Social Justice
Back in 2013, many Adventists were saying there is no such thing as a social justice movement in Christianity or Adventism. In fact, Fulcrum7 was criticized (occasionally by conservative individuals) for speaking out against these things before most people knew that they were serious issues.
I wrote an article in April 2012 called Pass the Justice Please, and Hold The Socialism. It was published on Advindicate, a website where I was one of the founding staff writers, and eventually president.
I also warned against social justice in a 2014 Operation Iceberg Symposium at Sacramento Central. Here we are, just seven years later, and we see massive issues taking place in our world and church because of social justice.
This social justice agenda is more dangerous than any other controversy that has come along in my 61-year lifetime. Possibly the most dangerous in the last 100 years.
It was Noam Chomsky who said if you want to start a revolution, come up with a slogan that no one can reject. Enter Social justice. Who would reject that? Black Lives Matter, who would reject that? The camel’s nose is already in the tent at that point, because most people have been conditioned by culture to be deathly afraid of being called racist.
Social Justice claims to have the solution to the problems created by Critical Theory. Some of these solutions are expanding homosexuality (sexual justice), increasing abortion (reproductive justice), promoting radical enviromentalism (eco justice), affirming feminism (gender justice), enacting socialism (wealth justice) and passing reparations (racial justice.
Critical Theory comes along and causes divisions and strife among people through envy and bitterness (James 3:14-15), and then turns to social justice “You can fix these problems.” That’s how people are deceived into supporting social justice. And a lot of Adventists in our Division bought it.
Over the last 15-years, the North American Division and progressive church leaders began to care more about being culturally relevant, rather than being righteous in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation (Philippians 2:15). They adopted social justice, invested heavily into it, and now they are left with a hollow shell as it ate away their core. Where once was the robust sound of the Three Angels’ Messages in our collective hearts, is the thin echo of cultural relevance, and political wokeness.
Injustice and Justice
We all agree that there have been injustices in the past and we renounce them. Our nation already paid a very heavy price for them and changed course. Praise God.
But what was so disturbing to me is that Adventists were jumping on the social justice and woke bandwagon before they even thought through what they were getting into. Adventist millennials and a culture-drugged class of Adventist adults were particularly vulnerable to these bandwagons. Some have referred to them as Left SDA Poliwokes (poliwokes is shorthand for political wokesters). They are salt without savor.
In the first place, justice doesn’t need an adjective. Justice is justice. God loves true justice in the Bible, indeed the culmination of the age is the perfection of God’s own justice on That Day. God does not love political agendas disguised as justice, that is called perverting justice (Deut 16:19). God’s justice is impartial. Partiality in justice is a perversion of justice that God condemns (Deut 1:17).
Yet, social justice and Critical Theory are constructed on partiality, as they judge certain races as intrinsically innocent (black etc) and other races as intrinsically guilty (white) simply based on their ethnicity. Critical Theory reduces humans into two groups, oppressed and oppressors. You are placed in one of those two categories based upon things like your gender, your race, your sexual identity and religion. According to Critical Theory, if you are male, white, productive, a Christian and married to a woman (straight), you have everything against you, and nothing going for you. You are the worst of oppressors, and you’re guilty.
Victimhood
Here’s an undeniable rule of life—whatever you incentivize, you get more of. We have an ever increasing mass of belligerent victims in America who are defining life by what they feel others have done to them. Why? Because we incentivize victimhood in this country.
The rates for birth and marriage are down so much because we don’t incentivize either anymore. The country gets more of what it incentivizes. That’s why we have 10 million victims for every person who is a success. We incentivize victimhood in this country.
People act like we’re some oppressive society, because there’s nothing more valuable than doing that. It builds your brand, your social media, and your bank account. All you have to do is find a way to be a victim and say you’ve been oppressed. There’s nothing more valuable than that.
Why would Oprah Winfrey, who is worth around 800 million dollars, want to be thought of as a victim? Why would a professional football player with millions of dollars, a successful career and homes in two states (one beachfront) want to be thought of as a victim?
Why would Meghan Markle, who was welcomed into Great Britain’s royal family as Prince Harry’s chosen wife, want to proclaim herself a victim? Why would he, a prince of England, join her in seeking victimhood status? The answer is simple. We incentivize victimhood in our culture, and you get more of what you incentivize. They want victimhood because it gives them special status.
In Harry and Meghan’s case, what we are really seeing is a huge distinction between people who still believe in duty and discretion and those for whom those words suggest repression, and for whom the highest virtue is victimhood.
Last year, a CBS correspondent (Ben Tracy) said, when Trump got out of the hospital after defeating Covid and returned to the white house, “I felt safer reporting in Korea then I currently do at the White House.” This is just crazy. This is also manufactured victimhood.
We have not only become soft, fat rich and bored, that we have turned to victimhood as a hobby. Its now become something that society values so much. People gather themselves together in whole groups that are victims, and celebrate their victimhood. Some even lie about being victims (Elizabeth Warren etc). It’s become the ultimate quest for everybody, because we don’t have anything else to do anymore.
