Nobody Expects Kool-Aid or the Spanish Inquisition!

Let's pretend we live in a world where there is a group of people who think that drinking Kool-Aid is a moral evil, and let's assume that this is a deeply held belief for these people. Let's also assume that they believe that it is a moral evil even to help someone else drink Kool-Aid. And let's also assume that part of their deeply held religious belief is that God will judge them if they do these things that we've just spoken of. In this scenario, these Kool-Aid abstainers have a moral compulsion to abstain from something: namely, the drinking or helping others to drink Kool-Aid.

Along comes Kool-Aid Man, and he wants Kool-Aid. "Oh yeah! I want some Kool-Aid! Fill me up, Kool-Aid Abstainer!"

"Please, sir. Go to another vendor. If I help you get this substance, I'll be in violation of what God has told me to do."

"Oh no!" says Kool-Aid Man. "I'm an open-minded and tolerant man. In the land of Kool, they teach us to be like that. That being said, I will only drink Kool-Aid if I can get it from you."

"Please," says the Kool-Aid Abstainer. "If you make me do this thing, I believe I will be judged by God!"

In this scenario, maybe you think Kool-Aid Abstainer is a nut job and a bigot. And perhaps he is, for all we know! But what kind of person does Kool-Aid Man have to be to actually make this vendor give him something when he knows that Kool-Aid Abstainer thinks it is morally wrong for him to do so? The question is not whether Kool-Aid Abstainer is misguided or unkind. The question is, if Kool-Aid Man could go somewhere else, why doesn't he?

You can judge Kool-Aid Abstainer all you want (plenty do!), but at the end of the day, Kool-Aid Man's conscience is not violated by Kool-Aid Abstainer's unwillingness to oblige him. In fact, if Kool-Aid Man is a respectful, open-minded, tolerant person who cares about the conscience of his neighbor, he should find another place to get his Kool-Aid. Perhaps Kool-Aid Man justifies his insistence by claiming that it's his right, and maybe it is, according to the magistrate. But it says something about Kool-Aid Man that he would force Kool-Aid Abstainer to oblige him: namely, he believes that his own desires are more important than what he is doing to Kool-Aid Abstainer's conscience.

When modern people look back at the Spanish Inquisition, there are particular things about it that they find deeply offensive. But perhaps among the most offensive is that these authorities forced people to say and do things that were against their consciences. They forced them to lie. They forced them to recant deeply held religious beliefs, and they did so by the forceful and coercive hand of the state.

It is not a stretch to say that Kool-Aid Man, as open-minded as he claims to be, and as tolerant as he likes to think of himself, has no respect for Kool-Aid Abstainer. In point of fact, Kool-Aid Abstainer has never asked Kool-Aid Man to do something wrong even in all his years of prohibiting Kool-Aid Man from drinking his favored substance.

It is one thing for a person to be prevented by the magistrate from doing what they want to do. It's quite another to use the same magistrate to force the other person to do something that that person doesn't want to do for moral reasons. Meet Kool-Aid Man... the new modern Inquisitor.

The Human Need for Divine Justice

In Gordon Wenham's fantastic book The Psalter Reclaimed, he has a chapter where he discusses, at length, various approaches to understanding the impreccatory psalms. Because of the often harsh language of these psalms, which long for the punishment of the wicked, some say these psalms are sub-Christian. Some say that they express a perspective that is unenlightened by the gospel of grace inaugurated by the coming of Christ and that they are not for the church to pray any longer. Wenham turns favorably to the work of German scholar Erich Zenger in his book A God of Vengeance? where he discusses at length the importance of the impreccatory psalms, and in particular the way that they address the human need for God's coming divine justice. Wenham then then offers an extended illustration:

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[Gottfried] Bachl tells of an SS officer who commanded a squad who wiped out a whole village of some six hundred people in retaliation for the activities of the French resistance.  Later this officer settled in East Germany, where he became a much respected member of the community. When eventually in 1980 he was tried and condemned to life imprisonment, he agreed to an interview, during which he repeatedly broke down in tears.

When the reporter asked, "Why are you crying now?" he answered, "Because I have been so happy, and now it ends this way." The journalist continued, "Did you ever weep over the children, women, and men you killed that day?" "No," he said. "Did it never occur to you that you had done a terrible injustice to those people?" His answer: "No, not as long as I was free. Everything was quite normal. But now I often think that there must have been something wrong, that I was involved in it myself somehow, that probably the whole thing was wrong."

Bachl comments that it was judgment that made this man face up to his guilt. That woke him from his happy oblivion and self-satisfaction. It was judgment that prompted him to respond as a human being who recognized what he had done. Bachl continues:

 The current of our history does not issue in justice, but in the question: Where will it happen? Will it ever appear in its true, comprehensive form. No court...will be adequate to the things that people...are doing to one another...What happens in the world of humanity is from its very beginning a cry for God's judgment. And the first response to that cry that is found in the gospel, the good news is:

The stream of events will not run on forever, over blood and victims, goodness, evil, innocence and justice. God will put an end to the course of history and will make clear that there is a difference between justice and injustice, and that this difference must be demonstrated. God will seek out the buried victims, the forgotten, starved children, the dishonoured women, and God will find the hidden doers of these deeds. God will gather them all before God's eternal, holy will for the good, so that all must see how it stands with their lives.

