Jeffrey Johnson, a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, has set himself the unenviable task of explaining, in just 68 pages, what Christians need to know about Social Justice. Owen Strachan, in his foreword, concisely describes Johnson’s thesis: “Social justice is not just not the gospel. It is anti-gospel. It is anti-gospel in its principles and its finished convictions; it is anti-gospel in its presuppositions and its animating biases.”
There are three groups in today’s Christian Church, according to Strachan, 1) the confused, of whom there are many; 2) the “engaged but tentative, wanting to promote justice but not certain as to whether they should do so through the lens of critical race theory”; and 3) a faction that has “enthusiastically embraced wokeness, is calling on white people to ‘repent of white supremacy,’ and is in real and grave danger of swapping out biblical Christianity for a compromised version of the same.”
The biblical and Christian worldview is not compatible with the foundation of wokeness, argues Johnson:
“As Christians we profess our authority to be God, and it is God who determines what is just and unjust. It was He in His ultimate wisdom and authority who laid the foundation for society and erected its infrastructure. However, the foundation of social justice is rooted in atheism and relativism. Social justice grew out of Marxism and critical theory, which have foundations diametrically opposed to that of the Christian worldview.”
Johnson argues that God has given us certain rights that precede government, including: 1) the right to life, 2) the right to protect life, 3) the right to work and provide for one’s life, 4) the right to marry and raise a family, and 5) the right to worship God according to conscience.
On the topic of marriage, Johnson writes:
“Though God made man as an individual before He instituted marriage, He didn’t design man to live alone (Gen. 2:18). Men and women are made to be codependent (1 Cor. 11:11). This is another basic truth revealed by God in nature. Man and woman were designed for each other. God has implanted natural attraction between men and women and provided the marriage union to satisfy and safeguard these natural desires.”
That is language that could have been written by any Seventh-day Adventist. But Johnson continues with a statement of biblical patriarchy few Adventists are brave enough to write or preach:
“Marriage was designed with a patriarchal head who leads a submissive wife for the purpose of taking dominion and propagating and raising the next generation of individuals. All these objectives are fleshed out in the early chapters of Genesis. Nature tells us, as does common sense, that the family consists of a man and a woman joined together by God, under the leadership of the husband, for the purpose of taking dominion through hard work and raising and nurturing children in the fear of the Lord.”
First, God has designed men to be masculine; it is imbedded in their biological nature. Far from being “toxic,” masculinity is vital for society. True masculinity allows a man to be strong and brave so he can protect and lead his wife and children and, if necessary, go to war and fight to safeguard the freedoms God has given all of us.
Next, God has designed women to be feminine. True femininity gives a wife the strength to be gentle in caring for her husband and patient in the nurturing of her children. Within the framework of a family, nature reveals the gender roles that distinguish men and women from each other. In other words, the difference between masculinity and femininity is not a social construct but something built into the biological nature of men and women.
All of this seems obvious, but for many Seventh-day Adventists, including the overwhelming majority of our clergy, these are fighting words. The SDA Church is not where it needs to be on created sex differences and role differences, and I despair of ever seeing us move toward a biblical model of sexuality and marriage.
Another institution that God has ordained is the state. Again, the state doesn’t have the power to undo or take away pre-existing rights belonging to the individual, the family, or the church. Johnson is also careful to note that church and state are conceptually distinct, and must remain separate to avoid the scourge of persecution: “The church is separate from the state, with a distinct jurisdiction, because the church derives its authority directly from God and not from the state. This ensures that the church’s authority is not undermined by outside powers, doctrines, philosophies, or influences. . . . The state and church must remain separate from each other; otherwise, religious persecution is bound to occur.”
Johnson argues that these four institutions of power—the individual, the family, the civil authority (the state), and the church—do not receive their authority from each other but directly from God.
That would be news to our founders, who argued that government “derives its just powers,” in Jefferson’s language, “from the consent of the governed,” and when government fails to govern by consent, it is time to replace it:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
By contrast, Johnson’s theory of government reminds one of the “divine right of kings,” a pre-American philosophy pursuant to which, since the government’s authority is granted by God, the sovereign king is answerable only to the Sovereign King, not to the people.
