The cross and society: a heart for social justice

I've been thinking for a while that I'd like to do an occasional series on the cross and its implications wider than the call to evangelism and salvation of individuals who trust Jesus.

It's true that these are massive and glorious implications of Jesus' death on the cross and his resurrection. Yet I fear that one of the reasons that some feel uneasy about a penal and substitutionary understanding of Jesus' death on the cross (that Jesus took our punishment in our place and in our shoes) is that they perceive that it has nothing to say more widely than the salvation of the individual. One university chaplain I know claimed to hold exactly this position in relation to penal substitution. Yet over the past year or so, as I've been reading Scripture, I've noticed that a whole load of wider implications flow from holding this position, which I plan to survey in a series of posts. Here's the first one.

The cross and social justice

God presented [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. [Romans 3:25-26, my emphasis]

Often evangelism and campaigning for issues in social justice seem to be set against each other as activities that Christians should engage in and pursue. Non-evangelical Christians often seem to have a much better record at being a voice for and campaigning for those who most often suffer injustice in the world today. I've also noticed that when evangelicals do speak about issues of social justice, it's almost inevitably spoken out with no reference to the cross whatsoever. It's as if we know we should care about the downtrodden and abused, but resort to a kind of proof-texting outside of a Biblical theology that points to Jesus' death and resurrection.

Yet one of the things that that a penal model of the cross says above all is this: God is bothered about ensuring that justice is done (see the quote from Romans, above). A penal understanding of the cross is based upon the (Scriptural) premise that a holy God demands that justice must be done. A holy God cannot just acquit guilty people of their sin (contra Allah of the Qur'an). This need for justice to be done flows from the very character of the God of the Bible - he would cease to be fair to his character if justice were not done. And so one of the things characterising the heartbeat of God is a heartbeat for justice to be done. By implication, through the cross we see that one of the things that God hates (we might state it even more strongly: something that he will ultimately not tolerate) is when injustice is done in his world and when evil appears to have the last say.

God's hatred of injustice that climaxes at the cross can be seen throughout Scripture. I've always found the description of God in Deuteronomy 10:17-18 moving: God cares about justice for those who, in Old Testament society, were the least likely to receive it. Perhaps today God would describe himself as the one 'who defends the cause of the abused child and the mentally disabled, and loves the asylum seeker and the dispossessed, giving them food and clothing'. Those who are unable to easily tend to themselves and those who are most likely to be abused are those who God speaks for. God passionately cares for justice. (See also a post I wrote on Jesus' parable of the unjust judge and the persistant widow, which I believe is all about God working justice for those of his people who are experiencing injustice today).

It's true that ultimately God's justice will be delivered, when Jesus returns and finally rights all wrongs in judgement of all. It's also true that being realistic about human sin means that we will never be able to eradicate all poverty or social ills. Yet God's passionate ache for justice that demanded a penal sacrifice of Christ endures today. God's heart still breaks as injustice goes on in the world.

I grant that the ultimate need of each individual in the world is to be reconciled to God through Christ. Evangelism is of vital importance - and I'm not wanting to dull anyone's commitment to proclamation of the gospel. My fear is rather that, as evangelicals, often we imply that we need not care about justice for the abused today because justice will one day be done, and we abdicate our responsibility to social justice in the name of evangelism. To do this is to see our own desires and passions diverge from those of the Lord. The cross reminds us that to be unbothered about injustice is to tolerate something that God himself hates.

So what?

The cross speaks of the God who will not let injustice have the last say in his universe. To share God's heart is to be stirred into action by the injustice we see. So why not, for starters, take a few minutes to...

Sign the Micah call
Lobby your MEP about renegotiating trade rules for Africa
Pray for the persecuted church

Film Review: The Dark Knight

Yesterday, I finally got around to watching the latest Batman offering, The Dark Knight, with Linda and my siblings. It's a fantastic film - and this post will probably be full of spoilers, so if you've not yet seen the film, do yourself a favour and see the film before reading this post!

