Biblical Justice

Good evening and thank you for joining us for this very special virtual event entitled Biblical Justice. We're joined this evening by a very special guest. Body. Bacham Modi is the Dean of Theology at the African Christian University in Usaka, Zambia. He's a husband, father, pastor, author, professor, conference speaker, and church planner. Bode's area of emphasis is cultural apologetics, whether teaching on classical apologetic issues like the validity and historicity of the Bible or the Resurrection of Christ, or teaching on biblical manhood or womanhood. Marriage and family. He helps people understand the significance of thinking and living biblically in every area of life. In today of fervent concern about issues of justice and injustice, Christians are encountering a wide variety of perspective is on what true justice is and how to achieve it. As followers of Jesus Christ, we need to be concerned about the well being of our. Communities, but we also must. Be guided by the Word of God as it's revealed to us in the scriptures. Today, vote will be helping us understand how we can seek justice from a biblical perspective. A perspective that is grounded in the Word of God. Voting. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Absolutely, it's my pleasure. Awesome. Well, I know you have a good word for us, and I'm going to turn it over to you. Help us understand and gain a biblical perspective on this fervent issue that is now consuming us concerning justice. Yeah. Absolutely, and you're right it is. It's consuming us, and unfortunately, for a lot of people, it's causing us to really question the Bible itself and the question God himself because so many trusted people are saying things that seem to be very contradictory and a lot of it has to do with this issue or this question of justice. And unfortunately, the way this discussion is being framed is that there are some people who are for justice and there are other people. Who are are not for justice. They wouldn't say these people are against justice, but that these people are are not for justice. And I think in order for us to understand this, we need to understand the worldview behind it that is causing this disagreement and this misunderstanding. And so bear with me while we just take a small jaunt through history in order to hope clear. Up some things. There have been ideologies around for a long time that have been competing ideologies in terms of what the Bible says. One of those competing ideologies is. The materialistic ideology, a naturalistic materialism, and probably the leading voice in this, the one that we know the most, is called Marx. Marx as a naturalist, as. A materialist, did not see the world and everything in it through the lens of scripture or even through the lens of there being a God. He's an atheist, and for him he saw all of life really as a struggle, a conflict over sources and material goods, and so in sociology this ideology is called conflict theory. Now, Marxism was very popular in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds. Marxists believed that capitalism was corrupt and that it would be overturned and usurped that there would be a revolution, workers of the world would unite, and it didn't happen. We saw the Bolshevik Revolution in early nineteen hundreds, but after that. It just didn't materialize. This Marxist utopia didn't materialize, Capitalism didn't fall. Instead, capitalism actually grew and gained momentum, and people prospered under capitalism, and a number of people began to rethink, not abandoned, but they began to rethink Marx's ideas. One of them was an Italian Marxist by the name of Antonio Gramsci. Graham. She was really a pioneer because Graham she sort of envisioned this idea that caught on. And the idea was that you know, people are not being you know, held down by forces or just by you know, the bourgeoi versus the proletariat, the people who control you know, resources versus people who don't control resources. Really it's ideas, and particularly he used the term hegemony and hegemony is this prevailing idea or prevailing worldview and a culture that Graham she saw as being used to control people, and so people needed to revolt, but they needed to revolt against the hegemony. For gram Sheet, this means this meant reducing everything to conversations about race, class, gender, and about influencing the influencers in societ so that there could be an ideological revolution. There's another group of individuals. These individuals were in Frankfurt, Germany, came to be known as the Frankfurt School, and they developed what's called critical theory, and a lot of people have heard of critical theory. Eventually, World War two comes and these individuals have to leave Frankfurt, Germany. They wind up in the United States and in New York and at Columbia University, and so the Frankfurt School really sort of grows and develops this idea of critical theory. There's a lot of things that come out of critical theory, including critical race theory, but it's based on the ideas of conflict theory and on graham She's idea of hegemony. And so, according to critical theory, life is divided between oppressors and oppressed. Again, you hear echoes right of Marxism, neo Marxism, this idea that the world is divided between oppressors and oppressed, that the oppressors use cultural hegemony in order to oppress the targets of their oppression. In the United States, those