Similarly, although the Christian church is, even more obviously, established and authorized by God, individual Christians govern it, according to principles laid out in Scripture, at every level of its organization, from the local church to our general conferences.
I don’t think Johnson is trying to argue that because God authorizes these institutions, only God can operate them. Rather, he seems to be trying to argue that the four institutions should each stay in its own lane, and out of each other’s lanes.
I’m not sure that it was necessary, in order to critique social justice, critical theory, and critical race theory, to articulate a Christian unified field theory of everything—as Johnson has tried to do in a very brief book—and this part of Johnson’s analysis does not seem well thought through.
Marxism vs. Christianity—Two Competing Belief Systems
Critical Race Theory, or “wokism,” is a Marxist phenomenon: “The Marxist roots of this movement are not something social justice advocates are hiding—they are rather proud of this. For instance, Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter (BLM), identifies herself and her fellow organizers of BLM as ‘trained Marxists.’”
Karl Marx was not a garden variety atheist; he wanted to extirpate all trace of God from human society. “He was prepared to rethink everything, including the family, from the ground up and start afresh. Marx was eager to eliminate everything associated with God so he could rebuild a new system of beliefs founded on the fluid and ever-shifting foundation of atheism. Thus, the old stone foundation had to go, along with the infrastructure that stood upon it.”
“He made this clear in The Communist Manifesto (1848) when he and co-author Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) declared, ‘Communism abolishes eternal truths.’ Everything truth-related to God and eternity must be thrown out. Communism begins on a totally new foundation. As Marx and Engels went on to say, ‘It abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis.’
Marxism is based upon four major premises: 1) materialism, the philosophical precommitment that all things can be reduced to physical matter, and there is no God, nor any supernatural, unseen world, 2) positivism, materialistic science is the foundation of all knowledge (Darwinism is the handmaiden of Marxism), 3) Tabula rasa, that humans are, in a state of nature, a “blank slate”, the theory being that there is no such thing as human nature, much less fallen human nature, 4) determinism, the philosophical notion that all events are determined by natural laws.
Christianity holds the opposite beliefs in all four areas: 1) there is an unseen, spiritual and non-material, supernatural world, hence, 2) there is knowledge that goes beyond what can be verified by the scientific method, 3) there is a fixed, fallen, sinful human nature, such that humanity is not infinitely malleable by government coercion, 4) God created us as free moral agents with free will; our moral choices are free and not determined by physical or natural laws.
Marxism’s prescriptions for fixing societal woes and ills are based upon its philosophical assumptions: the problem is not with human nature; humans are fine, so there must be a problem with our systems. If we can isolate the systemic problems and correct them, then we can have heaven on earth.
Christianity’s prescriptions are likewise based upon its philosophical assumptions: Humans are not fine; Adam sinned and therefore the entire race has a sinful nature which can only be repaired supernaturally, on an individual, person-by-person basis, through surrender to God in Jesus Christ and regeneration through the Holy Spirit.
Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) was preaching in London even while Marx was researching “Das Kapital,” at the British Museum Library. Spurgeon warned his congregation of the dangers of Marxism. Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” co-writer, Friedrich Engels, once referred to Spurgeon as “the person he hated most in the world” [David Aikman, “The Delusion of Disbelief,” 2008, p. 106-107].
Spurgeon was never taken in by Marxism, recognizing secular utopianism as a direct competitor to Christianity, not least because the two faiths have different theories of regeneration:
For many a year, by the grand old truths of the gospel, sinners were converted, and saints were edified, and the world was made to know that there is a God in Israel. But these are too antiquated for the present cultured race of superior beings! They are going to regenerate the world by Democratic Socialism, and set up a kingdom for Christ without the new birth or the pardon of sin.
As noted, Marxists blame society’s ills on its systems and institutions. At first, their main culprit was private property. “The theory of the Communists,” wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, “may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” But private property is recognized and protected in two of the Ten Commandments—"thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not covet”—so Christians reject this Marxist nostrum.
Karl Marx Rebelled Against the Family
A little known fact is that the early Marxists were not keen on the family, either. Johnson quotes the Communist Manifesto on abolition of the family:
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital. Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty. But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social. It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage—the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.
