Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 146 | Biblical Justice

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

We've heard of social justice. But what's "Biblical justice"?

What's up, guys? Welcome to Relatable. Thank you guys for tuning in. Today, we are going to talk about justice and how Christians should view justice from a biblical perspective. We've talked about this subject a lot. We've talked about the difference between secular social justice and what the Bible has to say about justice. This seems to be a theme that kind of weaves itself through a lot of the different things that we talk about. We've talked about this when we talk about socialism, when we talk about the different things that are happening and the news cycle when it comes to intersectionality, even how the news handles different kinds of people and how they report on different kinds of people, how they see what is just and what is not. And so the question is,

do we hold ourselves as Christians to that standard of justice, whatever that is, and that's what we'll talk about or to a biblical standard of justice. And what is the difference? And really, one of the big questions is, should Christians care about justice? Should conservative Christians care about justice? There are a lot of people who think that justice is a turn that has been completely monopolized by the left. And when someone says justice, we might even kind of turn our brains off just a little bit because we think that they're going to come up with some leftist intersectional argument

that we don't agree with. Or when people talk about equity or people talk about equality, people talk about love, inclusion, all of these universally positive terms that have been associated, especially in recent years, to progressivism or to leftism. And so a lot of times conservatives will push away from those things and say, oh, well, no, we're not for that. But really what it should make us do when we hear someone say, I'm for justice, I'm for, I'm for equality, we should ask the question, what do you mean by that? You'll probably notice with a lot of

people who I consider on the social justice left, and we'll talk about kind of what social justice means to a variety of people, that they refuse to define their terms. So they very rarely will tell you what they mean by equality or equity or even reparations or justice. A lot of times, literally, the answer that you will get if you're engaging with someone online is Google it or Google is your friend. And they act very put out or exhausted by the task of having to actually inform you what they're talking about. But in any kind of good faith discussion, any kind of debate or dialogue that we're having about a subject that is as important as justice or equality, we need to be able to define our terms. We need to be able to get on the same page. So when someone that you are engaging with uses a word like justice or equality, it is perfectly acceptable for you to ask what someone means by that.

Now, you might get a very defensive response, but that will reveal to you right away that they don't have that much of an argument. Because what we see a lot is that people use these terms that they know are supposed to be, like I said, universally positive. If you are against equality, if you are against justice, if you are against progress or love or inclusion, then of course you're a bad person. You're on the wrong side of history. But you don't get to just use these terms and apply them to whatever you want to apply them to and then say people who disagree with your application of these positive terms must be bad people. No, I'm going to push you a little bit further than that. And I'm going to make you answer for the terms that you're giving me. I'm not just going to take your definition of justice. We need to agree on what justice

looks like. And thankfully for Christians, we have one standard of justice, and that is the standard of justice that God gives us. Now, how that manifests itself, we might disagree on that. But at the end of the day, as Christians, we go back to the word of God as an errand, and as our source of truth, as our source of wisdom. And Jesus Christ is our source of righteousness. And so through him, we can. We can credibly discern what is righteous, what is not, what is right and what is wrong. We don't do this based on our feelings. We don't do this based on what society tells us is just or unjust. We do this based on God's word. And so before we get into what exactly God's word says about that, let's set this up. Let's get a little bit of context. So like I said, a lot of times justice

is a term that is used by the left and that we on the right associate with people on the left. We equate the term justice with being liberal, but of course that is not true. Liberty and justice for all is a term that the founding fathers obviously held sacred. And it's an idea that is really founded in the Bible, that people should be free from the oppression of tyranny or extortion or oppression in any way, and that they should be treated justly. And when I say oppression in any way, I'm talking primarily what the founders meant, of course, by the government. As Christians, we should care about justice. Of course, we should care about justice.

