My 49 Year Pilgrimage Toward Biblical Justice

My 49 Year Pilgrimage Toward Biblical Justice

During the first 42 years of my life, I fully believed the widespread American ideology that our founding fathers were Christians, that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were almost sacred documents, that this chosen nation had a democratic government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

But in April of 1968, at the time of Martin Luther King's assassination, I had a second conversion---a conversion away from American racism and toward social justice.  In a divine personal revelation from the Holy Spirit, I was suddenly and keenly aware of the fact that American was racist at its core, and that racism was demonic.  American exceptionalism was being used to legitimate evil racism.  Since 1968, I have been discovering and working out the biblical, historical and sociological ramifications of oppression and justice.

My latest ramification: the first Reformation did not address oppression and justice.  So we need to create a second Reformation built upon these biblical principles: the kingdom of God, love and justice, Jubilee justice and the release of the oppressed peoples of the world.

For the first 15 years after my second conversion, 1968-1983, I used common American terms such as racism and social justice to think with.  Most white theologians, pastors and churches had done little scholarship on racism so I turned to four black scholars/activists---Tom Skinner, John Perkins, Martin Luther King and James Cone---and secular sociologists for insights.  And I memorized portions of Isaiah 58, Matthew 25 and James 2.

In 1983, I discovered two books written by two Latin American biblical scholars---Thomas Hanks and Elsa Tamez.  Before their Spanish books were translated into English, there was no theology on the extensive (555 references to oppression in the OT) biblical teaching on oppression.  Since 1983, I have preferred to use the more precise biblical concepts of oppression and ethnocentrism, not racism.

And since 1983-2007, I prefer the Biblical term Jubilee justice over social justice.  After reading Kingdom Ethics in which Stassen and Gushee reinterpret the Sermon on the Mount through the Isaiah Messianiac passages, reading Wolterstorff's severe critique of English translations of the NT as having been 'dejusticized', after reading Steven Voth's comparison of Spanish, French and Latin translations of the NT having 100 references to justice whereas the English NIV has only 16, I now use Jubilee justice and kingdom of God justice interchangeably.