Superhero films tend to struggle to know how to present the cities in which they are set. Should such a setting be realistic or based more in fantasy? Gotham City is presented as being very much in the real world - it's a New York or a Chicago, but sleek and dark, clean and with lots of straight lines. Gotham is a cross between grit and beauty, providing an incredible backdrop for the action within.

The film appears well cast. Christian Bale (who went to my school in Bournemouth!) does well in his role; by day as cocky and suave businessman Bruce Wayne, and by night as the angst-gripped and often guilt-ridden Batman. Heath Ledger is fantastic as the Joker, living up to all of the hype. He owns the screen of the scenes he is in. The Joker is quite terrifying, mixing comedic nihilism with sheer brutality to great effect.

The backdrop and the casting provides the springboard to the big questions that the film poses.

Gotham is presented as a very needy city, where peace is fragile and difficult to maintain. Although in parts the film seems to present goodness as part of human nature (in particular in a scene with two ferries), the overwhelming tide of the film presents human nature and deeply flawed and even evil. The film examines the question of whether we're able to keep to our own moral frameworks, particularly when placed under intense pressure (a tactic that the Joker uses on several occasions). Pressure shows everyone's uncomfortable shortcomings. This reminded me of something that CS Lewis wrote on this theme in Mere Christianity. He wrote that, often, when we let ourselves down somehow, we blame the pressure we found ourselves under. In his own words,

'The excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.'

In the film, as the Joker applies the pressure and makes people make snap decisions very different to those they might have made in the cold light of day, we see a different side to various characters. Perhaps we see them as they really are. Perhaps we see darkness in the hearts of each person.

Another theme is the morality of the operation of vigilante characters like Batman who operate outside of the law. As the film opens, Batman is receiving a bad press: although Batman has Gotham's law-breakers on the run, many are saying that Batman should hang up his costume and leave crime fighting to the police authorities. That seems all the more possible when a new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, is appointed. At last it seems that Gotham will be rid of crime through legal means.

Through the introduction of the Joker and his psychotic genius, Batman is drawn out of 'retirement' and back into crime fighting. Yet this is only with a lot of angst on Batman's part: in common with many 'post-modern' superhroes, Batman appears frightened of who he may be, who he may become and personal sacrifices he will have to make. The clues of the film also suggest that Batman fears that his vigilante crime-fighting may have even encouraged criminals to further their games to new levels of danger and risk.

At times, Batman also seems to over-step the line of what is 'acceptable', even as a vigilante crime fighter. In one part of the film, particularly, he seems to infringe the human rights of others in order to be able to perform his role. Yes, this is always with a view to eventually restoring order to the state and its authorities (as it seems that Batman realises that the long-term health of Gotham depends on a fair and judicial legal system), but Batman considers operating outside of their restrictions regrettably necessary in certain situations. On another occasion, Batman considers it necessary to lie to the general public in order to re-establish law and order under the authorities. All of these actions are presented by the film in a sympathetic light. Batman is, after all, and even with all his flaws, the hero. This has led some commentators to wonder whether director Christopher Nolan is offering a sympathetic critique of the real-life 'vigilantes' that are operating as part of the global 'war on terror'.

A sympathetic critique, perhaps, but the film seems to realise that even Batman can't ultimately win in his role as a one-man fighting force in the war on terror in Gotham City. The depressing truth is that no matter how many criminals Batman puts away, we all know that this isn't the end of the story. The corrupt system will either release them, or even more unsavory criminals will replace them. There's a limit to the effectiveness of Batman's violence, whether that is violence employed in conjunction with the government and authorities or outside of it.

Christians believe that there really is only one man to whom we can look in our despair. He was anything but a rule-bending law enforcer, but dealt with violence and crime at its root cause.

My friend Chris Oldfield has written another review of The Dark Knight, which is far more eloquent and thought-provoking! You can read it here.