We should care that all people are treated equitably. We should care that they're treated equally in the eyes of the law, that no one is being discriminated against by the law because of some kind of immutable characteristic, something that they can't control, that the poor are not being exploited, that criminals are, are being punished, that the innocent are being exonerated, that victims are being listened to, that they are being cared for. We should care about the truth. Therefore, we should care about integrity in our leaders, in our courts, in our businesses. We should care about the abuse of power. We should care about people being treated with decency, with respect, that they are treated as creatures made in the image of God. These are things that Christians should, of course, care about.

I personally, some people just with different kinds of personalities that you have and different towards different kinds of upbringings that you have, have different propensities towards something. I have always been someone who has been very concerned with fairness. I have always hated bullies. If there's anything that gets me more, if there's anything that gets me angry or makes me upset or will, you know, just get me riled up, as we say in the South, it is a bully. It is someone that abuses their power. It is someone who, in my opinion, is so insecure and is so small and so not confident in

themselves and their own strengths that they have to manipulate or take advantage of someone who is smaller than them. I loathe a bully and I loathe bullying. I will always say something about that. I don't care if it's a partisan issue. I don't care. I loat bullies. I loat abuse.

Most people loat abuse. I'm not patting myself on the best. back for that. But I hate when the disadvantaged or when the small person or when the weak person or when the vulnerable person, the person who is helpless, defenseless, cannot do anything for themselves when they are taken advantage of. I hate it. I have no tolerance for these kinds of people and these kinds of actions whatsoever. And I have always been that way. And as God's people, we are all called to be intolerant towards these people. We are not to have tolerance for people in positions of power who lie, who exploit, who oppress. Proverbs 813 says,

the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance in the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. So we are called to hate these things, not only in the lives of other people, not only in the systems that are around us, but also in our own lives. Micah 6.8, a lot of you probably know this first. We are called to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. This is, this means that God is just, that he loves kindness, that he calls us to walk humbly with him. He has always been just. He has always expected it and will always expect his people to act justly to love justice and to execute justice. Now here, listening to all of that,

you might have thought, well, you sound like a liberal. This is a lot of what liberals say. And liberals might hear what I just said and say, great, me too. If you care about these things, if you care about the least of these, the way that you just said, if you care about the poor and marginalized way that you just said, then you have to believe in liberal policies. You have to believe in big government. You have to believe in all of the leftist government programs meant to combat poverty and uplift those on the bottom. You have to buy into our version, the so-called progressive version of justice, which,

of course, today is labeled social justice. But this, I do not believe, and I certainly don't have to believe in, in fact, because I believe in the Bible, I cannot believe that. The form of justice that we often see, not always, but often, in many cases coming from the left and leftist so-called progressive Christians, we see is not based on truth, and it also squashes freedom. So here's what I mean. A lot of people, we've talked about this many times, a lot of people on the left view justice as equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome.

This is something that I go in depth in on the socialism episode. So I won't go too in depth here. But basically, these people who see equality of outcome as a just thing, as a necessary thing, they see injustice everywhere they see discrepancy, everywhere they see difference. So you will often hear them talk about the gender wage gap, for example, as a form of injustice or the wealth gap between whites and the black community. as a form of injustice or acceptance rates into a college of certain minorities that may be lower than white people or Asian people. You'll hear them say that is injustice or the fact that

even graduation rates that are different between different races might be a symbol of injustice. They will look at these discrepancies and automatically see that something is unfair, that those at the top are disadvantaged, and that, uh, this is a sign of systemic injustice. But the reality is, the reality is that these are not always signs of systemic injustice. They could be, they could be in some cases, but discrepancies in success or wealth or acceptance into college does not,

it does not necessarily or automatically point to bias or a lack of fairness that is lazy thinking. It might very well have to do with choices, with circumstances. that are actually within the control of the people who are at the bottom. In a leftist view of fairness and justice, they very rarely see those at the bottom, those who are poor, whatever, disadvantage,

as products of choices that someone made. They rather see them usually as victims of a situation that is beyond their control placed there by oppressors who are in power. And so how they typically view things, is we need to give more to those at the bottom and simultaneously we need to push down those that we see at the top. So everyone ends up being at the same place.

