Transcript of All Things Episode 43: Social Justice: Antithetical to the Gospel or the Inevitable Fruit of the Gospel?
If you read my blog, you know I wrote a lengthy article yesterday about racial reconciliation. I was prompted to do that because of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, which occurred in February in Georgia. It just gained national recognition and prompted national headlines within the last few weeks.
If you’re a regular listener to All Things or if you often read JenOshman.com, you know that I have a burden and a passion for racial reconciliation. It’s an issue present in 2020 that I am passionate about, which leads me to write and talk about it quite a bit.
Because of that, some of my listeners and readers have called me a “social justice warrior.” I’m not going to either confirm or deny that particular label. I think it’s something that can mean all different kinds of things to all different kinds of people.
When Injustice Cries Out
Today I do want to talk about social justice and the gospel. Every time there is a crime like the shooting of an unarmed black man or black woman, there is an outcry when this crime reaches national headlines or when it goes viral on social media.
When we all become aware that this incident happened, there is, rightly, an outcry. People rightly demonstrate. People are rightly enraged or very upset. That is good and right.
Christians tend to engage with the incident, seeking to understand what happened and wanting to bring the truth to light. Whenever that happens, this social justice-versus-the-gospel issue comes to light again and again.
“Just Worry About the Gospel”
There’s this cry from some in the church that goes like this: “You shouldn’t engage in social justice issues. They detract from the gospel.” And so people feel like these racial issues detract from what really matters.
“Don’t get sidetracked into these progressive movements, where Jesus is put on the periphery and the gospel takes a backseat to the political issues of the day,” they say. “Don’t worry about social justice issues. Just worry about the gospel.”
This backlash, that narrative — they have always troubled me. And it has troubled me anew with the recent murder of Ahmaud Arbery. The idea that says “Don’t talk about social justice; just talk about the gospel” really troubles me.
The Words I Wanted
Before I go any further, I just want to thank my friend and brother, pastor Brandon Washington, for the sermon that he gave at his church — the Embassy Church — in Denver this past weekend.
I watched it on YouTube yesterday, and he gave me a ton of food for thought. He really put words to something that I feel like I’ve been wrestling with for several years, whenever this social-justice-versus-the-gospel issue comes up. I haven’t been able to put my finger on what really troubles me about this false dichotomy, this inconsistency.
Brandon gave me words for it, and I want to share his sermon because he says it better than I do. Because of this, because he said it so well, I want you to know that I’m borrowing some of his words and language. I would love for you to get to know him and to even engage with more of his sermons and materials online.
The Good News Is Not Monopoly
Agreeing with Brandon, I think the root of our problem here in the United States is that we have been preaching and embracing a truncated gospel. Now, I talk about this in my book Enough About Me. In it, I say that we look at the gospel and want it to be for salvation only.
The American church tends to view the gospel as “just about getting saved,” “just about getting to heaven,” “just about justification.” It’s a “get out of jail free” card. And so we leave the gospel there. “That’s all the gospel is,” we think. “It doesn’t bear on anything else in our lives. It’s just how we get into heaven.”
But the gospel does in fact instruct how we spend our time, our money, our education, our resources, our status, our socioeconomic level, our ethnicity, our family. Everything that we have — the gospel speaks to everything.
My Story (and Yours)
The Bible teaches us that the gospel should instruct all that we do (Colossians 3:16). The reality is, you and I were created by God (Genesis 1:27); we fell into sin (Romans 3:23); we were redeemed by Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21); and one day our relationship with him, as well as his reconciliation of all things, will be consummated in heaven (Colossians 1:19–22).
The Bible teaches us that really good news. It’s not just salvation. It’s not just heaven. It’s the good news that all things are going to be restored, and that good news influences everything in our lives.
In other words, because I have been saved by grace through faith, though I was dead in my transgressions, though I was an enemy of God, though I was in the domain of darkness — God, because of the great love with which he loved me, saved me (Ephesians 2:1–5).
