Understanding and doing justice

Stage II --- Private Property and Land Ownership

At the end of stage one, I highly recommended Money and Power, by Jacques Ellul.  In stage two, I also highly recommend Ownership, by Charles Avila.  Avila, a Catholic priest from the Philippines, was troubled by the huge gap between the rich and poor.  Unequal land ownership seemed to be a primary factor.  So Avila decided to study the early church fathers to see what they had to say  He was surprised to find a very strong anti-private property and anti-Roman position.  Roman law allowed for almost unlimited accumulation of land.  Her is what Augustine had to say:

"Augustine lived in fourth century Roman Africa, where Roman law theory and practice of private property had led, quite naturally, to the possession by a few persons of very great wealth, at the price of the dispossession and impoverishment of very many other persons.  This theological giant of the patristic age saw the prevailing oppression, the blatant injustices perpetrated against the poor, as an assault on Christ! . . . . He argued that this legalized right was an affront . . . . to the absolute dominion and paternal providence of the Creator, who had willed all of creation to be all in common, according to each person's need. . . ."

Basil, the Great, said that land, rain and sun are koina, a part of nature to be available to all.  Koina are to be used to promote koinonia.  Ta koina (common goods) are contrasted with ta idia (one's own things).  Basil warns that one should not make private, one's own, what should be public, for the common good.  Further, Basil warns:  "The private appropriation of the koina, such as land, is robbery.  Hence, continued excessive landownership is but fresh and continued theft."

It sounds like the Church fathers had something in common with the church described in the book of Acts (4:32-35):

"All the believers were one in heart and mind.  No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. . . . There were no needy persons among them.  For from time to time, those who owned land or houses, sold them, bought the money from the sales and put it at the apostle's feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."

Principles of justice, concern for the poor, must control the possession and use of private property.  If this does not happen, appeal to the right of private property (beyond a house to live and a farm to provide a livelihood), can be misused to create systems of socioeconomic oppression.

At the time these United States were founded, there was an attempt to add a sixteenth article to the Bill of Rights which would have restricted concentrated ownership of land.  This is how the proposal was stated:

"An Enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and Destructive of the Common Happiness of Mankind, and therefore, every free State hath a right by its laws to discourage the Possession of Such Property."

The founding fathers were a white, male, rich, propertied elite who benefited from concentrated ownership so it is not surprising that this article was defeated.  The defeat of the sixteenth article may have a tie to our current financial/economic crisis.  There was too much sand in the foundation of our current financial/economic system.  According to the experts, it would have all collapsed in 2007-08 if the Federal Reserve System had not stepped in with massive, and probably some illegal, rescue efforts.  Looking back, it appears that we should have let the existing financial/economic system collapse, as catastrophic as that would have been for most American, including myself.

Already much of Wall Street and many corporations are back making big profits while much of Main Street is struggling with high unemployment.  We need a new financial/economic system with the power of corporations and Wall Street severely constrained.

The family farm which is fast disappearing needs to be revived.  Small businesses which are being battered by the Walmart's of the world need protection.  Cooperatives should replace most of the modern corporations.

Jacques Ellul and Charles Avila have already outlined the principles of a more humane and just economic system.  Now we need some of the scholars at our Christian universities to provide a blueprint on how to build this new economic system.  In my humble opinion, our current financial/economic system is still fragile and will likely collapse in two to five years.  We need to be ready with plans to rebuild.

I am reminded of Jeremiah six where he says:  "From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain."  And tragically, in the midst of this combination of idolatry, oppression and greed, the people preferred the teaching of the false prophets.  And we all know the end result; all of the above were sent into exile.

Stage III ---  The Spirit, the Kingdom and Justice

We, as evangelicals, need to blend a John 3:16 gospel with a Luke 4:18-19 gospel: a two-pronged gospel.  John 3:16 is a personal-sin, personal-salvation gospel based on the cross and resurrection.  Luke 4:18-19 is a Spirit/Kingdom gospel concerned about justice for the poor and oppressed.  A complete, holistic gospel combines justification by faith and justice for the poor.