Lessons from Judges 1

I’ve been working today on a small group study on Judges 1:1-2:5. Judges isn’t a book I know very well, and so it’s been a joy to dig into this challenging chapter.

Essentially this section of Judges needs to be read within the context of God’s promises to Israel about the invasion of Canaan that he makes throughout the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua. In these books, God promises the land to be a gift to the people of Israel, where they will experience his blessings and rest. He warns the people to ruthlessly remove the pagan peoples and their idols from the land; both as a form of judgement against their sin (see Genesis 15:12-21), and to free Israel from the temptations of idols and other false gods. The land is to be a place where God’s people willingly submit to him as their ruler without distraction (see Deuteronomy 12:3 and Numbers 33:50-56).

The book of Joshua is generally positive: the people enter the land, win victory after victory under Joshua as they trust in the LORD’s promises and strength, and experience something of his peace, rest and blessing. Judges, however, opens with the death of Joshua. Although the people’s immediate response is to enquire of the LORD and to obey him (Judges 1:1-7), things soon fall apart.

Judges 1 is the sad story of how the tribes of Israel fail to drive the people and their idols out of the land of Canaan for the sake of convenience and ease. The Israelite tribes continually make the indigenous tribes merely subservient to them, rather than ridding them from the land completely. In doing so, not only do they settle for ‘second best’ in the land, but (more worryingly), they disobey the very God that delivered them from Egypt. God’s sad verdict comes at the beginning of Chapter 2: Israel has not obeyed his voice – and for that, they will suffer. The indigenous tribes will never be driven out; they will be thorns in Israel’s sides and their gods will be a snare, just as God had said they would (Numbers 33:55).

Here are some implications for us that I think we can make from this sad story:

• God’s justice must be done. He is a God of justice and demands that justice is brought about. This is seen in microcosm with the story of Adoni-Zedek. Romans 3:25-26 say that God would act ‘out of line’ with his character if he were not to punish sin. The amazing thing is that, in Christ, he is just and the justifier of the guilty.
• The failure of the people of Israel to love and treasure the LORD God in the land shows that a more radical change is needed: a complete change of heart. This, of course, was the change that Jeremiah prophesied (Jeremiah 31:33), brought about as a person is ‘born again’ through the cleansing of the cross. In Christ, a Christian is a ‘new creation’ – and we long for our bodies to be redeemed and made new too.
• Although Christ has taken the punishment of the sins of those who have placed trust in him, we still have to face the consequences of our sin. The people of Israel had to live with the consequences of rejecting God in their lack of ruthlessness against idolatry. We, too, may face serious consequences when we disobey God, disbelieve his promises and fail to deal with the idolatry of our hearts.

Revisiting the persistent widow and the unjust judge

As I said in a recent post, I've been thinking a great deal recently about the parables of Jesus. One of them that has puzzled me in the past has puzzled me again as I've revisited it. Now I think I'm getting a bit closer to the nub of this uncomfortable parable.

The parable in question concerns the persistent widow and the unjust judge, which is recorded in Luke 18:1-8. What got me thinking about this parable again recently was the repetition of the word 'justice':

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'

"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

This made me think that there's more to the parable than immediately meets the eye. The other thing that I'd never really thought about before was the context. Jesus has been speaking about his return in Chapter 17 - and then returns to that theme in the final sentence of the parable. The parable starts with the word 'then' - making the link between chapters 17 and 18 solid. And so it seems to me that we should think of this parable as an encouragement to the disciples who may be undergoing struggles in the period before Jesus' return not to give up hope, but to pray and remain faithful to Jesus.

The unjust judge

On to the parable itself, which centres around the unjust judge. That the judge neither fears God or cares about men is detail which is repeated. Both of these would have been reasons to have helped the widow - it is commanded by OT Law, and compassion would have demanded it. In other words, the judge doesn't respect the needs of the poor and oppressed. Though Jesus isn't explicit, there was probably a reason that the judge wouldn't give the widow justice. Perhaps she couldn't afford to bribe him. In other words, the judge was arrogant and unjust, a powerful man facing down one of the weakest members of society.

