Do you think you have 20/20 spiritual vision but, in reality, you only have 20/80? I needed a second conversion to cure my spiritual, historical and socioeconomic blindness.
Based on my 90 years of study and experience, I would hazard a guess that 90% of white, American evangelicals are spiritually, historically and socially half blind, but they are supremely confident that they have 20/20 vision. Why is this the case? Out of ignorance or out of choice? Would full light, full truth, be too uncomfortable to tolerate? Would it provoke too much guilt about their superiority and privilege?
Another way of raising the issue is using the analogy of invisible ink. It seems that some of the Scripture is written in invisible ink so that evangelicals can't see. They don't see the 555 references to oppression in the OT. There is no evangelical theology on the extensive biblical teaching on oppression. Why this horrific omission?
Almost all American, white evangelicals I know are keenly aware of personal sin, but these same people are blind to social evil, social oppression. This includes the thousands of Ph.D's, Th.D's and D.Min's., many of whom know both Hebrew and Greek. They have not discovered that systems of oppression can cause individual, family and community PTSD. Social and historical patterns of evil remain invisible to them. They see corruption, but not oppression; they see voodoo, but not oppression; they see poverty, but not oppression, not systems of oppression.
But it is not only white evangelicals that are blind to, or even deny, patterns of social evil. In 2000, Michelle Alexander, a brilliant, black civil rights lawyer, did not see the new system of oppression that had arisen in the criminal justice system. Here is her description of her blindness (The New Jim Crow):
"I understood the problems plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access to quality education---the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Never did I seriously consider the possibility that a new racial caste system [a new system of oppression] was operating in this country. The new system had been developed and implemented swiftly, and it was largely invisible, even to people, like me, who spent most of their waking hours fighting for justice.
After studying the situation for 10 years, Alexander concluded:
"Quite belatedly, I came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of radicalized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.
"What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals" and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination---employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, detail of food stamps, and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service---are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you scarcely have more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it."
To state it simply and bluntly, we have replaced "nigger" with "criminalblackman".
The biblical teaching on oppression and justice seems to be largely invisible to most white evangelicals. The following is my attempt to bring these extensive teachings to light.
The Hebrew scholar Thomas Hanks asserts that if a person considers the whole Hebrew semantic field for the concept of oppression, there are 555 references to the idea of oppression. So why is there no evangelical theological literature on oppression, no preaching on oppression?
Some of the following definitions of oppression and justice were stimulated by reading Six Theories of Justice by Karen Lebacqz. A fine book, but she says that the best biblical scholarship on justice to date only gives us FRAGMENTED theories of justice. I fully agree. If ignorance of the extensive biblical teaching on both oppression and justice is the primary issue, may I offer some thought-starters; at the end of my list of definitions, choose your favorite definition or create your own.
Oppression is organized and systematized injustice; it is not accidental, it is planned and deliberate. But by the second and third generation, the system of oppression may seem to the oppressor natural and normal.
Oppression is the cruel and unjust exercise of power and authority, usually by those who control political, economic and social, even religious institutions.
What does oppression do? It crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslave and kills persons and people created in the image of God; oppression, especially generations of oppression, cause individual, family, community, cultural PTSD. Exodus 6:9. Justice, by contrast, creates, honors, animates, improves and empowers persons and peoples.
Biblically, oppression is the primary, but not the only, cause of poverty.
Ethnocentrism usually leads to some type of oppression; or ethnocentrism is used to legitimate oppression.
Ideologies are often used to legitimate oppression.
Since we live in a fallen world (cosmos), full of poverty and oppression, justice requires that the laws of society reflect a bias toward the poor. (Isa.10:1-2)
In the NIV, the word oppression occurs 128 times; justice 134 times. In the typical Spanish, French, Portuguese, Latin or Italian Bible, justice occurs around 350-400 times.
Oppression destroys right relationships (righteousness); justice restore righteousness.
Justice requires action to restore righteousness.
Justice is an action that liberates the oppressed.
Jubilee justice is good news for the oppressed poor.
Justice occurs when a judge or a king makes a fair and just judgment between two parties.
Justice is an action; righteousness is a standard, a goal.
Justice sets things right.
Justice must identify systems of oppression and then destroy them.
Justice must identify ideologies used to sanitize systems of oppression; then replace them with truth.
Mishap---right judgments and concrete acts of justice.
Sedaqah---one word that combines justice and righteousness; same with the Greek word dikaiosune.
Jubilee justice---cancels debts every seven years; frees slaves every seven years; restores land every 50 years.
Jubilee justice does not allow lifelong or even generational systems of oppression to continue.
Justice and shalom are strong community concepts; oppression destroys families and communities.
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