social justice Archives – Aaron Armstrong

A better term than social justice

Aaron Armstrong on July 21, 2015

Everyone has words that make them shrivel up inside when they hear or read them. I always want to lose my mind a little bit when I read “trigger warning” (thankfully, I’ve never met anyone who has said this phrase without a hint of irony). “The feels” makes me feel ways about stuff, but it’s not good. “YOLO”makes me think NOLO…

Then there’s one that probably shouldn’t bother me, but it kind of does. It’s also one that’s nearly inescapable: social justice.

Obviously, I don’t have a problem with what the term is intended to convey—the idea of pursuing the common good, as seen in caring for those in need, rescuing women (and men) from sex trafficking and other forms of slavery, providing safe water for communities and the like. And, of course, none could easily deny the obvious connection between being declared justified in the eyes of God and living a just life. The Bible itself makes this connection in many different ways, from the great commandments, to James’ argument of faith displaying itself in works, and of course, the oft-quoted Micah 6:8:

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Many Christians and Christian organizations are quite vocal and passionate about this call, and rightly so. After all, if we say we love Christ but don’t love others, what are we? If we walk away from someone in need, wishing them God’s best but doing nothing to help them in their need, what does that say about us?

So what’s the big deal? Is this just an issue of semantics? Maybe (probably). But there is a reason I’m not a fan of it. And that reason really comes down to one thing: the term “social justice” is too impersonal to capture the biblical ethic. In “social justice”, people can easily become merely needs or problems or priorities. People are helped, certainly, but they risk becoming disembodied.

And for the Christian, this isn’t possible. When the Bible calls on us to meet the needs around us, it does so in deeply personal terms. We’re to bring a cup of cold water to a brother, to give a cloak to the one who has none, to assist the widow and the orphan. The biblical ethic goes beyond merely meeting a need to expressing love to a person. And a term like social justice just doesn’t do that well enough, at least not in my mind.

So what’s a better term? Personally, I prefer compassion (and not just because of where I worked for nearly 10 years). Compassion has a weightiness to it, a grit. It is not mere pity, but a heart-moving call to action. When Jesus saw that crowds of people were like sheep without a shepherd, that they were harassed and helpless, he had compassion on them (Matt. 9:35-38). He cared for them. He healed their sicknesses. He taught them and made the gospel known to them. Jesus’ compassion didn’t move him to lobby the government (to be clear, this sort of action is a good thing), but to show love to those he met in their midst. This is the heart of Christian social action—it’s a person-to-person encounter. It is not love in the abstract. It is love encased in flesh.

The primary (and peculiar) task of the Church

Aaron Armstrong on April 14, 2015

Why does the church exist? Is it to clothe the naked, feed the sick, liberate the oppressed? Is it wrong for churches to do this? Not at all; in fact, it is quite good and necessary to our Christian witness. But they’re not the main thing.

As Martyn Lloyd-Jones argues in Preaching and Preachers, those things are good, but they are symptoms of a greater problem. A sin problem. The problem of being separated from God. And so, it falls upon the church to bring people into a right relationship with God. He explains:

It has come into the Church and it is influencing the thinking of many in the Church—this notion that the business of the Church is to make people happy, or to integrate their lives, or to relieve their circumstances and improve their conditions. My whole case it that to do that is just to palliate the symptoms, to give temporary ease, and that it does not get beyond that.

I am not saying that it is a bad thing to palliate symptoms; it is not, and it is obviously right and good to do so. But I am constrained to say this, that though to palliate symptoms, or to relieve them, is not bad in and of itself, it can be bad, it can have a bad influence, and a bad effect, from the standpoint of the biblical understanding of man and his needs. It can become harmful in this way, that by palliating the symptoms you can conceal the real disease. . . .

The business of the Church, and the business of preaching—and she alone can do this—is to isolate the radical problems and to deal with them in a radical manner. This is specialist work, it is the peculiar task of the Church. The church is not one of a number of agencies, she is not in competition with the cults, she is not in competition with other religions, she is not in competition with the psychologists or any other agency, political or social or whatever it may chance to be.

The church is a special and a specialist institution and this is a work that she alone can perform. (30-32, formatting mine)

No kingdom builders or co-redeemers required

Aaron Armstrong on December 28, 2014

My day job exposes me to a great deal of literature and communication from “activist” Christians—folks who are very (VERY) heavily concerned with social injustices, sex trafficking, poverty alleviation, and other causes (which, y’know, we should be concerned about). However, whenever I read books coming from this group, or written by people trying to appeal to them, I get a little squeamish about the language used, which usually sounds something like this:

We’re to be world-changers, partnering with God in redeeming this broken world and building his kingdom.

But if that’s true… why doesn’t it ring true to what the Bible says?

