1/23 Yesterday I suggested that social justice is inherent to the gospel. On cue, pushback came: No, our calling is to preach Christ, not address social ills. We mustn’t water down the message with social justice concerns. Jesus didn't engage in social activism, so we shouldn’t.
2/23 For what it’s worth, here’s my story and take on the intersection between the gospel and social causes. None of this is meant to be critical, but simply to highlight a popular view I’ve encountered repeatedly over the years & offer an alternative view for your consideration.
3/23 Shortly after I was baptized, I invited some homeless addicts to church. They loved message & said they'd come again. Midweek, the pastor and an elder let me know that we are called to preach the three angel’s messages, not to solve the social ills of the world.
4/23 A month later, having discovered a "Dorcas" room full of food in the church, I invited three people to take what they needed. The pastor explained that our work is to preach the gospel, but that I could direct such people to the Catholic mission that does that kind of work.
5/23 Since launching a public campus ministry called “The Solidarity Project”—which aims to decrease sexual assault among students—a steady stream of anti-activism activists have contacted me insisting that “this is not our work,” but rather “we must preach the truth.”
6/23 Since starting an anti-racism ministry called Against the Wall (meaning we are against walls of racial prejudice), numerous people have warned me that speaking up on this issue will injure my influence and that we need to preach the gospel instead.
7/23 When my ministry team has held benefit concerts to help build a safe house for women fleeing from sex-slavery, concerned church members have expressed disappointment that we would allow ourselves to diverted from preaching the three angel’s messages.
8/23 Recently, a number of prominent voices have suggested that social justice causes and the proclamation of the gospel are incompatible, suggesting we are to focus on preparing people for the second coming of Christ rather than trying to better this present world.
9/23 This popular theoretical version of Christianity has clearly forgotten that “Faith (believing truth) without works (acting out the social implications of the truth) is dead.” To relieve human suffering is regarded as a diversion from the real mission of preaching the gospel.
10/23 As a black friend of mine once said, “If all Christians of the past had followed the anti-social-justice brand of Christianity, I’d be a slave right now. Praise God for the Christian abolitionists, the Christian underground railroad & the Christian civil rights activists!”
11/23 There were, in fact, countless Christian cowards who went silent as Hitler set in motion his “final solution” and fired up his gas chambers, and history tells the horrific outcome of that insipid version of anti-social-justice Christianity.
12/23 Something I’ve heard a lot is this: “You can’t give one example of Jesus being an activist on social causes.” I’d suggest it would be harder to find any part of His ministry that wasn't an active effort to overturn the prevailing systems of elitism, bigotry, and oppression.
13/23 Jesus launched His ministry by announcing that He came to establish a new kingdom, and a kingdom is a governing social order. He then proceeded to teach a kingdom ethic of “justice and the love of God” and to act out a social upheaval like none the world had ever seen.
14/23 Having announced His kingdom, He went about deliberately crossing entrenched social lines of prejudice—touching the untouchable, accepting the unacceptable, pulling into His social circle those the system had pushed out, thus upending the established social order.
15/23 Making clear His mission, He announced, “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, bcuz He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
16/23 The “in” people “praised Him” for His miracles but insisted He focus on them rather than ministering to the “out” people. He told them two Old Testament stories about God ministering to non-Jews. They responded by trying to throw Him off a cliff.
17/23 In a social order that regarded men as superior to women & Samaritans as sub-human, Jesus defied that social norm by directly engaging with and thus dignifying a Samaritan woman at a well. The disciples were shocked, but kept watching as He did one such deed after another.
18/23 In a social order that assumed male innocence and female guilt in matters of sexual immorality, Jesus stood for an accused woman and sent the men running away with their misogynistic manhood tucked between their legs, defending the defenseless and reproving the powerful.
19/23 In a social order that believed Jews were favored by God and Samaritans rejected, Jesus told an story in which the Samaritan was the hero and the religious elite were so self-absorbed that they would cross to the other side of the street to avoid helping a dying man.
20/23 In His Sermon on the Mount, He restructured the social order by blessing the low and rebuking the high, promising His eternal kingdom to those who occupy lowest echelons of the world system and warning that those on top will go down to eternal perdition.
21/23 To the religious teachers decrying His practice of socializing with the sexually immoral & the white collar tax thieves, He said, “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Then He told them a story about their closed, graceless system coming to an end.
22/23 As His ministry ended, He summed up His teachings by dividing the whole world into two groups—the sheep and the goats—identifying the sheep as those who actively engage in relieving social ills and the goats as those who avoid social action in favor of theoretical religion.
23/23 So my question is: In what sense was Jesus NOT a social activist? How can we read the Gospels and not come away as social activists? How can we refrain from standing with the oppressed, the abused, the economically disadvantaged, and against all that violates them?