And so you get somebody like a white house correspondent—he’s just a reporter reporting on what goes on in the White House, but that’s not enough for him. You have to be more, you have to signal how outraged you are, how victimized you are. Times have really, really changed for us.
You get more of what you incentivize in life
At the core of victimhood thinking is the belief that I am basically a good person and all these things that other people have done to me or to my ancestors are not my fault and they have made me what I am. I am a victim. Worship my victimhood. Somebody owes me stuff, and I want it now.
Mercy and Truth
If we got what we deserved, we would all be dead. We are alive because of His mercy (Lamentations 3:22).
If you have been saved, why would you be preoccupied with what others have done to you instead of living in joy and gratitude and forgiveness, all of which are fruits of the gospel?
A person who chooses to go through life as a victim has not experienced the salvation of the gospel and the joy and forgiveness that God brings. And they can’t forgive, because that would mess up their victim identity and status. Their mantra is:
Instead of brokenness over my own sin, I have replaced repentance over my own sin with anger over the sins of others. I am a victim, I am special.
I don’t like what you did to me so I’m going to burn down everything in your life. I’m gonna smash your store and anyone who looks like you. I am going to get even.
To my (so called) oppressors (whites, males, or straight Christians) I don’t need to forgive you, I need you to venerate my victimhood for the rest of your life. You will repent before me forever.
Social justice warriors are transferring their own guilt to a past generation in hopes of burying it and justify themselves.
The idea that people are guilty for certain immutable characteristics that they have no control over is absolute nonsense. It's like hating people that are over five foot seven inches tall.
An Anti God Agenda
Critical Race Theory says that human beings are the only creatures on the planet that come into the world as a blank slate—with no innate characteristics (even gender). This is an attack on the image of God in humans. Critical Race Theory further says that you are simply defined by culture—and culture is captive to white systemic privilege, therefore it produces the results that it wants.
There have been years and years of underlying developments to tear down democracy as we know it in America. For whatever reason, Critical race Theory like all Critical theories is iconoclastic, all it wants to do is destroy destroy destroy. There’s a simple reason for that.
Ultimately systemic racism Theory and Critical Theory and social justice activism share this common foundational reality. They are anti-God and anti-creation. We believe that God created humanity in His own image. That means that God gave to man innate immutable characteristics. For instance, He created them male and female, white or black etc. And God in his goodness created these complementary distinctions. It is a very godless notion which says “Instead of anything that needs resolved in my life, who can I blame and who can I hate for who I am?”
If you turn people into victims, then how do you make them responsible to God as sinners?
Systemic Racism
Systemic racism claims that laws in America are purposely against them. The bottom line is, what laws in America are against any ethnic group? None. There are no anti-ethnically designed laws in America. There are none. There were some in the past, and I am grateful that America changed course on that. There is nothing in this culture that legally limits anybody based on their race. Systemic racism is essentially a conspiracy Theory that the Left approves of.
We are, as white people, or non-African-American people, the culprits in everything that's wrong in this society and the people who are suffering are suffering because we've done them wrong systemically. That is the claim.
Conclusion
We have an ever increasing mass of belligerent victims in America who are defining life by what they feel others have done to them. The Bible calls that a sin. Bitterness (Hebrews 12:15).
So the woke social justice warrior claims “We are not responsible for who we are, we came into this world a blank slate and you corrupted us. So you are responsible and should be hated.”
Social justice is another term for socialism. It's also another term for taking money or virtue from one person and handing it to another one. It's basically a euphemism for equality of outcome. You can have equality of opportunity but you can't guarantee equality of outcome. Social justice wants to guarantee equality of outcome by taking away something that this person has earned and handing it to someone who didn't earn it. So it was just a front for socialism.
It is a very dangerous thing which has no room for God, no room for responsibility, and no forgiveness. There is no room for confessing my sin and coming in repentance to Christ.
If you can push off what’s wrong with you on someone else you’re never going to deal with your own sin and resultingly, you can never be saved by Jesus Christ. You will be lost.
Sinners want comfort and the easiest access to false comfort is to blame someone else. This leads to blaming God. Why did you make me like this? It’s your fault (Romans 9:20).
The biggest conditions of a person’s life is not the conditions that others may have brought on them, but the condition of their own heart.
To my social justice friends in the NAD, I say this, you can’t fix society. You cannot fix society because Satan rules it, he is the god of this world.
In Jesus, God offers His righteousness to us (Romans 1:17; 2:13; 5:1; 2 Cor. 5:21). That makes us relevant to a watching universe, it fits us for heaven and the New Earth. That is the only kind of relevance with eternal (Great Controversy) significance.
To my woke white Adventist friends, if all you have to apologize for is your whiteness then you are way too self-righteous. You should repent of something that really matters. Like falling for social justice, wokeness, and Critical Theory.
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God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).