Kevin DeYoung helpfully puts words to my awkward feelings about this in Why We Love the Church. There, he writes:

We need to be careful about our language. I think I know what people mean when they talk about redeeming the culture or partnering with God in His redemption of the world, but we should really pick another word. Redemption has already been accomplished on the cross. We are not co-redeemers of anything. We are called to serve, bear witness, proclaim, love, do good to everyone, and adorn the gospel with good deeds, but we are not partners in God’s work of redemption.

Similarly, there is no language in Scripture about Christians building the kingdom. The New Testament, in talking about the kingdom, uses words like enter, seek, announce, see, receive, look, come into, and inherit. Do a word search and see for yourself. We are given the kingdom and brought into the kingdom. We testify about it, pray for it to come, and by faith, it belongs to us. But in the New Testament, we are never the ones who bring the kingdom. We receive it, enter it, and are given it as a gift. It is our inheritance. It’s no coincidence that “entering” and “inheriting” are two of the common verbs associated with the Promised Land in the Old Testament (see Deut. 4:1; 6:18; 16:20). The kingdom grows to be sure, and no doubt God causes it to grow by employing means (like Christians), but we are never told to create, expand, or usher in the kingdom just as the Israelites were not commanded to establish Canaan. Pray for the kingdom, yes, but not build it. (49)

This, I think, is something we need to remember.

When I see people running around trying to be world-changers, all I see are people running themselves into the ground. Before too long, they’re completely frazzled; burnt out. It’s a burden that’s too much for them to bear.

Fortunately, God’s never asked us to be world-changers. Instead, he encourages us to enter into Jesus’ rest, and be thankful for what has been provided today. To trust him with the needs of tomorrow. And to do the work he calls us to—which, yes, does include social action—not in order to build our inheritance, but as those secure in the goodness of its Builder.

Photo credit: justinbaeder via photopin cc

Book Review: Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James

Aaron Armstrong on April 6, 2011

The role of women continues to be a question that looms large. In business, politics, education and countless other arenas, the opportunities for women in the western world are virtually unlimited. Yet in other parts of the world, in the Middle East or in nations ravaged by poverty, these opportunities don’t exist. Indeed, in many countries, women are treated as little more than property.

This issue has not left the church unscathed. Are women “merely” to be focused on the home and family? Are there limits to how women can serve or should serve? Does the church give women—who comprise at least half of it—an inspiring, captivating vision of what it means to be a woman created in the image of God?

Carolyn Custis James seeks to answer these questions in Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women. In many ways this book is a companion piece to Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which focuses on the abuses perpetrated against women around the world—among them sex trafficking, genital mutilation and honor killings. In light of the horrific crimes being perpetrated against women globally every day, James asks why the Church is not the loudest voice in this crisis; why the Church is not “the most visible at the forefront of addressing this humanitarian crisis” (p. 21). Half the Church, in James’ estimation, represents a call to action in combating these atrocities as the author describe what she sees as God’s vision for women.

From a male perspective, reading Half the Church was an unusual experience. It’s primary audience is women and James writes with that assumption in mind. In some ways this was quite refreshing as it gave me a glimpse into the female perspective, but it was also difficult at times to relate, particularly as she got into the nitty-gritty of her argument. And her arguments are where things get really interesting.

I need to be upfront about one thing before I go any farther: Half the Church was incredibly difficult for me to review. This is not because I wasn’t able to form opinions on it, but because my concern is that by voicing any disagreement with James’ premise or arguments I would be viewed as a misogynist (or worse). And nothing could be further from the truth. As a husband and father, ensuring that the dignity of women is protected is very, very high on my priority list. My daughters are learning how valuable they are in their Daddy’s sight, as is my wife (I hope!). I also acknowledge that I can’t possibly hope to cover every part with which I agree, any more than I can cover every point of disagreement. So if something you loved isn’t discussed, please be aware that I’m in no way trying to misrepresent the book’s message.

So, with all that said, let’s continue. Read More about Book Review: Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James

Working For Justice without Undermining Evangelism

Aaron Armstrong on October 25, 2010

It seems like everywhere you turn, people are asking the same question:

How do you work for justice without undermining evangelism?

Typically there are a couple of ways to answer the question. One camp suggests that we don’t need to evangelize until after the need has been met, if at all; that our focus should be eliminating extreme poverty or ending human trafficking. A cause is at the center instead of Christ.

The other tends to run to the opposite extreme, seeing any sort of social action as anathema to the Christian life.

Both extremes, obviously, are wrong. How, then, do you find a healthy, biblical middle-ground?