Wenham, Gordon J. The Psalter Reclaimed: Praying and Praising with the Psalms. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013. 139-140
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Wenham, echoing the work of Zenger, concludes: "These psalms can serve to wake us from our structural amnesia about God...They awaken our consciences to the anguish of those who suffer. They serve to wake us from the dreadful passivity that has overtaken the comfortable churches of the Western world. They make us long for the coming of the kingdom in justice and power."

Is Social Justice Really the Heart of the Christian Faith?

So the folks at Sojourners are up in arms because of Glenn Beck's statement that "social justice" is code-word for communism. He further says that if you go to a church that pushes "social justice," you should leave. Now, I refuse to take church attendance advice from a Mormon, but I do appreciate his larger point: namely that it's stopped being about caring for the poor and it's become more about the government monstrosity caring for the poor, the widow, and the needy. The church's role in fulfilling Jesus' command has been relegated, in my opinion, to begging our congressmen to feed the monster and make it bigger so that the poor can please get something to eat.

Jim Wallis, who's been running Sojourners for ages said on his blog, "What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and Christians should no longer watch his show."

I have spoken on the perversion of "justice" before, so this is nothing new for me. But I am increasingly frustrated by the abuse of this word, and so for me, Beck's comments certainly reflect sentiments that I have harbored for a number of years.

Listening to Wallis' response to Beck makes me wonder if he is simply resorting to hyperbole by saying that social justice is really the heart of the Christian faith. Actually, since I have some experience with reading Sojourners, I don't think it is hyperbole. Which is sad.

On the blog, Wallis points to Luke 4:18-19 to justify his statement that social justice is the "heart" of the Christian faith.

18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Where, in these verses, does Wallis find even the slightest suggestion that social justice is the heart of what we as Christians believe?

[As always, do I need to say that I'm a huge fan of "social justice" if we mean by it that that church should privately help the poor, as James said true religion consists in?]

A Perversion of "Justice"

I understand that the concept of social justice is a concept which has been used to bring those in the broader Christian community in line with more redistributive political agendas. I want to avoid, for the moment, the question of whether the government's policy of playing Robin Hood is virtuous or vicious and instead deal with the abusive terminology involved in using a phrase like "social justice."

All thinking Christians ought to be deeply troubled by the term "social justice." The way the phrase is used in popular Christian circles, it should actually be called "social mercy." The confusion of justice and mercy is like confusing white and black. It's like seeing a bird and calling it a lizard. Justice and mercy, with regards to sinful human beings, are two polar opposites.

Why the shift in nomenclature? Why would someone say "white" instead of "black," or "justice" instead of "mercy"? In my estimation, it is a strategic decision. If one calls it "social mercy," the imperative nature of the problem is removed. To most, mercy is something which is important, but which is in some sense optional. However, the idea of "justice" seems imperative, because most agree that justice must always be done; otherwise we as a society are then unjust. The deceptive terminology is an attempt to gain the moral high ground so that if one opposes their idea of what social justice is, then their opponents are, by definition, defending injustice, and nobody wants to be on the wrong side of that conversation.

Perhaps the real question should first be asked. What is justice, and what is mercy? I approach this question a bit differently than some would, because I ask the question of God first. Divine justice is when God gives to the creature what he deserves. If the creature does wrong, He punishes that creature. If the creature does good, He rewards the creature. This activity is divine justice. It is giving to someone what they deserve.

What is divine mercy? Well, the simplest and shortest explanation is that it giving the creature goodness when they deserve otherwise.

Now, there should really be no massive shift between how God relates to man in terms of justice and the way that man relates to man in terms of justice. To treat each as they deserve is justice, in its simplest form. Of course there is greater complexity to this, but this complexity does not change the basic substantial meaning of what it is to be a just person (or society, which is simply a collective of individual persons) and what it is to be merciful. Even if one wants to quibble over the definitions of justice and mercy being offered, it is nearly undeniable that justice and mercy are being used interchangeably by redistributionists when the words are not, in fact, synonyms.

So then, if the terminology were honestly used, what would social justice look like? Well, frankly, it would look like the opposite of what those advocating the current definition of "social justice" say it is. In a society practicing true or literal Social Justice, each would receive according to the labor of their hands, whether that is much or little. However, the concept of "social justice" as it is pushed today reflects the opposite sentiment. It says that people should receive mercy at the hands of society, and receive goods which they did not produce or earn. There may be merits or demerits to this, but what I am simply pointing out is that the proposed policies and terminology are at odds.