Dec 12
9
From: ChristianGovernance eletter, December 8, 2012
A few days ago, we reported on our plans to include a session at our April Biblical worldview “Courageous Justice” conference on Environmentalism’s war on the poor. Because of the comprehensive and totalitarian nature of Environmentalism, it takes courage to stand against it for the sake of justice, justice for all, including the vulnerable and oppressed. The Frontier Centre this week reprinted a piece from the Washington Time on this topic: “Environmentalist power trips harm poor countries.”
Christianity has been declining in the West because the Church has stopped practicing it. We became really good at telling people how to become converted. But after that – what? We continued to think and live the same way as before in terms of day-to-day decisions, motivation and purpose. With a couple of minimal and mostly superficial exceptions: Don’t drink or smoke or chew, or go with girls who do! That’s deep!!!
Biblical worldview – the notion that the Bible is all-sufficient – that it contains all we need for life and godliness – is real Christianity. It’s not an option. Even at the political level, Christianity is a worldview. Those who are only interested in “social conservative” issues are expressing a stunted notion of Christianity. Economics and governance are full of theological and moral concepts and decisions – Biblical ones and unbiblical. And it’s our duty to learn the difference.
At a more general level, in the midst of talk about crucial theological matters, we have Paul in Galatians 2:9-10 writing, “and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. They only asked us to remember the poor-the very thing I also was eager to do.”
In Paul’s farewell comments to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, he talks about his integrity in providing for himself instead of burdening others, concluding with: “In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
We know these aren’t the only two calls to care for those who are needy and vulnerable amongst us. They are two that I’ve never heard teaching or preaching about so I wonder how often we overlook them in Evangelical circles. The Psalms, which we love to sing at our church, are full of calls for justice for the oppressed. Of course the Bible defines oppression. The serious Christian doesn’t take these commands and reinterpret them within today’s modern humanistic framework with its own notions of oppression. The Bible also defines justice, and it’s a notion that is inconsistent with social welfare and state-ist attempts at imitating charity and monopolizing the administration of justice.
Many people today are passionate about what they believe to be justice. Because of the fraudulent and misguided notions of justice in our day, it takes courage to take a stand for true justice. This often places us at odds with modern state-financed and media-backed Establishment thinking. Modern environmentalists think the poor are aided by their ideology. When we present the message that Environmentalism is a war on the poor, we are directly challenging Environmentalist ideology, beliefs that have even been embraced by a remarkable number of Christians. When we give exposure to Islam-inspired domestic violence, we are odds with today’s multiculturalists who are giving Muslims a pass on the just treatment of women, and civilized family relationships. When we frankly address sexual slavery and human trafficking, we challenge the incoherence of today’s sex-enslaved society that pretends to be concerned about this issue, but lacks the motivation to confront it effectively. When we advocate real justice in the realm of criminal justice while repudiating the injustice and one-dimensional thinking that extolls imprisonment as the best sentencing solution, we challenge the failures and immorality of the political left and right.
Courageous Justice is a powerful Biblical vision for our day. It might be a vision large enough to capture the hearts and minds of serious Christian men and women. Today is not a day for half measures and weak knees. Is that appropriate for any day? Too many Christians are half-hearted. Many of them don’t know what Christian justice and a Biblical worldview look like, so they are floundering but, if we can read, there’s no excuse for remaining in that state. Canadian Christians need a vision for Courageous Justice, a vision for justice predicated on the Law of God and the Lordship of Christ, and a vision of justice which then extends into all of life, all of Canadian society, through us, the subjects of Christ’s Kingdom.