I’ve written about this a few times (here and here for example), but over at the Gospel Coalition last week, they examined the issue by posing the question to a number of wise pastors and theologians. Here’s a look at their insights:

Don Carson:

1. By doing evangelism. I know numerous groups that claim to be engaging in “holistic” ministry because they are helping the poor in Chicago or because they are digging wells in the Sahel, even though few if any of the workers have taken the time to explain to anyone who Jesus is and what he has done to reconcile us to God. Their ministry isn’t holistic; it’s halfistic, or quarteristic.

2. By being careful not to malign believers of an earlier generation. The popular buzz is that evangelicals before this generation focused all their energies on proclamation and little or nothing on deeds of mercy. Doubtless one can find sad examples of such reductionism, but the sweeping condescension toward our evangelical forbears is neither true nor kind…

3. By learning, with careful study of Scripture, just what the gospel is, becoming passionately excited about this gospel, and then distinguishing between the gospel and its entailments. The gospel is the good news of what God has done, especially in Christ Jesus, especially in his cross and resurrection; it is not what we do. Because it is news, it is to be proclaimed. But because it is powerful, it not only reconciles us to God, but transforms us, and that necessarily shapes our behavior, priorities, values, relationships with people, and much more. These are not optional extras for the extremely sanctified, but entailments of the gospel. To preach moral duty without the underlying power of the gospel is moralism that is both pathetic and powerless; to preach a watered-down gospel as that which tips us into the kingdom, to be followed by discipleship and deeds of mercy, is an anemic shadow of the robust gospel of the Bible; to preach the gospel and social justice as equivalent demands is to misunderstand how the Bible hangs together.

4. By truly loving people in Jesus’ name—our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all people, especially those of the household of faith. That necessarily includes the alleviation of suffering, both temporal and eternal. Christians interested in alleviating only eternal suffering implicitly deny the place of love here and now; Christians who [fail] to proclaim the Christ of the gospel of the kingdom while they treat . . . suffering here and now show themselves not really to believe all that the Bible says about fleeing the wrath to come. In the end, it is a practical atheism and a failure in love.

Ray Ortlund: Read More about Working For Justice without Undermining Evangelism

Book Review: Radical by David Platt

Aaron Armstrong on September 14, 2010

“Do we really believe [Jesus] is worth abandoning everything for?” asks pastor & author David Platt in his new book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. “Do you and I really believe that Jesus is so good, so satisfying, and so rewarding that we will leave all we have and all we own and all we are in order to find our fullness in him?” (pp. 18-19)

As Christians living in the very comfortable Western world, having “our best life now” is really appealing. After all, if God gives good gifts to those who love Him, wouldn’t it include a big house, a big backyard, a big state-of-the-art church facility, a big latte and maybe a lot of money in the bank account?

While none of this is inherently wrong, Plant wonders if we are “settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.” And in Radical, he seeks to remind readers of the biblical gospel and that its implications mean the death of the American Dream—that we’re called to spend our lives on others, rather than merely spend our cash on ourselves.

There is much to enjoy about and be challenged by in Radical. Platt’s focus is less on showing readers a specific road to take (“here’s how you should do XYZ…”) and more about building a bigger vision for mission and reaching the nations for God’s glory.

In many ways, what Platt seeks to do is much the same as what John Piper has done in Let the Nations Be Glad and Don’t Waste Your Life—by providing Christians with a much-needed corrective to the overstated (and under-realized) notion that the days of overseas missions are over. That our focus can and should only be on local missions, if we have any sort of focus at all beyond a Christianized version of the American Dream.

As Platt notes, with over 2 billion people (as a conservative estimate) never having heard the gospel, one can hardly say that the days of overseas missions have passed us by.

At the same time, he doesn’t want to suggest that missions only happens overseas.

In Canada (where I live), generous estimates place the number of Christians in the population at around 8.5 percent. And as our population changes, there are more and more people who have never heard the gospel. The unreached are both at home and abroad. (It’s why missionaries are coming to Canada and the United States from countries which, two generations ago, we would have sent them to!)

What I especially appreciate about Platt’s book is this focus. That, even as he talks about poverty and how we in North America can be generous in caring for the poor, the goal is not alleviating poverty. The goal is seeing people meet Jesus. Platt writes,

The point is not simply to meet a temporary need or change a startling statistic; the point is to exalt the glory of Christ as we express the gospel of Christ through the radical generosity of our lives. (p. 135)

Perhaps the thing I enjoyed most about Radicalis the Radical Experiment—Platt’s challenge to put into practice what’s been learned through the book. As a pastor, he knows full well that unless there’s a way to apply knowledge, it will never move from the head to the heart. His one year challenge is shockingly simple, yet terribly complex:

Pray for the entire world. Pray for specific needs among the nations.
Read through the entire Word. Get through the entirety of Scripture in one year. Use a plan, read cover-to-cover… whatever you do, commit to doing this.
Sacrifice money for a specific purpose. Research an organization that loves Jesus, that explicitly spreads His gospel, that serves His church and is trustworthy with finances.
Spend time in another context. Whether it’s overseas for a short term missions trip or the soup kitchen downtown, go and be with people who aren’t like you.
Commit our lives to multiplying communities. Be a part of a local church that is growing, making disciples and sending people out. Serve faithfully and pray fervently for it. And if you’re not in one, get into one.