He delivered me into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Through no effort of my own, so that I may not boast, he delivered me. He seated me in the heavenly realms at the right hand of Jesus, and he gave me good works to do, which he prepared for me in advance (Ephesians 2:6–10).
Freed to Restore
All of that really good news — the gospel — does impact the way I live my life. It means that my entire life is changed. I turn from living for myself to living for God. I turn from loving myself and being self-seeking to loving God and loving others. Jesus says, “Come, follow me. Pick up your cross. Lay down your life to follow me” (paraphrase of Matthew 4:19; 16:24).
And so the gospel then instructs all that we do, all that we say, all that we are. The gospel says that I must begin to model my life after Christ’s by
sharing Jesus with my Hindu neighbors.
participating in adoption or foster care;
sharing the gospel with my friends and family who don’t know him;
visiting those who are sick;
volunteering at a pregnancy center;
taking food to my local food bank;
preaching the gospel overseas; as well as
feeding the homeless here in Denver.
The gospel changes everything we are about. It’s not just the way into heaven. It’s not just good news for our justification — it’s also good news for our sanctification, for our growth, for the way that we live and conform more and more into the image of the beloved Son.
Compelled to Love
So then, as my friend Pastor Brandon says, the inevitable fruit of the gospel is the pouring out of ourselves here on earth because our citizenship is in heaven. We give all we’ve got here on earth because we belong to heaven.
And racial issues are really no different. The social justice issues of our day are the inevitable fruit of the gospel. We are redeemed and saved by Jesus, and therefore we turn our lives over to him. We become all about his business here on earth.
We care about our neighbors because they are made in the image of God. You and I are image-bearers. Every man and woman of every color, every ethnicity, every nation, tribe, tongue, and language is made in the image of God. And God says, “If you love me, then love my image-bearers” (paraphrase of 1 John 4:19–21).
So when our black and brown friends — black and brown image-bearers — say they are hurting, say they are mistreated, say they are victims of injustice, we’ve got to listen. We must listen to their burdens. We must listen to their grievances. We must enter in and understand their stories.
It’s not okay for you and I, who are rescued and redeemed image-bearers, to ignore the grief and the cries of injustice, the pain of other image-bearers who have darker skin. The gospel demands that we care.
Cross-Wrought Fruit
My husband said in his sermon this past weekend that we have been loved much; therefore, we must love much. The gospel has changed everything about us: the way we spend our time, our money, our education, our status, the way we steward our resources (which includes the color of our skin), the way we love God, the way we love our neighbors.
And, in my understanding of the term, social justice is not made up of peripheral, progressive, threatening, scary movements. Social justice is a part of this reality that the gospel changes everything.
Therefore, I must listen and learn. I must be an ally and a friend and a co-laborer with my brothers and sisters in Christ who have black and brown skin.
So, the first point I want to make — thanks again to pastor Brandon Washington — is that social justice is the inevitable fruit of the gospel. In other words, loving our neighbors is the inevitable fruit of the gospel.
Being involved in some kind of activism in the name of Jesus, for his glory and the good of neighbors, bringing about the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven — this is our imperative from the gospel. Social justice is not separate from the gospel. It’s not antithetical to the gospel. It’s the inevitable fruit of the gospel.
Call it something else if you want to. It’s too much of a loaded term for some. I don’t blame you for that. Nevertheless, we are called to love God and neighbor.
We Shut Our Eyes at Open Wounds
This is the point of the article that I wrote a couple of days ago. I wanted to call people, especially Christians, to pause, to listen, and to lament alongside our black brothers and sisters who are deeply grieved by the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.
Arbery’s murder prompted me to write the article, but here’s something else that I was thinking about even before Ahmaud Arbery’s murder came to light. I have been ruminating over it for the last couple months, actually.
This is what it is: the conversations that I have in women’s ministry with women who have survived sexual trauma are not unlike the conversations I have with my friends of color who have experienced racial trauma.