oppressors would be understood to be white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered, able bodied Christians. Christianity is understood clearly in critical theory to be a source of hegemonic oppression. And so they're coming for us So when you're looking at things from this perspective and the dominant perspective and the social sciences, in all the social sciences is critical theory, conflict theory, critical theory, everything is oppressor and oppressed. So when you see disparities and your worldview is oppressor oppressed. Then the explanation for the. Disparities automatically go back to oppressors and oppressed. So what does that have to do with this debate about justice. Well, one of the things that critical theory has done, specifically critical race theory is redefined the question of racism. So when people talk about racism today, there used to be this discussion, right, personal racism versus systemic racism, But today we've moved further in the direction of critical theory, so we talk about racism. When most people talk about racism, they're not talking about personal racism. They're talking specifically about structural, systemic, and institutional racism. And what they mean by that is not that there are laws on the books that are racist, not that there are individuals in power that are racist. But what they mean is this going back to conflict theory and back to critical theory. They mean when you see disparities. Whenever you see disparities, the answer as to why those disparities exist is oppression. And so when people are talking about racial justice, for example, and you hear this all the time, there is racial injustice, why because of disparities in policing, disparities in incarceration, disparities in wealth, disparities in dot dot dot. And the automatic assumption is that that equals racism. And so, for example, when you try to answer that, well, this disparity may be caused by fill in the blank. And when you try to go to the way people live, when you try to go to the choices people make, the automatic assumption is that you are arguing from hegemony. You are arguing from and by the way, the hegemony, the word for hegemony is white supremacy. Today in the US, you're arguing from white supremacy and you're blaming the victim. Why because the only explanation that is acceptable within critical theory critical race theory is the explanation that says, these disparities arise from oppression, they arise from racism. And so. That's why we're it seems like we're having these different discussions and there are people who are trying to express things in a compassionate way, and you know, trying to identify with concepts of justice. But if you don't understand these ideologies, then it's not that you don't understand what justice is, but you don't understand from their perspective what injustice is, and injustice is anything that would create a disparity. And so as Christians, we look at these issues from the perspective of the heart. We look at these perspective. We look at these things from the perspective of who am I in Christ? And who are you in Christ? And how do I see you in Christ? We look at this from from the perspective for example, of you know Ephesians chapter two, that last half of Ephesians chapter two, and Christ being our peace and breaking down the dividing wall right and making the two into one, and this idea of reconciliation. And then we have people on the other side saying there can be no racial reconciliation without racial justice. That's a direct quote from a number of people on the other side of this issue. There can be no racial reconciliation without racial justice. Now that flies in the face of what God's words says about his people. We are reconciled in Christ. We don't need to get reconciled in Christ. We are reconciled in Christ. How then, can it be true that there can be no reconciliation without justice, especially when Christ died on the cross. To set by the very justice of God. So even if we were to agree. That justice was required for reconciliation, then we would also have to agree that justice has been achieved on the cross by Christ himself. That is why Christ has also achieved reconciliation. It is done, it is finished. But does this mean that we don't have compassion? Does this mean that we don't need to seek and strive after justice? Well, nothing could be further from the truth. A couple of passages of scripture. Here, one passage in Micael. We know Michael six eight, right, he has told you, a man, what is good? And what does the Lord require of us? But to act justly and to love mercy and walk humbly with our God. So he requires that of his people. But there's another passage of scripture that I want to read for you. It's from Job. Job twenty nine, and it reads and. Job again took up his discourse and said, oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone upon my head, and when his light, when by his light I walked through the darkness, as I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent, when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were all around me, when my steps were washed with butter. I love that phrase. My steps were washed with butter, and the rock poured out for me streams of oil. When I went out to the gate of the city, when I prepared my seat in the square, the young men saw me and withdrew, and the aged arose and stood. The princes refrained from talking and laid their hand