The persistent widow

We don't know how the widow was being cheated. We do know that the judge wasn't inclined to help her. We also know that she was persistent. She came many times and implored the judge to rule for her. If she had kept quiet, perhaps things would have died down. But since she kept on demanding justice, time after time, the judge had no choice but to do something. Whatever he had been paid wasn't worth the hassle she was causing. He decided to grant her what she was due just to get rid of her.

The meaning of the parable

Now for the unjust judge and the widow, Jesus substitutes God and his 'chosen ones' - his people. It's not that God is like the unjust judge - rather, it's the opposite case. In fact, every detail that we're given about the unjust judge contrasts with what we know about God from the rest of the Bible. Jesus' argument is from the lesser to the greater: if an unjust, selfish judge will see that justice is done in response to persistent requests, how much more will the just God bring justice to the people he loves who pray constantly for help. I think that it's this emphasis on justice which is often missed when reading this passage.

Jesus evidently isn't saying that praying to God will lead to a temporal relief from injustice. Poor and oppressed Christians around the world are still calling out for relief and, for the most part, don't seem to be appreciably closer to a world of justice and compassion than they were when Jesus told the parable. If you read the parable as just an encouragement to prayer, there will always seem to be some lack of evidence that such prayer really makes a difference.

This is where the context of Chapter 17 (and Jesus' return) comes in. From the very earliest times, Jesus' followers hung on the promise that he would return. Only that made sense of 'losing life' (and all of the persecutions that brings) in order to experience 'true life'. Just like today, the promise of Jesus' return under-girded and overarched their lives. Without Jesus' return, Christianity makes no sense. And so, particularly in moments of injustice, we long for Jesus' return and for the way in which he will right wrongs. Sometimes the wait is particularly painful. Like the believers in the book of Revelation, sometimes we cry, "How long, Lord?" Sometimes it seems that God will never answer our cries for justice. Sometimes it feels like God is just putting us off.

But Jesus' answer is firm: God will see that his people will receive justice - and quickly. God's people will not suffer for a moment too long. When Jesus returns, it will be at the right time. Not our time or our preference, but God's, but the right time.

The challenge

Jesus' return is sure - but his question for us comes in the last sentence.

"However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" In other words, will we still be disciples of Jesus, even though it's cost us in the period waiting for his return? Or will he find us having given up, having capitulated to despair? When the answer to the prayers we have prayed and prayed and prayed finally comes, how will we be found? Or will we have turned instead to resentment or bitterness towards God? How will the coming of the answer of your prayers find you?

Jesus has told a parable of a persistence widow - very weak in the world's estimation - who has won a victory because she didn't give up hope. She didn't give up her plea and finally won the day, despite having the odds overwhelmingly stacked against her. And so I think the point is this: we sometimes become so worn down and discouraged by the injustices of our lives and the hardships that come through being Christians that we stop praying, stop hoping and ultimately stop expecting Jesus to return.

But the reminder of the character of God (so unlike the unjust judge), his care for his people and the surety of his promises should lead us to prayerfully and confidently commit ourselves to him - even when facing injustice. The Judge of the world is fair, he is loving, he is in control - and he will return.

And perhaps the other challenge for us in the West concerns our own godliness. We see in this parable that God cares passionately for the justice of his people. Walking in relationship with God means loving the things he loves and hating the things he hates. Perhaps as part of our own godliness, we need to be more concerned about the plight of Christians around the world who are experiencing horrific injustice. People like the widow from Bangladesh that is pictured here - whose husbands have been murdered for their devotion to Christ.

It's a word, at least, to me.

http://www.barnabasfund.org/
http://www.opendoorsuk.org/