An example of this is affirmative action. You accept people of a certain race at the expense of another race. Wealth redistribution. You take wealth from people at the top. You give it to people at the bottom. It's an attempt, they say, to level the playing field.

But it's really not even that. it's an attempt to accomplish equal outcomes. And even playing fields is equal opportunity, where those who are better players are still going to win. But that is not really what a lot of leftists want, especially this social justice left. They want everyone to, quote, win no matter what. So to do that, to accomplish that,

you have to discriminate against, if we're using the metaphor of a playing field, the better players. You have to. You have to discriminate against those who you deem are privileged or who already have, in your opinion, too much. Thomas Soul calls this cosmic justice in his book that I highly recommend, a quest for cosmic justice. He describes what leftists call social justice as cosmic justice, because it is based not on any real, tangible calculations of determining who deserves what or who is in the wrong,

but on some intangible, cosmic subjective calculations of pushing one side down and lifting the other up in the hopes that this will create equal outcome. An example of what he gives of this is, so say you have a pizza place, and the pizza place decides that they're not going to deliver to a particular neighborhood because the neighborhood is dangerous. And delivering a pizza there offers a high risk to your employees. Well, say an activist group hears about this. They decide that that's racist. That's unjust. And they say, you can't discriminate against people in this neighborhood. So they organize a boycott and say you have to deliver to people in this neighborhood.

And they say, this is justice. This is fair. This is equality. Because this neighborhood is now being treated like everyone else once you give in to the pressures of our boycott. But, okay, what is the other side of this equation? And what is the other side of this so-called justice? So now the pizza place, say they cave into this pressure, the boycott was too much in order to stay open.

They said, okay, fine. The pizza place says, we're going to deliver to this unsafe neighborhood at the risk to the employees. And because of this risk, this owner of this pizza place, say it's just, you know, his small business that he built from nothing and now is somewhat lucrative. Okay, well, because of this risk, because of the risk that is being offered to, my employees that is being posed on my employees, I need to pay them more. I need to pay them more to keep them here. So they don't all quit, which means if I have to pay my employees more,

he says, I either have to charge more for the pizza or I have to fire three employees to make insmeats. I'm going to have to cut costs somewhere in order to keep myself in this business afloat if I'm going to pay my employees more. So say he decides to charge more for pizza to do that, Not only are the people in this poor, dangerous neighborhood not going to be able to even afford the pizza, everyone else might also stop buying from his restaurant because they can get cheaper pizza everywhere or elsewhere. And if he fires three employees, he's not going to be able to make as many deliveries. And then all of his customer base suffers. And as a result, in either case, his business might have to close.

And so now the owner of the pizza shop is out of a job. Now all of his employees, maybe they were poor teens trying to make enough money to pay for their books or even provide for their families, now they don't have jobs. Why? All for the sake of what seemed on the surface by this activist group. This is just an example, by the way, to be the just right thing to do. But this is cosmic justice. It aims for some arbitrary goal of fairness for one group at the expense of another group without even thinking about the cost. It's the same thing for raising the minimum wage or what the Democratic presidential candidates are now calling living wage. It sounds really good. It sounds like you're advocating for those at the bottom who are being exploited by saying everyone deserves a living wage. And if you argue against that, then in my experience, I can tell you from experience, you will be called an elitist bidet. They will say, well, why don't you believe that the McDonald's employee deserves to feed her kids. Why don't you believe that, Allie? They ask these really emotional questions because they don't

want to deal with the logic that if you raise the minimum wage, the owner of the business is going to find a way to cut costs so he can still make a profit. And by the way, there's nothing immoral about making a profit. It's actually necessary for the business to keep going, for it to be worth it, for this person to own this business and actually employ people. Also, very often a business owner is going to go without a profit for a long time or cut his own profits for the sake of his business, but he or she can only do that for so long because she has to feed her family. So if you raise the minimum wage, you're either going to have to fire people or raise the cost of the product. Either way, people are going to suffer.