There’s much of interest in that passage. First, the family isn’t based upon private gain, but families are far more economically stable and prosperous than single people. Family breakup, illegitimacy, and female-headed families are a huge driver of poverty in America’s lower class. Marx and Engels noticed the prosperity of the “bourgeois” family, but got cause and effect switched around: wealth does not lead to stable families; stable families create prosperity and wealth.
Notice also the Marxist motive for “replacing home education by social.” Socialist education is not a benign thing; I suggest the reader watch one or two of our friend Scott Ritsema’s very revealing and startling lectures on socialist or “Prussian” schooling, as transported to America. Where possible, we need to return to home schooling; in my opinion, an “Adventist” imitation of the government-run Prussian schools is not good enough for our children.
In any case, Christians must and will reject the Marxist attack on the family. The family was created by God at the creation of mankind, and God Himself hallowed the institution of marriage, just as he hallowed the Sabbath day.
The attacks against property and the family are still going on, of course. The covid nightmare was designed to ruin small, local businesses—it permanently closed thousands of with non-chain restaurants, for example—and to herd consumers toward tech platforms that the Left controls. And of course the trans mania is designed to efface God’s created sexual order—“male and female created he them” Gen. 5:2; Mat. 19:4; Mark 10:6—and thereby destroy the family.
Critical Theory
Critical theory sprang from Marxism, and claims that those in power use language as a means of oppression, and that if language can be deconstructed, the power structures of oppression can also be deconstructed.
In the 1920s, many Marxists became disillusioned with Marxism, and were increasingly concerned that communism was not taking root outside of Russia. In the more prosperous Western nations, Marxism was soundly rejected by the working classes, the very people whom Marx had expected would embrace it. Clearly, “classical Marxism”—meaning the class struggle, the strife between capital and labor, or business owners and employees—was not gaining traction as Marx and his followers had assumed it would. Something had to change, and eventually classical Marxism would be replaced by what has come to be known as Western Marxism, social Marxism, or cultural Marxism, which includes critical theory.
The two intellectuals who pioneered this movement were Georg Lukács (1885–1971) and Karl Korsch (1886–1961). Georg Lukács was an active member of the Hungarian Marxist Party; he eventually moved to Moscow and found work at the Marx-Engels Institute. Korsch fled Germany in 1936 for the United States and taught at Tulane University in New Orleans before moving to New York to work at the International Institute for Social Research.
The Frankfurt School
Lukács’ and Korsch’s move away from classical Marxism set in motion the rise of the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxism. The Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, Germany, was founded in 1923 by Marxist law professor Carl Grünberg (1861–1940), the first avowed Marxist to hold an endowed chair at a German university. The chair was endowed by a wealthy merchant, Felix Weil (1898–1975), who was also a committed Marxist, and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the problems of implementing Marxism.
The Frankfurt School was dedicated to researching how best to implement Marxism around the world, as well as infusing Marxist ideas into every discipline—philosophy, sociology, history, law, and psychology. Notable Frankfurt School scholars include Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), Erich Fromm (1900–1980), and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), who would take over leading the program in 1930.
Horkheimer defined critical theory in his 1937 essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory.” Philosophically, Horkheimer replaced Marx’s positivism with relativism, which has become one of the pillars of critical theory. According to Horkheimer, the laws of nature cannot be comprehended outside of our subjective experiences, which are the product of our cultural milieu. Robin DiAngelo has written, “Critical theory developed in part as a response to this presumed superiority and infallibility of scientific method, and raised questions about whose rationality and whose presumed objectivity underlies scientific methods.”
Such radical relativism, skepticism, and deconstructionism render objective science impossible. Science arose in the wake of the Protestant Reformation and is based upon the Christian idea that God is rational and non-arbitrary, and generally operates through natural laws that He has created and set in motion. Because external reality follows fixed, discoverable laws established by God, we can, Kepler said, “think God’s thoughts after Him.” As Solomon said, “it is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” Proverbs 25:2. When we jettison the Christian foundation of science, science goes away. That’s why science is disrespected and degraded by the Left. Research Lysenkoism for an example.