Here’s what I mean by that. When people of color share their stories with me, when I’m reading a book by a person of color, when I’m listening to a person of color speak out on a podcast, or when I’m in a small group where these stories are being shared — the cry of their heart is, “Why don’t people believe me?” The same is true of the women, as well as of the men, who have survived sexual trauma.
What I hear over and over from both populations is, “Why don’t people believe me?” In other words, they share their stories, and they are often written off. They are often disbelieved. The culture-at-large does not really believe their stories.
Un(ad)dressed Wounds Don’t Heal
And so I started to make a connection between racial and sexual trauma. Here in the United States, racial trauma and racial division is still awful. We can say that in 2020 we are still a very racially divided nation.
If my girl friends who have endured sexual trauma cannot heal unless people believe their stories, could the same be said of my brothers and sisters with black and brown skin? When the racial trauma stories of their lives are not believed, when survivors of trauma are not believed, they cannot heal. They cannot move forward.
Our immediate thought is to disbelieve survivors of both sexual trauma and racial trauma. I know this doesn’t account for all racism: I know there are always going to be extremists and nationalists on all sides.
Deflection Versus Reflection
But most of us live in what I call the “middle majority.” Most of the white population stays in the middle of the road. When it comes to social justice, nobody is too extreme. At the same time, we say, “Hey, here in this average group we are not racist. We teach our children to love everyone. We would never hurt a fly.”
Whenever a potentially racially motivated crime happens, I know what our conversations sound like because they happen in my midst all the time. We always say something like “Well, we need to wait to see what really happened!” or “Didn’t he actually do something to deserve it? Didn’t she actually deserve it? Doesn’t this person actually have a criminal record?”
We try to explain away the supposedly unjust situation. We have this immediate reflex of deflecting rather than reflecting and, therefore, understanding.
I don’t believe that we in the white middle majority are willfully racist, but I don’t know that we are willing to pause and take a look inward. I don’t know if we are really willing to examine the stories of our Black brothers and sisters with objectivity.
We need to seek to understand why, in 2020, people with black and brown skin say they are mistreated. What’s really going on? What’s at the heart of these stories? Why is it still happening? Why does our culture allow it? Why does our culture cause it?
Untraveled Conversations
I know that, for many, this is a very uncomfortable situation to be in. For example, when a girl has endured sexual trauma, her parents have to look at that situation and say, “Okay, how did we contribute to it? Where was I willfully ignorant? Where was I naïve? How did I contribute to your harm?
We who are in the majority culture have to say the same thing to our brothers and sisters who are in the minority: “Where have we been ignorant? Where have we been naïve? Where have we been unknowingly culpable — or knowingly culpable, as it may be?”
It’s simply easier to disbelieve, to write off these stories of trauma, than it is to believe and to wrestle and to really understand the heart and the context and the history from which these situations come.
More Objectivity, Not Less
I can hear the pushback even now in my head. People are likely to say, “Hey, Jen. You can’t take everything at face value. Just because somebody says that he or she was the victim of something doesn’t mean it really happened. I mean, half the time these people are imagining it or making an excuse.”
I know that pushback is out there, but I’m not saying, “Let’s be less objective.” I’m saying, “Let’s be more objective. Let’s be genuinely objective. Let’s actually pursue real truth and real justice rather than deflecting it, rather than having this immediate reflex of disbelief.”
We so often say, “Well, I really need to see more. Well, I really need to make sure that this person was not a criminal in the past. Well, it looks to me like he deserved it. Well, he was wearing a hood, and it was dark.”
All the things we come up with in order to deflect make us incredibly biased and incredibly subjective. I’m not saying for you to be less objective. I’m saying for you to be more objective.
We Reconcile Because God Reconciled
And I really believe that Christians must lead the way precisely because of what I said at the beginning of this episode: Social justice is an inevitable fruit of the gospel. In other words, we are rescued by the gospel, and so we love our Savior.
As a result, we should be leading in a way, listening in a way, and loving people in a way that our Savior does. We should love the people that he created, whom he loves so much himself. We ought to be leading the way and loving them for ourselves.