Soon, I guarantee you, if we raise the minimum wage, then all minimum wage jobs like waiters, hostesses, whoever, are going to be automated because it's going to be too expensive to pay the minimum wage when the minimum wage is raised. There is going to be no more low-skill work available, which means that low-skill workers will not have job options. So the reality is the minimum wage, obviously, and this is getting a little bit off the justice point a little bit, should be set by the market, meaning that you pay someone as little as they're willing to do a job for, so whether that's $5 an hour or $500,000 a year. But no, it is not fair advocates for cosmic justice say to pay a worker at McDonald's less than you pay a secretary or less than you pay a manager, et cetera. So they say make sure everyone can live off of what they get paid

for working 40 hours a week no matter what their job is, no matter what the cost is on the other side of the equation. The other side of the equation, like we've said, is that people suffer. People lose their jobs. Businesses closed down. So no one actually wins, except for the people in governments because the people in government now have more people to care for. They can get people to pay more taxes to pay all the people who are out of jobs and have to depend on welfare. So no one really, though, besides bureaucrats, wins in that situation. So that is not justice. Another example of this cosmic justice that sounds good on the outside but ends up poorly for the people who are involved.

District attorney in Dallas, I think I've talked about this before on the podcast. recently decided he's not going to prosecute criminals who steal items or steal something of less than $750 in value if it was done for the thief's economic benefit. That is a real story, a real thing that is happening in Dallas. This is done in the name of social justice, in the name of helping the poor and the marginalized. But who does it hurt? It hurts. Well, I think it hurts the thief, first of all, because it trains you to be lazy and to be dishonest rather than making money in a way that demonstrates any kind of integrity. But it also hurts the men and women, probably even the poor men and women who are just trying to get by who maybe own their own

business, their own shop. And $600 or so of their property that is stolen of their money that is stolen is a big deal to them. That's a big deal to them. It sounds compassionate. It sounds like you're really helping those who are desperate, but you're hurting a lot of people. So social justice, as it is defined, cosmic justice does not equal actual justice. The same thing with racial reparations, as we've talked about before. It sounds fair to compensate those who have suffered losses from slavery. That sounds like restitution. That sounds like us dealing with our past and facing our past sins bravely. It sounds righteous and humble and just, and maybe even, if you're not thinking very hard, But when you look at the calculation, it doesn't work out.

Number one, no one alive today in America is or has ever been a slave or has owned a slave in the sense that we're talking about in this context. I'm not talking about sex slavery, which is still very much alive today. Unfortunately, I'm talking about the kind of slavery that we had over 200 years ago. So it is impossible to say, if you're talking about reparations, white or black, who was actually affected by it? People who advocate for racial reparations say, well, white people should pay. via the government, black people for slavery.

Well, not all black people in America today had ancestors who were here 200 years ago, and same goes for white people living in America today. Also, there were black people who owned slaves. So what about them? There were Native Americans who owned slaves. So what about them? What about half black people? What about people who are one fourth black?

What about them? Do they get reparations? What about black people who are rich? So should a middle class family who's struggling to put food on the table? should they be paying reparations to Barack Obama and to Jay-Z and to Kanye West just because they're black? Like, is that justice? There are really no answers to these things because the calculation doesn't work because it is cosmic justice. It sounds good. It sounds like you're advocating for the oppressed, but you're not. There is no way to tell who has really been affected. So this is not based on truth. It doesn't meet the bar for biblical justice because of that. That is the problem of basing our, idea of justice and fairness, not on what is true or what is real or what is tangible or actual

or logical or direct, but on what feels good. So let's bring this back to Christianity, because I know it seems like we took a little detour, but we needed to explain that because so often the religious left monopolize this idea of equality and justice, and they put these definitions on justice that aren't actually biblical. So I want to bring it back. Biblical justice, as we've talked about, is not based on what feels good, which is by nature biased, but what is good, which is by nature unbiased. Here's how Leviticus 1915 defines one form of injustice. You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great.