Luke 4:18-19, a neglected Scripture in most evangelical circles, is a quotation from Isaiah 61.  Tied to other Messianic passages from Isaiah (9:7-8; 11:1-4; 16:5;28:16-17;42:1-4; 61:1-4, a supporting scripture: 10:1-2), we glean a clear grasp of Isaiah's understanding of the nature of the coming Messianic kingdom.  What we call the kingdom of God in the New Testament has three characteristics: the Spirit, the kingdom, and justice for the poor.

Read and reread these Messianic passages in the NIV.  Memorize some or even all of them.  Saturate your thinking with these truths.  Then bring these truths with you into the New Testament and they will transform your understanding of the kingdom of God.  Here is my paraphrase of Isaiah 61:1-4:

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
  because the Lord has anointed me to preach
  good news to the poor,
  to proclaim freedom and release by practicing
  Jubilee justice for the poor.

  To bestow on the poor
  a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
  the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
  a garment of praise instead
  of a spirit of despair.

  These transformed poor will be called
  oaks of righteousness or trees of justice.

  These transformed poor will rebuild
  the ruined cities."  (Noble paraphrase)

In Luke 4:18-19, we find four key concepts: the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Jubilee justice.  As you read Acts 1:1-8, in which there are two themes---the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God---bring the truths from the Messianic passages and Luke 4:18-19 with you.  Then Paul sums all of this up beautifully and concisely in Romans 14:17, one of the most overlooked passages in the Bible.  My paraphrase of Romans 14:17 is as follows: "The kingdom of God is justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit."  Note how the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God are tied together, and how justice and shalom are an integral part of this package.

Stage IV --- Justice

Stop.  If you are reading an English translation of the Bible, put it down.  If you are reading the KJV, throw it out. Instead, learn to read the Bible in either Spanish or French or Latin, or any of the Romance languages.  Even German or Dutch are better than English.  In these languages, the justice message comes through loud and clear, but, by comparison, only weakly so in English.  In the RSV, the NIV or NKJV, you will find the word justice from 125 to 134 times.  In a Spanish, French or Latin translation, justice occurs from 350 to 400 times, about three times as often.  If you translate the Bible from Spanish to English, suddenly you will find justice in Romans; of course, in English translations, dikaiosune is usually translated righteousness.

The old KJV was much worse than our modern English translations.  In the KJV, there is no reference to justice in the New Testament, and justice is rarely found in the Old Testament.  KJV translators translated mishap as justice only once; most of the time mishap as justice about 100 times.  The KJV translated sedaqah as justice (correctly) many times, but the KJV was a disaster in terms of communicating the biblical concept of justice widely and correctly.  So, for centuries, the English-speaking world was cursed with an inferior translation of the all-important concept of justice.  Probably this is a primary reason for evangelicals being justice deficient.  For scholarly documentation of the above charges, see chapter 14, "Justice and/or Righteousness," by Steven Both in the book entitled, The Challenge of Bible Translation.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, a brilliant Reformed philosopher/theologian, asserts that translators of classical Greek into English almost always translate dikaiosune as justice, not righteousness as New Testament translators into English are wrong because they put the strong justice message of the Bible.  See his recent book entitled, Justice, for four chapters that specifically address the biblical perspective.

Joseph Grassi, a Roman Catholic bible scholar, in his book informing the Future:  Social Justice in the New Testament, has a chapter on the gospel of Matthew which he call Matthew:  the gospel of Justice.  Grass is dogmatic in asserting that dikaiosune should be translated justice in the
Sermon on the Mount.  If so, then there would be two major themes in the Sermon, the kingdom of God and justice.  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice . . . ."  Or "Seek first the kingdom and its justice . . . ."

When we combine the theological failure to expound on the large biblical teaching on oppression, with the translation failure on justice, we find an explanation for the white, American evangelical failure to understand and act on socioeconomic systems of oppression and social justice.  Given the above sad state of affairs, it is not surprising that when Karen Lebacqz did her Harvard dissertation on Six Theories of Justice, she discovered that the best western scholars on justice were severely deficient in their understanding of justice and injustice.

The door is wide open for some bright, young, evangelical bible scholar to write what could be the single most important biblical treatise since the book of Romans --- the definitive work on the
Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God and justice for the poor and oppressed.

