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This year we want to have a strong focus on missional justice. Over 5 weeks, we are reposting a helpful article from Tim Keller (Gospel in Life Q4 2020) critiquing secular visions of justice that shape our current world. Last time, he outlined some of the foundational problems with other views of justice. In this blog Keller looks at justice through a biblical lens.
A Brief Outline of Biblical Justice
In order to compare biblical justice to the secular alternatives, below is a brief outline of the facets of biblical justice.[6]
- Community: Others have a claim on my wealth, so I must give voluntarily.
The Bible depicts the human world as a profoundly inter-related community. So the godly must live in such a way that the community is strengthened. Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke puts all the teaching on “the righteous” in the book of Proverbs into a concise and practical principle: “The righteous (saddiq) are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”[7]The gleaning laws of the Old Testament are a case in point(Deuteronomy 24:17-22). Landowners were commanded to not maximize profits by harvesting all sheaves or picking all the olives or grapes. Instead the owner was to leave produce in the field for the workers and the poor to take through their labor, not through charity. When the text reads that the sheaves, olives, and grapes “shall be for” the poor, it uses a Hebrew phrase that indicates ownership. To treat all of your profits and assets as individualistically yours is mistaken. Because God owns all your wealth (you are just a steward of it), the community has some claim on it. Nevertheless, it is not to be confiscated. You are to acknowledge the claim and voluntarily be radically generous. This view of property does not fit well with either a capitalist or a socialist economy.[8]
- Equity: Everyone must be treated equally and with dignity.
Leviticus 24:22- “You are to have the same law for the foreigner as for the native born.” The Hebrew word mesraim means equity and Isaiah 33:15 says “Those who speak with [equity, mesraim]…keep their hands from accepting bribes.” Bribery is unjust because in commerce, law, and government, it does not treat the poor the same as it does the wealthy. Any system of justice or government in which decisions or outcomes are determined by how much money parties have is a stench before God. Another example of inequity is unfair business practices. Leviticus 19:13 and Deuteronomy 24:14-15 speak of unfair wages. Amos 6:5-6 speaks of ‘unjust scales, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” To cut corners and provide an inferior product in order to make more money but not serve customers is to do injustice.
- Corporate responsibility: I am sometimes responsible for and involved in other people’s sins.
Sometimes God holds families, groups and nations corporately responsible for the sins of individuals. Daniel repents for sins committed by his ancestors even though there is no evidence he personally participated in them (Daniel 9). In 2 Samuel 21 God holds Israel responsible for injustice done to the Gibeonites by King Saul even though he was by that time dead. In Joshua 7 and Numbers 16, God holds whole families responsible for the sin of one member. In 1 Samuel 15:2 and Deuteronomy 23:3-8, he holds members of the current generation of a pagan nation responsible for the sins committed by their ancestors many generations before. Why? There are three reasons. Corporate responsibility. Achan’s family (Joshua 7) did not do the stealing, but they helped him become the kind of man who would steal. The Bible’s emphasis on the importance of the family for character formation implies that the rest of the family cannot wholly avoid responsibility for the behavior of a member. Corporate participation. Sinful actions not only shape us, but the people around us. And when we sin we affect those around us, which reproduces sinful patterns—even if more subtle—over generations. So, as in Exodus 20:5, God punishes sin down the generations because usually later generations participate in one form or another in the same sin.[9]Institutionalized sin. Socially institutionalized ways of life become weighted in favor of the powerful and oppressive over those with less power. Examples include criminal justice systems (Leviticus 19:15), commercial practices such as high interest loans (Exodus 22:25-27; Jeremiah 22:13) and unfairly low (James 5:4) or delayed wages (Deuteronomy 24:14-15). Once these systems are in place, they do more evil than any one individual within the system may intend or even be aware of.
- Individual responsibility: I am finally responsible for all my sins, but not for all my outcomes.
My outcomes. The Bible does not teach that your success or failure is wholly due to individual choices. Poverty for example, can be brought on by personal failure (Proverbs 6:6-7; 23:21), but it may also exist because of environmental factors such as famine or plague, or sheer injustice (Proverbs 13:23[10]; cf. Exodus 22:21-27). So we are not in complete control of our life outcomes. My sins. Despite the reality of corporate responsibility and evil, the Bible insists that, ultimately, our salvation lies in what we do as individuals (Ezekiel 18). There is an asymmetrical balance between individual and corporate responsibility. Deuteronomy 24:16 says that in ordinary human law we must be held responsible and punished for our own sins, not those of our parents. We are indeed the product of our communities, but not wholly—we can resist their patterns. Ezekiel 18 is a case study of what can happen if we put too much emphasis on corporate responsibility—it leads to ‘fatalism and irresponsibility’[11]. The reality of corporate sin does not swallow up individual moral responsibility, nor does individual responsibility disprove the reality of corporate evil. To deny (or largely deny) either is to adopt one of the secular views of justice rather than a biblical one.[12]
- Advocacy: We must have special concern for the poor and the marginalized.
While we are not to show partiality to any (Leviticus 19:15), we are to have special concernfor the powerless (Isaiah 1:17; Psalm 41:1). This is not a contradiction. Proverbs 31:8-9 says “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves…Defend the rights of the poor and needy.” The Bible doesn’t say “speak up for the rich and powerful,” not because they are less important as persons before God, but because they don’t need you to do this. The playing field is not level and if we don’t advocate for the poor there will not be equality. In this aspect of justice, we are seeking to give more social, financial, and cultural capital (power) to those with less. Jeremiah 22:3 says “Protect the person who is being cheated from the one who is mistreating… foreigners, orphans, or widows…” Jeremiah is singling out for protection groups of people who can’t protect themselves from mistreatment the way others can. (cf. Zechariah 7:9-10)
In our next blog, Keller will look at two common views of justice “freedom” and “fairness.”