But in righteousness, you shall judge your neighbor. So you do not show partiality to the poor. You don't show deference to the rich. but in righteousness, we judge our neighbor in a court. Righteousness means honesty, integrity, equity, truth. We can deduce from this verse that showing partiality to the poor then or deferring to the powerful is unrighteous, according to God's word, and that showing impartiality or being unbiased is righteous and is therefore just.

That's what this verse tells us, and this is not a decontentering. extraized verse. If you are impartial or unbiased, that means you are objective. Objectivity means weighing the facts at hand, looking at the evidence and deciding a verdict based on that. James 2 talks about not showing preference to the rich person in favor of dishonoring the poor, which is confirmation of that Leviticus verse, one part of the Leviticus verse. And then James goes on to Sam, verses 8 through 9 in James 2, if you really fulfill, the royal law according to scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. You are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

There is a reason. The personification of justice, lady justice, is blindfolded. She has a scale in her hand, but she cannot see. This is a very biblical depiction of what it means to judge righteously. She is not showing favoritism based on appearance, based on demographic, based on socioeconomic status. She is blind to these things. Instead, she is weighing the facts on a scale. So even though today's brand of social justice looks through the lens of intersectionality, the lens of which group is traditionally more oppressed than the other group based on their skin color or religion or whatever it is, biblical justice is different. It's It looks at things based on the facts of the case, based on truth.

That is one meaning of the word justice that we see in the Bible justice in dealing with crime and punishment. The Hebrew word for that, I'm totally going to botch this, is Mishpat, M-I-S-H-P-A-T. I'm sorry, I don't know how to pronounce my Hebrew very well. And it occurs in various forms over 200 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. its most basic meaning is to treat people equitably. It means acquitting or punishing every person on the merits of the case, regardless of race and regardless of social status. Anyone who does the same wrong should be given the same penalty.

But there is another kind of justice included in this term in the Old Testament that means giving people their due. So recognizing people's rights, the things that they are actually entitled to as human beings made in the image of God, showing them the care and the dignity that they deserve. Justice used to punish wrongdoing and justice used to recognize people's rights should be true for both the government and for us as individuals. We treat everyone with the same honor, with the same respect, no matter how important in the eyes of the world they are.

This is something that we believe the government should do and that we should do. So where this is not happening in the government, that is where Christians have traditionally and should speak up. When we recognize that the government is violating human rights by treating them with partiality or cruelty, and that means that justice is not being executed in the way that we believe that it should be righteously and biblically, that is where we stand up. And that is very often, that very often means that some of the issues that Christian stand up for are bipartisan or that we stand against our bipartisan. That means, for example, that we care about abortion, both in a legal and a personal sin. So yes, we fight against legislation that strips the personhood from an unborn child. And personally, we help the mothers who are in crisis.

We volunteer at pregnancy centers. We donate money. We help with the adoption process, whatever we need to do. That means, yes, that we care about the children. at the border. Now, this does not mean we have to be for open borders. In fact, in my view, caring for kids at the border means strong border policy. It means disincentivizing illegal crossings, making sure that both Border Patrol and ICE are being supported and held accountable, by the way. Of course held accountable. But they're also being supported so that they can ensure justice is being executed towards bad actors, towards drug cartels, human traffickers, and also so these children that are crossing can be cared for well. It also means that we advocate for humane