This is a powerful challenge, one that I’m praying over how it would look in my life. I’m looking forward to what God shows me in response.

Perhaps the thing that struck me funny reading this book was something I found to be a bit of an oversimplification on Platt’s part. ON page 76, he writes:

But even if we were to do these things [helping the sick, feeding the hungry, strengthening the church in the neediest areas of the country] we would still be overlooking a foundational biblical truth when we say our hearts are for the United States. As we have seen all over Scripture, God’s heart is for the world. So when we say we have a heart for the Unites States, we are admitting that we have a meager 5 percent of God’s heart, and we ware proud of it. When we say we have a heart for the city we live in, we confess that we have less than 1 percent of God’s heart.

While I get what he’s trying to say, I can’t disagree strongly enough. While in some cases people can and do use the term of “having a heart for this city” as a cover for apathy (because their lives don’t reflect this heart), to say that if someone genuinely has a heart for the United States, New York State or San Francisco is ridiculous—and insulting. Such an oversimplification (while unintentional, I believe) runs the risk of devaluing one’s sense of calling and mission from God. Instead, it’s more likely that such a person has 100 percent of God’s heart for that city, state or country.

We need more men and women who have a genuine heart for their contexts, and it does nothing for their spirits to suggest that they somehow lack the fullness of God’s heart for the lost.

“Will we risk everything—our comfort, our possessions, our safety, our security, our very lives—to make the gospel known among unreached people?” This is the challenge that Platt puts to his readers (p. 160). What are we willing to sacrifice? What idols are holding us back? Will we give it up for the glory of Christ to be made known and to see more people reached with His gospel?

This is not an easy question to answer—but it’s one that I believe we need to wrestle with. And Radical forces us to do exactly that.

Read the book, be challenged and see how God might transform your life for His global purposes.

Title: Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Author: David Platt
Publisher: Multnomah (2010)

Book Review: Outlive Your Life by Max Lucado

Aaron Armstrong on September 10, 2010

Title: Outlive Your Life
Author: Max Lucado
Publisher: Thomas Nelson (2010)

Some time ago, I was in the president’s office at a Christian NGO and noticed a new book on his desk. Making conversation, I asked, “What’s that one about?” It’s about the Christian’s responsibility in areas of poverty and injustice, he said. I made a mental note and determined to give it a read.

A couple weeks later, I began to read Outlive Your Life by Max Lucado. Over the course of 16 chapters, Lucado loosely examines the first twelve chapters of Acts in an attempt to show readers how they “were made to make a difference” in the lives of impoverished men, women and children around the globe.

Christian books on social justice and caring for the poor are tricky things. There’s a tendency to turn a God-honoring act into “God’s mandate” for the Christian life. A false gospel based around our work, rather than Christ’s work on the cross.

So where does Outlive Your Life land?

A weird place.

First, what did I like about this book?

Lucado is a very fast-paced writer; his style is easy-going, light and conversational. The plus side of this is that it makes this book a very quick read. The chapters are short (usually no more than about 4-5 pages) and you can breeze through it in a couple hours.

Lucado’s use of illustrations from everyday life help makes his subject matter come alive. He generally portrays himself as a bit of a goober, so you get the impression that he’s just a regular guy who puts his pants on one leg at a time (but when he puts his pants on, he sells hundreds of thousands of books).

When it comes down to the content, I greatly appreciated chapter 15, “Pray first; pray most.” This section in particular was a strong reminder of the importance of prayer and why everything we do, if we are followers of Christ, should be saturated with prayer.

Additionally, I did appreciate the idea behind the chapter, “Don’t write anyone off.” There’s no one that God can’t save—so why would we write off anyone as “unsave-able” when God is capable of doing more than we can imagine? After all, He saved Paul, who persecuted the Church & murdered Christians and used him as His instrument to spread the gospel throughout Asia Minor, and into Rome.

Now, having said that, there is a lot that concerned me about Outlive Your Life.

Some of it’s just goofy, like a strangely graphic description of a temple guard on page 78 (that I’m not entirely sure is historically accurate) that wouldn’t seem out of place in the movie 300. There’s some creative speculation into biblical stories in an attempt to engage readers… But there’s also this prevalent notion that sound doctrine isn’t as important as actions and working together for the common good. Read More about Book Review: Outlive Your Life by Max Lucado