on their mouth. The voice. Of the nobles was hushed, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth. When the ear heard had called me blessed, and when the eyes saw it approved. And why now, with all of that build up, why was job so revered by men great and small? Verse twelve. Because I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless, who had none to help him, the blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me. My justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind, feet to the lane. I was a father to the needy. I searched out the car him whom I did not know. I broke the fangs of the unrighteous, and made him drop his prey from his teeth. Then I thought, I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand. My roots spread out to the waters with the dew all night on my branches, my glory fresh with me, and my bow knew in my hand. Well, we know what happened after that. Things didn't end up the way that Job expected or anticipated that they would. And so there are a couple of things that we see here. Number one, we see that Job walked in righteousness. That's where we begin in the book of Job. That he walked in righteousness. He was reconciled to God, and being reconciled to God, he was reconciled to his fellow man. This vertical reality manifested itself in this horizontal reality. And that is absolutely true. As Christians, this vertical reality of our relationship with God absolutely manifested itself in a horizontal reality and our relationship and our fellowship with our fellow man, and we see this in Job's life. We see not only this horizontal reality that allowed job uh to bring about justice for individuals, to bring about healing and wholeness for individuals, but we also see that this justice caused others around him to recognize the blessing of God in his life because of this manifestation that he experienced. But then there's another thing that we see that this justice that Job was walking in was not sufficient to rescue him from calamity because there is another message there in Job, and the message is this is that our righteousness is an alien righteousness, that the blessing of God that we have is not the blessing of God that we deserve. And everything that Job had was stripped from him in spite of the fact that Job did all of these outward things, because Job is not the ultimate righteous one. Job is not the ultimate just one. Job's righteousness was proximate, and Job's justice was proximate because there is only one who is righteous, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Job needed Christ's righteousness in order for him to be made righteous. And all of those to whom Job reached out needed more than just Job reaching out to them, representing them and being a great blessing to them. They needed Christ. The righteous One, because Job or the people of God could do everything that these individuals needed, and yet it would be insufficient, because ultimately what they need is not God's people, but they need God. And this is why the Gospel must ever be on our lips. And this is why when we speak about justice, justice is not about equal outcomes. That is a lie from the pit of hell. Justice is not about equal outcomes. It has never been about equal outcomes. There are many reasons and causes for unequal outcomes, and our job is not to pursue equal outcomes. Our job is to pursue righteousness. And righteousness is about being right with God in terms of the law of God being upheld. And because the law of God is not upheld, the blood of. Christ pleading for us because we. Have not upheld the law of God, and so we favor neither the wealthy nor the poor injustice. We don't try to bring about equal outcomes because there are myriad reasons that people don't experience equal outcomes. Not everybody gets the same talents, and ones who are unfaithful with their talents get them taken away from them and given to those who are faithful with their talents. That's unequal outcomes, and that's from the Lord Jesus Christ himself. It is not in any way unjust or unrighteous. So must we seek justice. Absolutely, Absolutely, we must seek justice. But when we seek justice, we have to make sure that we're not seeking it in accordance with world views that are antithetical to biblical truth. We seek justice based upon the law of God. We seek to align ourselves with God's righteous law, and we seek to pursue the alignment of everything around us with God's righteous law. That's why Jesus told us to pray, our Father, who are in heaven hell, will be thy name. Your kingdom Come, will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is our desire. Amen. We want that. We want the justice of God. We want the kingdom of God. We want the rule and the reign of God. And so we're after that. But how do we get that. We get that. Through pursuing the person and work of Christ, resting in the person and work of Christ, and by God's grace, pursuing righteousness as it is laid out in God's righteous and perfect Law. Amen. Amen, preach it. Oh, thank you so much, Moody. That was phenomenal, not only bringing us back to the heart of the Gospel and the Word of God, but also just giving us, especially at the beginning, just that understanding of history, because there's so many in the church that actually think what they're doing is noble by moving beyond the Gospel, moving beyond the Word of God, and really living in ignorance and ministering out of