The Frankfurt School held that language is a social construct of the ruling class used as a means of oppression, and therefore that language is inherently oppressive. This view was promoted by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) and later by Michel Foucault (1926–1984), who claimed that “knowledge is a construct of power.” For Foucault, there was no objective truth; rather there were “regimes of truth,” which each society establishes according to its political needs.
Johnson states:
It’s not necessarily jails or prisons that keep the Have Nots oppressed; it is language itself that is holding them down. The Haves define the meaning of words, and such proscribed meaning is what keeps the Have Nots in line and submissive. And this is the heart of critical theory—any authoritative meaning that passes itself as objective truth is inherently discriminating and oppressive. Therefore, critical theory seeks to deconstruct objective meaning wherever it’s found.
Under this ideology, not only can there be no objective truth, including the objective truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, there can be no law, history, literature, or science, or really anything at all except the ever-shifting sands of who is in power at the moment. There is no objective truth, there is only the narrative needs of the Party, and all other and previous facts must be “memory holed.” This is the picture of lawless totalitarianism captured so well by George Orwell in his novel, 1984.
Horkheimer understood that such a radical change in how we view reality could not take place overnight. “The Revolution won’t happen with guns,” Horkheimer stated, “rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism.”
Back to Destroying the Family
The “New Left”—the communist revival in the late sixties and early 70s West—was a major driver of the sexual revolution. Wilhelm Reich, the author of The Sexual Revolution and Social Function of Sexual Oppression, claimed that only “under non-capitalist and non-patriarchal institutions could people live honestly, industriously and co-operatively.”
The Left needed to tear down the family in order to leave the individual defenseless, without a mediating institution, in the face of the Marxist system. The radical Left had to assault the biblical model of gender roles, complementarianism, responsible parenting with discipline, sexual modesty, and purity until marriage, and they did. In social justice theory,
“married women who are happy to follow God’s admonition to be submissive to their husbands and to care for their children at home are not only supposedly oppressed themselves but also contribute to the oppression of others. Though they may be happy, they are restricted. More than that, they are propagating this oppression to the next generation—their children. Such women need to feel ashamed of their actions, so say social justice acolytes. And if things continue, their children will need to be removed from such abuse and placed in reeducation camps, as suggested by Michael Beller, former principal counsel of the Public Broadcasting Service. In short, those who don’t actively and continuously repudiate the evils of the current ordering of society are aiding oppression and helping it continue on to the next generation. Their silence is violence.”
Critical Theory demands that parents be stripped of the right to raise their own children, and that children be empowered to make more and ever more decisions on their own, such as the permanently life-altering decision to transition to the opposite sex, without parental consent. Any parent who objects to their child being prescribed puberty blockers or undergoing a sexual transition or an abortion are seen as abusers who need to be arrested. This is the ideological background of the “Biden” regime’s declaration that parents who protest a Leftist-controlled school board’s brainwashing of their children are domestic terrorists who must be investigated by the FBI.
Nationalism Must be Destroyed
Because Marxism is a global international movement, nationalism must fall and there must be an open, borderless society. The “Biden Administration” is ushering in millions of illegal aliens per year, and may bring in as many as 30 million during its four years in office. The national character of the American people must be totally transformed by massive transformative immigration.
Power and decision-making must be moved from the local municipalities to the state, from the state to the federal or national government, and from the national government to international authorities and organizations. Issues like climate change and global pandemics are ideal for justifying the migration of power from national governments to international bodies. But God confused the languages at Babel for a reason: He did not want the world united with one language, culture and people.
The Cultural Marxists Despise Individual Rights
Individual rights and freedoms must bow to the global agenda of the cultural Marxists, who have a fanatical hostility and contempt for free speech. The Left have always stifled free speech wherever they have control, starting on school campuses. The Marxists now control big tech, however, so the largest social media and video hosting companies routinely delete non-approved speech, and ban users who persist in opposing approved narratives such as the Covid narrative. Corporate Human Resources departments are also staffed by thoroughly indoctrinated cultural Marxists, so there is stifling repression and conformity at most of America’s large corporations. Scores of people are warned, disciplined, or fired every day for non-approved speech at America’s large corporations.
