Thread by @scott_m_coley

In response to the suggestion that Christians ought to pursue justice, some evangelicals express concern for the preservation of individual liberty. But this concern only makes sense if we fail to distinguish liberty from license.

Let’s use the word *liberty* to describe the freedom to act in ways that are consistent with justice; and let’s apply the term *license* to conduct that violates justice in the name of freedom—by presuming, for example, the freedom to withhold that which is someone else’s due.

Thus liberty is the legitimate freedom to do that which justice permits, while license claims the illegitimate freedom to do that which justice forbids.

So it makes sense to worry about justice curtailing my freedom only if the freedom in question is really a form of license.

Notice that I might, in the name of liberty, lay claim to some freedom that is in fact a form of license. In the name of liberty, e.g., segregationists once claimed the freedom to divert some children to inferior schools based on the complexion of their skin.

License doesn’t introduce itself by name and declare the freedom to commit injustice: it adorns itself in the language of liberty and says, “Focus on me, and be indignant about the deprivations that I must endure without the freedoms that I’ve come to expect.

Do not gaze upon the oppressed and contemplate his dignity or what he is due. Don’t be moved by his suffering.”

But the freedom to do injustice is merely license, no matter how many politicians or evangelical thought leaders attempt to cloak it in the language of liberty.

Christ followers should ask what justice requires of us and then, once we've given others their due, attend to our own freedom. Whatever freedoms we forfeit in that process were not rightly ours to claim in the first place.