks the sins of his friends because they are mistreated in some respects by individuals whom he does not favor? This “always” obscures the perfect unity of God’s judgment and mercy. Perhaps in human courts we must distinguish starkly between innocent and guilty parties, pure victims and pure perpetrators. But God judges the human heart, and no one is purely innocent.

“On the side of”

What does it mean to say that God is “on the side of” the oppressed? In the preceding paragraph I raised the possibility that this assertion makes God a mere partisan, motivated not by justice but by favoritism. What does the assertion say about the speaker? It sounds high-minded at first, but then you realize that implicit in the statement is a claim about the speaker: “I too am on the side of the oppressed. God and I are on the same side!” This claim does not place you in good company. During the American Civil War both the North and the South claimed that God was on their side as they slaughtered their brothers, sisters, and cousins. The present Russian Patriarch claims that God is on Putin’s side in “liberating” Ukraine. Iran, ISIS, Hezbollah, and Hamas cry “God is great!” as they slit the throats of pregnant Jewish women. For some, God is white. For others, God is black, or gay, or lesbian.

Sadly, history shows that when people claim that God is on their side, they often do so to justify using extralegal and immoral means to achieve their ends: violence, theft, genocide, betrayal, murder, rape, lying, and deception. In the Bible, God is the judge of all the earth; it is spiritually safer, then, to assume that God is not on anyone’s side! Perhaps we should focus on striving to be on God’s side, without, however, presuming that we actually are!

“The Oppressed”

Who are the “oppressed”? What does it mean to be oppressed or to be an oppressor? Each of the other terms in the sentence, “God is always on the side of the oppressed,” opens the door to mischief. But the concept of “the oppressed’ blows a hole in the wall. In contemporary progressive culture, the official list of the oppressed grows longer every day. It seems that everyone wants to be oppressed. People of color, black women, black lesbians, white lesbians, gay people of all colors, trans and bi, questioning, nonbinary, fat people, short people, indigenous people, differently abled…God is on your side always! In the case of these groups, what does oppression mean? Are they legally proscribed or stripped of civil rights? Have they had their goods confiscated unjustly? Are they prohibited from pursuing the professions or attending university? What makes a black, lesbian professor of law at Harvard or a gay Secretary of Transportation one of the world’s oppressed?

Again, what does it mean to be oppressed? What do all these people and groups listed above have in common that makes them oppressed? Of course, you can find instances, past and present, wherein members of these groups have been treated unfairly. But you can also find among these “oppressed” people rich, famous, powerful, and glamorous individuals. It seems that what they all have in common is that they are not white, straight, and male. Perhaps I am oversimplifying matters, but it seems to me that the ideology that determines who gets recognized as oppressed has been designed with one purpose in mind; to dethrone the group it views as having at the beginning of Western civilization illegitimately acquired hegemonic power to which it still clings.

What does it mean to be an oppressor in contemporary social theory? It does not mean that you cheat widows out of their houses and orphans out of their inheritances. Nor does it mean that you enslave people on the official list of oppressed groups. In fact, you may be a benefactor to widows, orphans, the homeless, and the poor. Or, indeed, you may be among the poor yourself. Nonetheless, if you are white, male, and straight you are an oppressor. And if God is on the side of the oppressed, God is not on your side. The only option for you is to engage in perpetual confession and continual penance for being born into privilege. And one of those penitential exercises is to repeat the assertion, “God is always on the side of the oppressed.”

Tear Down this Wall (Ephesians 2:14)

The New Testament envisions a community of brothers and sisters under Jesus Christ, indwelt, transformed, and made one by the Holy Spirit, forgiven, reconciled, and directed to the Father from whom all good things flow.

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:1-5).

Judged by this standard, the assertion “God is always on the side of the oppressed,” as it is used by contemporary liberationist theologians is profoundly heretical; for dividing the church into oppressors and the oppressed is a grave sin against the unity of the body of Christ.

An Open Letter to a Forgetful Church

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Dear Church:

I’d like to remind you of something. I have no authority to made demands, and I offer no new revelation from on high. I cannot read minds or infallibly discern hearts. My message is more an expression of longing than of prophetic denunciation: I want you to live up to your better self. I want you to remember who you are and why you are in this world. I want you to be free, fearless, and determined. I want you to be clear and confident.

You are God’s People

You are not like other people. You are different. You were chosen by God, assigned a mission, and empowered for a task. You know something other people do not know. Your sense of identity stretches backward before the world began and forward into eternity. The meaning of what you do daily is determined not merely by its immediate causes and effects but by its relationship to God.

When you think of yourself you must not think first of your national, social, or ethnic identity. You are not first male or female, black or white, rich or poor, or educated or uneducated. Like Paul, we must consider all these marks of identity and distinction “garbage” compared to knowing Jesus Christ (Phil 3:8). We are the person God chose us to be in Christ.

Church, please rise above these distinctions. Do not fall into the pattern of contemporary society and politics by giving these distinctions the importance nonbelievers give them and allowing them to cause divisions within God’s people. Nonbelievers, of course, have their identity in the world. That is all they know. But we know of another homeland and another family. I am not speaking here of mere politeness while you are at a church assembly. I am talking about what goes on in the deep recesses of your hearts. Know with the clarity and in depth of your soul that you are a child of God. Let that knowledge free you from the bonds of other identifiers.

Bear Witness to Jesus

Why did God choose, call, and empower you? You have one task, that is, to bear witness to the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. You are obligated to point people to him as Lord and Savior. You are supposed to manifest to everyone the power and quality of life that Jesus lived. Jesus must live in your entire life, in every dimension, in every relationship, for every moment, and into and throughout your soul. Paul again speaks the word we need to hear:

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

Bear witness to Jesus in the way you speak. Bless and never curse. It must begin in your heart. Turn away from anger and offense. Do not retaliate for evil done or insults given. Don’t do it on social media, in your car on the freeway, or in your heart of hearts. When nothing good can be said or done, keep silent. Bear witness to Jesus in how you act toward others. Never act unlovingly or unjustly toward anyone. Help those in need. Be faithful, loyal, and truthful. And when someone asks you why you live as you do, tell them how Jesus changed you.

Church, I am worried about you. Please keep your divinely given mission close to your heart: your charge is to witness to Jesus by living as he lived. Do not import worldly agendas into your life. Oh, how tempting it is to adopt contemporary social causes as if they were divine obligations. After all, these causes seem to be working for good ends. Should not the church stand against, injustice, poverty, oppression, abuse of the environment, inequity, and racism? Should not the church call out immorality, irresponsible behavior, and envy? Many contemporary believers find this an unanswerable argument. For the church also considers these things to be sinful and would happily see them removed. Indeed, it would. But not by the world’s methods.

Church, you must never let a part of your moral vision be disengaged from the complete vision of life in Christ and from the call to repent and believe in Jesus. That is what politicians and social activists want you to do. They want to channel the energy of the church into secular political causes, but they care nothing for the gospel and the life of discipleship to Jesus. Don’t be fooled. Do not join their causes—right, left, or center—no matter what evil it fights or what good it proposes. Their solutions to evil are intimidation, law, violence, rudeness, slander, obscenity, persecution, protest, coercion, and police action. Such activities cause strife and division among believers and between believers and nonbelievers. You must follow a different path. You must preach the gospel, do good works in the name of Jesus, and set an example of a comprehensively good life, individually and communally.

With affection and concern,

Ron Highfield