Although the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the constitution, both the Obama and “Biden” administrations have found ingenious ways to deny people that very right—conspiring with the large banks to prevent gun dealerships from using banking and credit card clearance systems, having a dozen federal bureaucracies, including the weather bureau, order a 50-year supply of ammunition all at once—many millions of rounds—making ammunition very expensive and hard to find, etc. The Left well understands that an armed populace is the biggest obstacle to the monstrous totalitarian tyranny they are rapidly imposing.
Social Injustice
The most perverse aspect of “social justice” is its Orwellian perversion of language. “Social justice” is not about justice at all. Social justice is not concerned with the rule of law, equality before the law, the fair and impartial treatment of everyone, regardless of race, sex, religion, ethnicity, although these things are the concern of true justice. In fact, the Left fanatically despises true justice.
True justice is based on the universal law of God that demands fair treatment and righteous judgment. the Bible, which states, “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow.” (Deut. 16:19–20).
Social justice makes a cardinal virtue of the very inequality and lawlessness with which it treats people. People from “oppressed groups”—blacks, women, Muslims, gays, etc.—are deemed to have specially elevated authority, and, under the concept of “intersectionality,” to have even more authority for each oppressed group they are part of. White males are at the very bottom of the totem pole, of course, and should be subject to all the systematic obstacles, indignities, and penalties that society can find to impose on them.
Social justice derogates traditional justice by calling it a social construct designed by white men to keep their subjects obedient. Social justice is obsessed with equality of outcome, which means there can never be any actual law. Because in any game with equally-enforced rules, there will be winners and losers, and the whole point of Marxism in general and cultural Marxism in particular is to make certain there is equality of outcome—in other words, there can be no winners or losers. So the rules and the laws must be tossed out, and they are, gleefully.
Social justice is committed to obliterating all laws. Since law is an intrinsic part of the character of God, and a sense of justice is inborn in the humanity God has created in his own image, social justice is profoundly atheistic, anti-theistic, and anti-humane. Social justice is a blatantly satanic rebellion against God and God’s image in humanity.
The Tactics of the Social Justice Warrior
How have the cultural Marxists been so successful? In a word, Gaslighting, a term from the 1938 play Gas Light (and the 1940 Ingrid Bergman movie of the same name), in which a fortune-hunting husband tries to convince his wife she is crazy. Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic, an attempt to make someone question their own perceptions or judgment by continually lying to them. The cultural Marxists have accepted Leftist utopian ethics, according to which their hoped-for utopia justifies any crime, any atrocity, certainly including constant lying. And that is what they do: they lie constantly.
By far the most influential book of radical Leftist tactics was Saul Alinsky’s 1971 volume—which he dedicated to Lucifer—“Rules for Radicals.” His basic strategy was:
Divide and conquer
Demonize institutions of power
Control the narrative
Relentlessly assault resisters
Make globalism the solution
Alinsky directed Leftist radicals, including those acting as “community organizers,” to always be fomenting disagreement, strife, and hostility:
“The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. . . . Fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. . . . Search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them. . . . There can be no such thing as a “non-controversial” issue. When there is agreement there is no issue; issues only arise when there is disagreement or controversy. An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into which the people can angrily pour their frustrations. He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time.”
Alinsky advises never to refer to people as “Americans” because that tends to unite us, and the social justice warrior can succeed only by dividing us. As Alinsky states, “A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives—agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.”
Alinsky emphasizes that you don’t necessarily need a majority for the revolution to happen. You need an aggressive minority and a passive and silent majority that won’t resist the revolution. “Any revolutionary change,” states Alinsky, “must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.”
Race – the Gift that Keeps on Giving--to Marxists
Critical Race Theory, or “wokism,” is merely the latest iteration of a longstanding Marxist strategy to use America’s racial divide to destroy the strongest and most important bulwark against communism—the United States. The communists understood, upon gaining power in Russia in 1917, that the United States would be their chief adversary, and that America’s greatest weakness was race. Almost immediately, they began to exploit this weakness.
