There is a lot of back and forth on Christian Twitter these days about justice, injustice, social justice, SJW’s, anti-SJW’s, anti-justice, and, more recently, ESJs and ASJEs: Evangelical Social Justice and Anti-Social Justice Evangelicals.
“I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, etc.” Our day typically finds the accusatory “You are, you are, you are,” evidence or none. I do not find these segmentations helpful. They might be harmful in the long run since they tend toward personal animus rather than philosophical and theological debate.
Exacerbating the lack of productive conversation is that few offer any suggested (much less agreed on) definition of justice or injustice. It is clear enough to most that we are starting at different places, yet few participants define the baseline terms often enough to advance the discussion. Finger-wagging becomes default.
Well-meaning people use justice, social justice, injustice, and even biblical justice with little regard for the multiple ways each of those terms is understood or commonly used. Worse, some assign to those with whom they disagree the worst connotations the terms invoke even over the objection of the user, different definitions used by them, or clear evidence to the contrary.
The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel devotes Article 3 to “Justice.” The article implies a biblical meaning (by use of supporting verses), but the authors do not define justice or injustice. Every reader is left to the meaning that is right in their own eyes. And we are back to Go without collecting $200.
My friend Paul Littleton offers up this succinct, theologically accurate definitional pairing:
Justice and righteousness are basically the same word in Greek. It has the idea of both doing right and making things right. In a world that has gone wrong, justice is a matter of setting things right. Injustice would be both being a part of a process that makes or keeps things wrong or simply standing by passively in the presence of the wrong.
Paul’s brother Todd narrows down “biblical justice”:
Biblical justice is the God-ward move that stands with those who have been maligned, marginalized, and discarded by any society, power, or persons.
It is worth a moment to dispense with an idea that, as if drawn to flame, nearly always enters the conversation: evangelicals who pursue justice see it as a means of salvation. To be clear, I do not. Further, if there are evangelicals who believe voter registration drives or doing away with criminalizing poverty justifies the sinner, I’ve never seen them, met them, or read them. To be so influential they are very well camouflaged.
I am less than no one in the overall justice conversation, and others could almost certainly do better than my effort below. I have, however, been writing about justice for the better part of the last decade. Our family has and does financially support various justice causes like End Slavery TN, International Justice Mission, and our local pregnancy care center. I’ve given uncountable hours of study and thought to the subject. Thus, in the spirit of being actionary* instead of a reactionary, the following definitions are suggested as common ground for followers of Jesus discussing and pursuing justice.
Injustice–the deprivation of any person’s Creator-endowed rights, dignity, or freedoms by those in authority through oppressive or unfair laws, customs, or mores that cause, allow, or protect the physical, sexual, or economic exploitation of men, women, or children who lack power, position or voice, affecting individuals or groups, whether isolated or broad-spread, hidden or acknowledged, all of which grows from contempt toward or ignorance of God’s standard of righteousness as revealed in Scripture.
Justice is the righteous use of money, law, politics, or power to restore Creator-endowed rights, dignity and—when and where possible—freedom to men, women or children anywhere they are experiencing injustice, becoming their voice to address, rebuke, or replace those abusing authority and power so God’s standard of righteousness as revealed in Scripture is recognized and demonstrated as much as it is possible within the fallen systems of this world until Christ brings the kingdom of God in its fulness.
*—Coining words is fun.
For further reading search this site for “justice” and “injustice.” There is some overlap.
Click here for my Uncommontary conversation on justice with pastor/theologian Thabiti Anyabwile.