treatment for the children and their families. This, again, can be done through legislation. It can be done through politicians ensuring these people are treated with dignity and it can be done personally. They're organizations that give aid to people at the border. They're organizations who are on the ground in countries where these people are coming from, teaching these people's skills for trade, sharing the gospel, teaching them leadership skills and entrepreneurship. So real biblical justice in this case, in the case of immigration, just to kind of add, not a caveat, but just a little aside here, does not simply mean that everyone who wants to come in comes in. That is not an example of justice. Because again, this is a type of secular social justice that sounds good and compassionate. But the other side of the equation is that people are incentivized to cross illegally putting children, and especially girls who stand a very high chance of being raped and sexually assaulted when they're crossing the board. border at risk. It creates overflow for border patrol. So humane, individualized, compassionate care for those who are detained becomes impossible. It also means that there will be criminals who are

allowed through the consequences of that, both on immigrant and non-immigrant communities in the United States is obviously detrimental. Not to mention, it means that we essentially no longer have borders, which means we're no longer a sovereign country, which means that we can no longer enforce our laws and protect our people. So justice in the case of kids at the border, we show compassion to them, we do what we can, we make sure that they are treated humanely, but that does that, that does not mean that we don't have laws. That does not mean that we don't have borders. So as Christians, when it comes to not just this, but all things, we have to be thoughtful. We cannot just choose the most emotional option. Now, sometimes it might be an emotional option

in the sense that sometimes there might be emotion attached to it. But what's important is that we use truth, that we use logic, that we use our discernment. We have to consider both sides of the equation. We have to consider what is true. We have to consider what is righteous. We have to be impartial. For the example of abortion, if we look at both sides of the equation, we say, okay, we've got an unborn child here. We've got maybe a teen mom who is poor and she's not ready to have a child. We look at both sides of the equation and we say, okay, this baby, if they're born, they could have a really hard life. This mom isn't ready to be a child. It's pretty easy to see who takes the cake in that side of the equation. It's either dismember the unborn child or the mom

has a hard life. Okay, well, I don't think that having a hard life either for the child or the mom justifies the taking of a physical life. And plus, of course, there are other options like adoption. And so we're thoughtful about those things. Doesn't mean that we forget about the mother. It doesn't mean that we don't take care of the mother when she's in need. It doesn't mean that we abandoned her, of course not. But it does mean that we weigh both sides and we say, okay, the physical life of a child is always going to trump the non-physical aspects of this and the non-life-threatening aspects of the abortion issue. So this also means that Christians care about justice. This means that we care about what happens in the criminal justice system. For example, you probably know

about the infamous crack versus Coke crackdown, pun intended there, were those who, had crack were given far harsher sentences and those who possessed just cocaine. Now, there's a lot to this story. There's a lot of history here. There's a lot of context here that we don't really have an opportunity to get into right now. But crack was disproportionately possessed and sold by black people. There was no real reason for the distinction in sentencing between crack and cocaine. And this is often seen as a liberal issue. This is often brought up as a liberal, I don't want to just say talking point because that sounds trivializing, but as a liberal point about how systemic racism has manifested itself in various ways throughout our history. But this particular instance should not just be a

liberal issue because this was not justice. As far as we can see, this was not justice to have this kind of disproportionate disparate, disparate sentencing for crack versus cocaine, because that is not based on reality. That appears arbitrary. So Christians should not be for arbitrary applications of justice or arbitrary applications of something. sent and seem. We should be for equal application of punishment for breaking the law. And it doesn't seem like that happened in that case. And so we should care about that. This means that we care about what happens in our prisons. In April, there was a report that absolutely broke my heart about a woman who had special needs or who had mental disabilities in Broward County, Florida.

She was in prison for drug charges. She went to prison in March and they knew that she was very pregnant at the time. She went into labor in April and she was reportedly screaming out for help. She reportedly said that she was having contractions, that she was bleeding. And the police on guard said, oh yeah, we called the doctor, but the doctor didn't show up. And the guards did not offer to help her. And so she was laying there, writhing in pain, screaming. Anyone, I haven't given birth yet as I'm recording this podcast, but I can imagine how painful it is. Any of you who have given birth, especially any of you who have had any sort of traumatic births, know how terrible this probably was.