Stage V --- Biblical Solutions

We need a few bible scholars who will think in a multifaceted, comprehensive fashion to address the complex problems.  Recently, I read a brilliant book on being filled with the Spirit.  It reflected aid-ranging scholarship, but it was narrowly conceived; not much relating the Holy Spirit to the kingdom of God and justice.

I suggest that we need some in-depth scholarly work on Luke 4:18-19 tying the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Jubilee justice together.  These verses also imply that the rich, the oppressors, shalom and the kingdom of God must also be included.  Because Luke 4:18-19 have not been central to the Americanized  gospel that has been preached in America, ethnocentrism and oppression have largely been unchallenged.  For example, Blacks have suffered under three systems of oppression in America: slavery, segregation, and now massive incarceration.  The abolitionist and civil rights movements temporarily solved the problem, but soon the oppressors reorganized and redesigned a new system of oppression.  Because the evangelical church did not have a comprehensive theology of society to guide, it did not recognize the new system of oppression, or even worse, often condoned it. Today the evangelical church is largely silent about the horror of mass incarceration even though it has been going on for almost 30 years.  Our biblical theology in the areas of ethnocentrism and oppression is bankrupt.  We need an evangelical think tank, a crisis response, to adores these issues immediately.

One of the projects the think tank needs to tackle is replacing the American trinity with community, sharing and reconciliation.  for a scholarly critique of American trinity, especially the individualism part, see The Kingdom Revisited: An Essay on Christian Social Ethics (1981), by Charles Kammer.
Hammer believes that the modern Western world, especially the United States is in a state of crisis in many ways (economically, socially and politically).  [Noble: Things are much worse today (2010) than they were in (1981.]  The heart of this crisis, however, is a moral crisis.  Negatively, Kammer asserts, it is "a misconceived individualism" which views society only as a negative factor impeding individual progress.  Positively, Kammer shows how the sociology of Emile Durkheim and the Christian concept of the kingdom of God can be used to bring back a balance between the individual and the society.

Stage VI -- How does he American evangelical church operationalize Luke 4:18-19 today?  This will be incredibly difficult because, for themes part, white American evangelicals are blind to they own massive social sins.  I suggest four steps:
*Admit, identify, specify the social sins.
*Confess those social evils.
*Repent of these social sins.
*Restore, do justice.

It will be very difficult to even get started with the admit stage, because evangelicals are very self-righteous in the area of social evil.  We are experts at identifying the evils of others, such as homosexuals and abortionists, but blind to our own sins of ethnocentrism and oppression.  We are highly skilled at rationalizing, even Christianizing, them away.  We do not see that injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among those things that appeared just.  We as white evangelicals are usually not Klan type bigots, but most of us rather quietly, but deeply, assume that we know best, we are superior.  Whether consciously spoken or not, this implies that Blacks are inferior; their problems are largely self-imposed, not the results of systems of oppression created and maintained by us.  So there is nothing for us to confess, to repent of.  Everything is stopped before it can get started.

Is there any way to break the impasse?  I know of only one way.  Somehow expose evangelicals to the HORROR OF OPPRESSION.  How?  Four possible ways to come to mind: 1) Engage is a serious bible study of at least 50 of the 128 verses on oppression; discover how oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills persons created in the image of God;
2) read a book like the New Jim Crow which describes the devastation and damage being done by the massive incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males; 3) go see with your own eyes a current system of oppression, but have a person from the oppressed community interpret what you are seeing;
4) then come and see me and I will show you how our historical past of extensive ethnocentrism and oppression haunts our sociological present.

If the Holy Spirit cannot break through to you, using the HORROR OF OPPRESSION, you are a hopeless case.  Enjoy the present, because the fires of hell will soon singe you, burning the less off your bones.

May I cite an example?  The War on Drugs was started in 1982.  Whites created the War; Whites financed the War; Whites operationalized the War; Whites built the prisons.  The War on Drugs has targeted young Black and Hispanic males.  White evangelicals never organized to stop the evil, oppressive War on Drugs.  I assume most of us approved of it.

Who do we organize to change things?  The church?  The Christian liberal arts colleges and universities?  The seminaries?  In some ways all of the above have been a part of the problem throughout the history of America and still are today.  If so, how can they become a part of the solution?