Monthly archive: January, 2011

Justice, Power, and Boundaries

January 28, 2011, by 5 comments

“Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” Lev. 19:15

It doesn’t take much time to notice that the world is much darker than what God created it to be. Our world today is a far cry from Eden, a place of peace—often described as shalom in the Hebrew Scriptures—where humans walked with God and knew God intimately. From the beggar on the street to the rich man with no love in his life, the shalom of God often feels distant. There is poverty, hunger, slavery, and oppression all over the world.

The Scriptures reveal to us God’s plan to restore shalom. When Jesus enters the story, he reveals “the kingdom of God,” a peaceful kingdom that stands in contrast to the violent kingdoms of this world. Jesus’ own actions were peaceful and non-aggressive. He personally served the poor, left his own family to serve the needs of others, and made company with the outcasts at his own social and cosmic expense. He called on others to voluntarily sacrifice their lives and follow him. His followers were expected to be beacons of light throughout the world, shining love and peace wherever they went.

As followers of Jesus today, we must address the lack of peace and justice in the world with Jesus as our model. Our task is to seek peace, restore brokenness, and bring to justice those who trample on others. Our calling is to also enroll others to join in this endeavor. Yet with all things involving human beings, there are limits to what we can do with and to others. If we are to engage the world, Christians must ask a very critical question: what boundaries are there to seeking justice?

In order to answer this question appropriately we must deal with the imbalance of power in society. Injustice stems from abuses of power. Libertarians and Christians believe that no human has the right to exercise power over another human by means of force or coercion. In order to truly achieve justice, individual freedom must be promoted. Justice itself hinges on the freedom of individuals to exercise their respective wills. Denying this freedom not only tramples human dignity, it pushes justice farther away.

So then, what should the Christian’s attitude be toward the State’s role in the fight for justice? A consistent ethic of peace would have us exercise the power of government only to punish those who have offended the natural right of freedom. Outside of this we have no right to impose our will upon another. If each person is God’s image-bearer with unsurpassable worth, we are duty-bound to not trample upon them, whether on our own or by leveraging the State to suit our preferences. Leo Tolstoy believed that “Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the State, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.” Christians should resist looking to the State for power to fulfill the mandates of the gospel.

Those who partner with the State in order to achieve a measure of justice have an impoverished imagination. Instead of advancing the kingdom of God peacefully, they seek to restore justice by controlling the rights and property of others. If it is truly the vocation, calling, and responsibility of the people of God to not only live out but carry out God’s justice, why would we want to delegate that responsibility to an entity whose primary mechanism of operation is threat of force? Christians must think long and hard about how they regard the State.

The Kingdom of God is about greatness through servanthood, loving by sacrificing. Changing the world is not done with might or power but through love and sacrifice. This is why we ought to reject government-centered solutions to social justice.

Christians have succumbed too often to the temptation of power, believing that if we are on God’s side, our power over others is justified. It is time that Christians embrace the Kingdom of the Cross (driven by servanthood, sacrifice, and love) and abandon the Kingdom of the Sword (driven by force, violence, and coercion). The power of the gospel to change the world is not made manifest through violence but through the freedom to love and serve others.

(This post was originally written in 2009 and was revised and republished at libertarianchristians.com.)

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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A Ray of Hope for Pro-Life position

January 13, 2011, by No comments yet

Rich Nathan at Red Letter Christians writes of the irony that in spite of the fact that most young people are decidedly more liberal than their parents and grandparents about everything, they are more conservative with one particular topic.

Abortion.

Yes, you read that correctly. While the bulk of social justice advocates are more permissive about things like gay marriage, marijuana use, and sexual ethics, on one issue they are more conservative.

Why? Cited is the author of the study who published the statistics:

Because young adults have grown up in a world of widely available contraceptives, pregnancy is generally seen as a failure to take responsibility for one’s choices.  So, in many cases, young adults feel that abortion amounts to an unwillingness to accept the consequences for one’s own choices rather than a so-called tragic moral dilemma.  “Taking responsibility for one’s behavior” has great potential as a message for increasing the valuing of life among young adults.

