So where does God fit in Social Justice?
Justice for me is about applying universal truths (from God) to real life situations. Social Justice is about getting together various groups that are all working towards some piece of universal truth. I suppose we all believe our own personal tuning into universal truth is the best avenue for social change. I personally believe that equality (social, economic, and recognizing and rewarding individuals, etc.) is the master key that will bring about a lot of other universal truths (clean environment, end of violence, etc.).
The most successful social change movement has a spiritual base. Social change occurs by God’s grace, his divine supernatural power, moving within each individual and society and spiritually transforming everyone. “Great men…all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven…we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object” (Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis).
What’s important to social change is not a self-empowered movement but a spiritual empowerment by God. The closest thing to an embodiment of God’s supernatural power is the church. There certainly aren’t any super-heroes in the church but the power that flows through the body of the church is super-powered by God’s grace and Holy Spirit. Philip Yancey writes, “For all its flaws the church at times has, fitfully and imperfectly to be sure, dispensed Jesus’ message of grace to the world. It was Christianity, and only Christianity, that brought the end to slavery, and Christianity that inspired the first hospitals and hospices to treat the sick. The same energy drove the early labor movement, women’s suffrage, prohibition, human rights campaigns, and civil rights” (What’s so Amazing About Grace).
The Salvation Army was also started as a Christian mission. “They feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, treat addicts and alcoholics, and show up first at disaster scenes. The movement has continued to grow so that today these soldiers of grace number a million–one of the world’s largest standing armies—and serve in a hundred countries” (What’s so Amazing About Grace). Maybe the Christian character is what is needed for movements like the environment. “Our culture says, ‘If you don’t own it, you won’t take care of it.’ But Christians live by a higher standard: Because God owns it, I must take the best care of it that I can” (The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren).
I’ve got a particular calling towards righting the inequality in society, however C.S. Lewis explains my conundrum: “There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by ‘judgment’ (i.e. Social Justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible” (The Problem of Pain). The poor have more of a reason to be dependent on God and as a result it is easier for them to receive God’s grace and blessings. I feel a calling to right the injustice of inequality in the U.S. and the world but by doing so am I giving people less of a reason to turn to God?
Is social change more effective through changing lives instead of changing laws? Yancey points out how unpolitical Jesus was. “Jesus’ images portray the kingdom as a kind of secret force. Sheep among wolves, treasure hidden in a field, the tiniest seed in the garden, wheat growing among weeds, a pinch of yeast worked into bread dough, a sprinkling of salt on meat—all these hint at a movement that works within society, changing it from the inside out” (What’s so Amazing About Grace). Yancey gives the fall of the Roman Empire and the crumbling of Communism as evidence that Christianity is more powerful and lasting than any national power or political movement. Should we concentrate our social change on people (and as result society) instead of laws?
Christianity is not “salvation from this earthly existence, but a religion of salvation from injustice in this earthly existence”. Matthew 25:31-46 “is about justice. It says that to alleviate the condition of the social least is to render them what justice requires. It is not to go beyond justice into the realm of charity and benevolence; it is to render to them what justice requires. To fail to come to their aid is not simply to fail in charity or to be less than fully righteous. It is to wrong them. And the passage gives a truly awesome significance to wronging them: to wrong the social least is, whether one realizes it or not, to wrong Jesus Christ himself” (Justice, Not Charity: Social Work through the Eyes of Faith by Nicholas Wolterstorff).