She had no help. She was forced to birth this baby on her own in what I guess was hours and hours of labor, because labor typically lasts a long time. It's not typically like this 30 minute thing. And so maybe the guards didn't see. No, I'm sure she was screaming. I'm sure she was in a terrible pain. I'm sure she was absolutely miserable.

And she delivered this baby. and only when a guard saw her with her newborn, did they call the doctor and the doctor came in with the nurse to check if she was okay. Now, we only have this side of the story, but as far as we know, from the facts of this case, that is wrong. That is wrong. That is unjust. This was oppression. This is heartbreaking. They could have offered help, but because she was a criminal, because she was poor, because she was powerless, because she didn't, they probably didn't think this was ever going to get out. They did not offer the help. that they would have for other people, that they would have wanted themselves.

This is wrong. Christian should want justice to be done here. We should want accountability. We should want someone to be punished for this. There is an internal investigation going on right now, and that should make us glad, and we should be praying that justice is served here. We should be praying for the people in our prisons. There is no excuse for that, unless there is some big part of the story that we just don't know.

There's no excuse for that. Her life matters to us. her baby's life matters to us and she should be treated with dignity and respect just like anyone else. The reality that every person, every single person on earth, no matter how young, no matter how old, no matter how capable, no matter how disabled, no matter how rich, no matter how poor, everyone is made in the image of God. That gives us a desire for justice for people to be treated fairly. The reality that God is a righteous God and hates evil gives us his children, his saints, his chosen ones, his co-labors a desire for justice. We care about the weak. We care

about the oppressed. This is precisely why Christians like Wilberforce led the way for the abolition of slavery. This is precisely why Christians like Bonhofer and Corrieton, Boom, resisted the Nazis. This is precisely why Christians fought against Jim Crow that is precisely why Christians fight against abortion. And any Christian, any Christian who advocates for, or so-called Christian, advocates for some form of oppression in the name of the Bible, saying that the Bible justifies whatever oppression they're advocating for is wrong. And so you'll often hear the argument, well, Christians used the Bible to justify slavery, to justify segregation, to justify whatever kind of injustice. Well, those Christians, those so-called

Christians, those churchgoers were wrong. They were wrong because that's not what the Bible says. That doesn't say anything about the wrongness of Christianity that says something wrong about the people who called themselves Christians. Christianity does not justify oppression. It does not justify injustice. In fact, it speaks loudly against those things and calls Christians to fight against them, both legislatively in a way that is thoughtful and truthful, by the way, not just latching on to big government programs that take away people's freedom and don't actually help anyone, and personally ourselves. And so when we look at Christians throughout history, Christians, gospel-believing, gospel-preaching Christians, they have been on the front lines against

injustice. That is why we fight things like abortion. So anyone who says, well, the Bible doesn't say anything about abortion or the Bible, maybe even condones abortion. You've got some crazy people saying that. And they're saying that in the name of Christianity, know that they are wrong. That God cares about the least of these. That God knit us together in our mother's womb, that he created gestation, that he created fetal development, that he created, how life was made, how life is developed. He cares. He cares about that. We do not, as Christians, look to show unfair favoritism to the poor. We do not look to demonize the rich and the powerful. We view people as individuals. That's what distinguishes us between, you know, the social

justice advocates, and that's what distinguishes us, sorry, got tongue tied between us and them. We do not see people as members of groups. We see people as individuals. We do not assign people oppression points based on their immutable characteristics and judge their guilt or innocence from there that is not righteous, that is not just. So it is not just for a Christian to say that all black people, all minorities, all immigrants are disadvantaged in all white people are privileged. That is not Christian. That is not biblical. It is wrong to say that all cops are bad. That is not biblical. We view people as individuals and we view their cases based on the facts at hand, based on truth. We care also about freedom from tyranny, which are.