Read the entire article here.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Progressives, Libertarians, and God’s Economy

January 7, 2011, by 1 comment

When progressives emphasize social justice by using collectivist phrases like “common good” and “caring for our neighbor,” the typical reaction of libertarians is to focus on their wrongheaded policies and methodology. But libertarians who call themselves followers of Jesus can greatly benefit by understanding an important aspect of the gospel. If the good news of Jesus Christ is sufficient for personal transformation, it is sufficient for social transformation as well. But progressives fail to produce workable and ethical social reform, whereas libertarians offer ideas that are not only compatible with social justice efforts, they offer an ethical social framework within which to produce it.

In contrast to the overly emphasized and individualistic go-to-heaven-when-you-die gospel, social gospel advocates focus on the broader purpose of Jesus’ coming to earth: to establish a final Kingdom that will reign in peace through love. Jesus’ kingdom not only stood in contrast to the Roman method of establishing peace through violence, it was a subversive challenge to the imperial injustice of the so-called Pax Romana. Caesar was not Lord. Jesus was Lord. Caesar was not the Prince of Peace. Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Jesus proclaimed the good news that “the Kingdom of God is here!” He started a true living-and-breathing social movement based on peace, love, and mutual cooperation.

(Brief aside: historically, the Social Gospel movement of the Walter Rauschenbusch variety was so obsessed with the social implications of Jesus’ message that they naively embraced unethical ideals such as redistributionism, socialism, and in some cases communism. Instead of seeking truly social and peaceful ways to change the world, they tended to embrace coercive methods to achieve their ends. This is not a tenable position for a libertarian Christian, because the Rauschenbusch gospel is one that is neither social nor personal.)

In some respects we can view the Kingdom of God as “God’s economy.” But this does not mean we will find in the New Testament a prescription for legislative structures by which society ought to be run. Instead, we will find something more valuable than legal remedies or answers to the debate over economic distribution. We will find answers to the core problem of sin through Jesus’ demonstration of the Kingdom of God. God’s economy is about the health of human relationships, not the ideal institutional structures. To misunderstand this is a recipe for dangerously applying Jesus’ Kingdom ethics to an unjust and inadequate institutional framework. As my friend Art Carden has put it, “The important question in social science is not really evaluating the moral quality of the outcome, but evaluating the institutions that produce the outcome” (emphasis mine).

If Christians are to proclaim God’s economy and social order, developing an economic way of thinking is critical to proposing truly progressive social reforms. This is where libertarians—particularly those of the Austrian persuasion—can contribute enormously to the goals of social justice. Yet most progressive Christians have not even considered an economic way of thinking; some are even opposed to it!

Austrian economists will quickly point out that economics is fundamentally about observing human action and explaining how the world works. Developing an economic way of thinking can prevent us from seeking social reforms that produce ersatz outcomes at the expense of human dignity and moral development. Invoking Bible verses about treatment of the poor (such as Proverbs 22:1) to call for higher taxes on the wealthy or raising the minimum wage does not justify theft or magically reverse the laws of supply and demand. For all their talk about social justice, progressives prescribe cures for social ills that are neither social nor just.

Progressives believe the popular myth that the U.S. operates under pure capitalism, and have thus concluded that economic injustice inheres from advocating freedom. They rail against injustice, but they have mistaken the identity of the enemy. Instead of considering that the fundamental idea behind free markets is that they foster cooperation and mutually beneficial trade, they treat them as if they were the enemy of justice. So freedom becomes the scapegoat, and the sword becomes the savior.

Our economic system is unjust not because it is too free, but because its institutional structure benefits the politically well-connected. Progressive ideas like the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and labor laws are all anti-liberty policies that have hurt the people they purport to assist. This is why the fight for social justice is not won by sleeping with the enemy, but by choosing to build for God’s Kingdom. Progressives mistakenly believe the state exists to guard against economic inequality and protect the underdog. Libertarians rightly understand the state for what it is: violent, oppressive, and a destructive force in society.

Progressive and libertarian Christians alike can learn something valuable from each other. Libertarians (especially libertarian Christians) should not see social justice as a dirty word. It is a social aim that Jesus valued and sought, and his followers should do the same. Progressives Christians need to stop looking to the state to fix the social sins of greed, oppression, and racism because it cannot cure those ills.

The hope of the world is not in tweaking the kingdoms of this world. The hope of the world is Jesus, and only through the peaceful advancement of his Kingdom will society change for the better.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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