Systemic sin and social justice in Leviticus:
"Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight, or quantity. Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt." Leviticus 19:35-36
"Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight, or quantity. Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt." Leviticus 19:35-36
Calvin argues that dishonest weights and scales "involve the grossest violation of public justice" (social justice). Not only that, but he argues that "...if the laws of buying and selling are corrupted, human society is in a manner dissolved" because of its systemic impact.
God condemns such "trickeries... by which our neighbors are defrauded" and that "He sets Himself against all evil and illicit arts of gain."
People who read the Bible generations ago had no problem talking about "public justice"/"social justice" and systemic sin.
People who read the Bible generations ago had no problem talking about "public justice"/"social justice" and systemic sin.
White Evangelicals who push back hard against the ideas of public justice and systemic sin have to realize that they are actually a minority position within the history of the church, if not an entire anomaly in terms of the trajectory of biblical exegesis as a whole.
In other words, the main reason why they bristle at the idea of public justice and systemic sin is informed more by their socio-cultural setting as White, American, politically conservative Evangelicals than careful exegesis that recognizes the history of biblical interpretation.
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