Our God is a reconciler. That is his very nature. Colossians 1:20 says that Jesus died to “reconcile to himself all things . . . making peace by the blood of his cross.” Second Corinthians 5:18 says that we have been given a “ministry of reconciliation.” That’s not just reconciliation of man to God. It’s also reconciliation of man to man.
There’s no way to love the gospel and love our God and love our Savior without loving the outworking of it in our community, in our culture. When we love our Creator, we are going to love his image-bearers, as well.
With Whom Did Christ Walk?
And of course Micah 6:8 says, “Do justice . . . love kindness . . . walk humbly with your God.” My call for you and me is to just walk in humility, to be kind, to pursue justice. So when our brothers and sisters cry out — why do we deflect? Why do we ignore?
For us who are Christians, this should not be! We have a Savior who is kind and compassionate, who drew near to the oppressed, to the meek, to the brokenhearted. We should be doing these things, as well. We should absolutely be mourning with those who mourn. We should be leading in these ways in our world.
The world should know us by our love (John 13:35): the love that we have for those who are hurting, the love that we show by listening, the love that we show by advocating when something wrong has actually taken place.
You and I have also got to grieve with those who grieve (Romans 12:15). How quick were you and I to lament Arbery’s death? I think the middle majority was quicker to disbelieve it or to explain it away somehow, to look for some sort of loophole as we said, “Yeah, but . . . I think this is what really happened.”
Why didn’t we just grieve with his mother? Why didn’t we just allow ourselves to be brokenhearted that this man was laid out on the asphalt in Georgia, his life cut way too short, when we was murdered at the hands of those two men? We look for a way to defend the white murderers with our initial reactions — rather than grieving, crying out with his family because Arbery’s life was ended far too early.
Questions to Ask Ourselves
Here’s my bottomline: Trauma will not heal if victims are not believed. This is true when there is sexual trauma or racial trauma. I think that our bias and the uncomfortable feeling, which comes with looking at our history and at the reality of race in 2020, keeps us from really diving in. These things make us more subjective than objective. We deflect, rather than reflect.
It is absolutely uncomfortable, but trauma is not going to heal if you and I don’t initially believe and seek to become more objective by doing research.
I think it’s important to ask, Do we want healing in our nation — or are we satisfied with the status quo? This is a scary question for the white middle majority. We enjoy a ton of privilege — are we afraid of losing that? Do we want peace and harmony?
If we say we do, but we aren’t willing to listen and to wrestle with the stories we hear, then we have to ask ourselves, Why? Why don’t we want to listen? Why can’t we let people with black and brown skin tell their stories? Why does that feel problematic to us?
With Whom Did Christ Walk?
Again, friends: Our God is a reconciler (Colossians 1:20). He reconciled us all to him, here and now, on this earth, so that we can have a heart of reconciliation, too. We are reconciled now in Jesus, so let’s pursue a ministry of reconciliation now (2 Corinthians 5:18).
If we are going to take after him, these issues have to matter to us. If we are going to love him, if we are going to love his image-bearers, if we are going to love our neighbors, then we must start bearing up in humility, loving our brothers and sisters, bearing their wounds.
Let’s do that. Let’s lead the way in walking in humility, grieving with those who grieve, mourning with those who mourn (Romans 12:15), listening patiently and with great objectivity as we try to understand what is at the root of what our brothers and sisters are experiencing.
His Heart Orients Ours
The way to do that, I think, is by taking on a posture of humility and a posture of silence, too. We need to take in and understand and read into history and our present day from the context and perspective of our brothers and sisters of color.
I encourage you to read my article, in which I link to books and movies that will help us all take a posture of humility as we seek to understand why so many of our friends of color are hurting and grieving because of Ahmaud Arbery’s death, as well as why so many in the white middle majority are quick to write it off and slow to link arms with our brothers and sisters of color in order to seek social change.
Again, I do believe that social justice is the inevitable fruit of the gospel. My encouragement to you and to me is to pursue God’s heart for reconciliation here and now.
Special thanks to my friend and fellow writer Tanner Swanson for this transcription.