What is Church? Social Justice

What is Church? Social Justice – is that really in the Bible?!

I’ve noticed over the years how people seem to have a love/hate relationship with Social Justice. This happens for several reasons…

Firstly, you do not find the term in the Bible; it is a contemporary term. What you do find in the Old Testament is the word “righteousness” which the Roman Catholic Jerusalem Bible consistently translates as “justice”. God seeks righteous behaviour in his people at a personally level (ie being holy, virtuous and loving) and at a social level in business (pay the workers), politics (do not take advantage of the weak) and in the law courts (give justice to the widow and the poor and reject bribery). This is Social Righteousness (Social Justice) that God expects of his people.

(1) Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, (2) to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. Isaiah 10:1-2

Secondly, who God’s people are changes between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
In the Old Testament, the people of God are literally a nation with a government, law courts and an economy. A righteous nation is God’s expectation.

But in the New Testament God’s people are no longer a nation but across many nations. They are as yet too small to have any influence on any nation’s behaviour. The early church, for instance, knew they were totally helpless to stop slavery but Paul refused to live by that distinction when the church was a gathered community.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, (27) for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (28) There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (29) If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Gal 3:26-29)

It took another 1800 years for the church to realise that it had the chance and the duty to remove that disease from Western Society.

You see how times change? The early church had no role in Social Justice but in our time we now have the ability to make a difference. Democracy allows us this chance and it would be irresponsible as a Christian to not exercise our democratic rights to influence society to aid the poor and the oppressed.

Shall we say nothing to our politicians about refugees driven to mental illness by 6 year delays in our Detention camps due bureaucratic delays? Shall we not urge our Government to give well targeted aid to poor nations lacking in basic education and health care when our gambling losses alone could provide fresh water to nearly every poor person on the planet? Shall we remain silent as the Government underfunds our UCA Aged Care Agencies so that the future looks bleak for nearly all of them?

Shall we be silent when our political parties create their policies according to what the citizens think are important.

Social Justice advocates often give the impression that they have all the answers and this arrogance can be a turn off. But that is no excuse for not being involved, even if it is only at the ballot box.

God truly does not take sides in politics. But he does take sides when it comes to the poor and the marginalised. Will you?

I wonder what Paul and the tiny New Testament church would have done if they had the opportunities for Social Justice we now enjoy?

“James, Peter and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. (10) All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along!” (Paul in Galatians 2:9-10)

Graeme