also leads to tyranny also leads to the devaluation of life. We believe in the freedom of speech. So the gospel can be shared without fear of punishment. We believe in freedom of religion so people can worship without fear of punishment. Of course, we know that without these things, the gospel is still going to spread. And of course, we know that without these things, the church is still going to stand strong. But we should believe in these things. Because these things lead without these things, without freedom of speech, without freedom of religion. That leads to oppression, which leads to human suffering, which is unjust. This means when it comes to cases about things like discrimination, we are careful not to jump to the most emotional option. Freedom is important. If you look at the case with

Jack Phillips, the cake baker out of Colorado, who said out of his religious convictions that he was not going to bake a cake for a gay couple for their wedding. He would bake them another kind of cake, but not a wedding cake because that violated his personal conscience. And Colorado said, too bad, you're going to have to bake this cake. Of course, he was sued by the gay couple. And it went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, no, you don't have to bake a wedding cake for gay people. Now, the Supreme Court decision on that didn't actually do that much for religious liberty. That's kind of besides the point. But the fact of the matter is, Christians, on that side of the case, we should care about religious liberty because the couple has the

freedom still to go anywhere they want and get the cake that they want made. But Christians are called to follow God's law first, and that's what this person was doing, and we should advocate for a government that allows us to follow God's law and to not have to violate it because otherwise we're going to be forced to by a tyrannical government. That's not justice. So here's the most important factor here. Here's what we're going to end on, that you often will not hear, that you often will not hear from those who claim to be Christian social justice advocates. The way to spread true justice, true advocacy, true peace is not through legislative changes. It's not even through cultural changes. It is through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

those who are dishonest, those who oppress, those who dehumanize the unborn, who exploit the poor, who do not enact proper justice, do so for one reason. They don't know God. Ephesians 417 through 24. Now this I say, and I testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles or non-Christians do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. So there is a difference between those who know God and those who do not. Those who know God, those who are, those who do not know God, those who are not in Christ, are darkened in their understanding. They are ignorant. They are alienated from the life of God.

Their hearts are hardened. They are calloused. They give in to sensuality, to greed, to impurity. That is not true for those who are in. Christ. We are to put off those things which belong to our old selves, to be made new, to be like God in righteousness and in holiness. And I would say, if I can be so bold, to extend that to say injustice and in sacredness, in rightness, and it being set apart. Now, this doesn't mean that there aren't moral people who are not Christians in the sense that there are people who follow

God's moral law without calling themselves Christians. That is a gift of common grace that is extended to all people, that all people can know God's moral law, follow it, and still come across as biblically minded or moral people. There are people like that. But essentially, but essentially the people who practice these kinds of atrocities that we've been talking about do so because they don't know God. And no one is righteous, really apart from Christ. It is the gospel that changes lives. It is the gospel that ensures real justice and encourages real justice. We cannot separate justice from the gospel. You very rarely will hear someone who is a part of the social justice, even religious left, also say that Jesus is the only way, the only truth

and the only life and that no one comes to the father except through him. Why? Because they've adopted this social gospel liberation theology thing that says basically the only thing that we need to do is not tell people about Jesus, but just to make sure that they are loosed from their earthly chains, whatever that is. They see everything through that lens of the oppressor versus the oppressor, but that's not biblical. Our most important calling, our highest calling, is the sharing of the gospel of the love of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ came to die to save sinners, that he rose again three days later, conquering sin and death. That is the thing that changes hearts. That changes the world. No matter what happens with our government, no matter what

happens with our society and our culture, we preach the gospel, no matter what. So that's where I'm going to end it today. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you do like this podcast, please leave me a five-star review on iTunes. And if you don't, subscribe to my channel, Ali Beth Stuckey on YouTube, do that. And feel free to follow me on social media as well. And I'll see you guys soon.