As early as the 1920s, the Communist International (Comintern), whose mission was to spread the communist revolution around the world, developed a plan to recruit southern blacks to push for “self-determination in the Black Belt”—a separate black state in the South, which would provide it with a beachhead for spreading communist revolution to North America.
From the 1930s throughout the Cold War, and even until the end of the Soviet Russia in 1989, any criticism directed at communist Russia’s genocides, gulags, lack of freedom, or economic failure was met with the response that America oppresses its black minority. This tactic was so over-used it became known as “whataboutism.”
Even as recently as the 1970s and 80s, the May 19th Communist Organization, which included die-hard revolutionaries from the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, and other militant groups, committed crimes to raise money for a black ethno-state in the American south, the old dream of the Comintern in the 1920s and 30s. The infamous 1981 Brinks-Nyack robbery, in which three people were killed, was carried out to raise money for that purpose.
Critical Race Theory follows classical Marxist theory in insisting that sinful human beings are not the problem, rather, social structures are the problem. And while conventional Marxism blames private ownership of the means of production, Critical Race Theory casts a much wider net, alleging that all the institutions and structures of society, having been created and developed by a majority white culture, are inherently racist and evil. Under critical race theory, racism is not a private attitude or belief, it is a system of social structures developed by the white majority, all of which is racist and therefore all of which must be torn down and destroyed (and replaced by a Leftist utopian totalitarian system, although this part is not said out loud).
This is an inversion of biblical morality. Critical Theory teaches that today’s white child has inherited the racial guilt of ancestors who lived decades or centuries ago, and can do nothing to ever be rid of it, whereas Scripture teaches that guilt adheres only to the guilty person, not his descendants. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” Ezek. 18:20.
The Critical Theorists Understand That They Substitute Their Own Morality for God’s Precepts
Jeremy Rifkin, a communist who in 1970 founded “the People’s Bicentennial Commission” to provide “revolutionary alternatives” for the bicentennial year, has been forthright in noting that critical theorists do not adhere to the old norms and values, including biblical morality:
“We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home and therefore obliged to make our behavior conform to a set of preexisting cosmic rules. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world, and because we do, we no longer feel beholden to outside forces. We no longer have to justify our behavior, for we are now the architects of the universe. We are responsible for nothing outside of ourselves, for we are the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever.”
Because God and biblical morality have been removed from the picture, there is no objective standard of right and wrong, only what those who seize power are able to enforce.
Conclusion
Social Justice is totalitarian in its beliefs and character. When it achieves total power, it will brook no opposition. The voraciousness of “cancel culture” is frightening. Today’s cancel culture is the phase of Leftism that Rod Dreher has termed “soft totalitarianism,” meaning that the social justice mob will get you fired from your job, but not, as in the “hard totalitarianism” of the old Soviet Union or Mao’s China, imprison or kill you.
But the reality is already worse than that. We are in a legal twilight zone of weaponized investigation and prosecution in which Trump supporters and non-communist journalists/reporters are harassed with baseless arrests and searches and, in the case of the January 6th defendants, held without bond for years for misdemeanor trespassing, while few of the Left’s street thugs—Antifa and BLM—were prosecuted for a 2020 anti-Trump rioting spree that killed scores of people and destroyed billions of dollars worth of property. In fact, celebrity Leftists and even the Vice President, Kamala Harris, raised money to bail some of these rioters out of jail. But, again, unequal treatment, bias, and injustice are the very soul, the very of essence, of “social justice.”
The character of Marxism in power has been demonstrated over and over and over, in Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, etc. When the Left’s power is sufficiently consolidated, they will imprison and kill you. That is a certainty, and it is coming in America faster than you think.
This obviously has horrific consequences for the Christian Church. Ever since Marx, Leftists of all varieties have understood that Christianity and Leftism are competing religions, and have always, after consolidating their power, taken steps to suppress Christianity. And yet many Christians do not see the bright, shining snare they are stepping into by embracing “social justice.” They are actually facilitating the coming catastrophe. As Johnson writes:
The church needs to realize that once individual freedoms are gone, religious freedom will be gone too. Inviting social justice to enter the church is like asking Satan to come and preach and then being surprised afterward that he tried to burn the place down.