ignorance, not even understanding kind. Of the historical nature of what they're embracing. I just want to briefly touch on a few things that you said in your your talk to us this evening on biblical justice. And obviously you you've talked about this for the the last twenty minutes, but you know, you often hear people say when they hear talks like this, pastors your you're oversimplifying the issue, the issue of justice and the issue of race. When you just tell us to stick with the gospel or stick with the Bible. What do we say practically to those people that accuse individuals like us, that say, you're oversimplifying this very complicated issue. Yeah, there's a couple of things. One hear me carefully when I say the law of God. One of the things that I'm encouraged by is that there are a lot of people who were running away from the law of God who now are talking at least in the right categories. Right, and so the law of God is good, the law of God is just, the law of God is perfect. And those in the reform camp, and I'm a reform Baptist, I'm a Second London Baptist sixteen eighty nine. You know, confession guy, We recognize that applying God's law in life has never been simplistic. We never have a simplistic approach to applying God's. Law and life. If you believe that, then you haven't read the Westminster Larger Catechism, the section on the Decalogue, right, It is anything but simplistic. It is comprehensive. And so I would say to those individuals, you're not hearing me, if that's what you're if that's what you're saying. The second thing I would say is this is that there are two different categories. One is the category of our reconciliation, and that is extremely simple. Christ has accomplished that we are reconciled. There is one race, period, full stop. On the other hand, these individuals are talking about racial reconciliation and racial justice from the perspective of critical theory, which means that racial justice requires tweaking society so that there are no more disparities. And so if that's what you're talking about, then you're absolutely right. Not only is that complicated, but it is unachievable. Amen, Vodie. So you touched on it as well, this issue of social justice, and I think that's a loaded term right now in our culture. What is your perspective. I know you're all about and you just mentioned it. You're all about seeking the transformation of society, seeking the transformation of people, community, places, and things. But why is the term social justice in your opinion, as it's been defined by culture, unbiblical and anti gospel. Because the term social justice means distributive justice or really redistributive justice. Social justice is not about everybody being considered equally before the law or before justice. For example, and social justices, and even talking about the law. Social justice is about equity in outcomes, which is grossly unbiblical and has never existed anywhere in the world and does not bring glory to God. Let me explain what I mean by that. There is nowhere in the world, no culture, past or present, where you could divide people up you pick however you want to divide them up right and say that they are equally represented, or that you know, on gifts or levels of success or whatever is equally distributed among them. And we don't even have to talk about ethnic groups. We can even talk about birth order. First borns do better and virtually every measurable category, then second born, third born, fourth born children always have. It is not equitable the distribution in terms of intelligence, in terms of achievement, in terms of wealth, and a whole bunch of other things between firstborn children and second, third, four to fifth born children. There is a disparity there, not just in the United States, but all around the world. There is a disparity there. So do you mean to tell me that that is an injustice or is there another explanation. We see people, for example, Austrians, Austrians wherever they have gone in the world have been leading instrument makers. Right, Does that mean that there's a disparity or do you mean to tell me that if there's a group of Austrian violin makers in the United States and they get a disproportionate amount of the violin making business because of their excellence in making violins, that that is an unjust disparity and that will be better off if we get more people making violins even though they can't make them as well as the Austrians. Or if I'm in Pennsylvania, then do I just criminate against the Amish because the Amish disproportionately are represented in high end furniture making, right? I mean, you just look anywhere in the world, any culture in the in history or presently, and it is ludicrous to expect that there will be outcomes equally distributed anywhere. You know, for that matter, look at the. NFL, in the NBA sixty five seventy percent black, respectively. That that is a gross disparity when Blacks make up thirteen percent of the population. Right, how do we explain that? Do we explain it by saying hegemonic power has No we can't say that because the hegemonic power supposedly is working against black people. Therefore that doesn't work. So, yes, these things are are complex, but you know, we've we've got to give up, ironically on this simplistic view of critical theory that reduces everything to oppressor and depressed and therefore simplistically explains all disparities that way. Body, we have a lot of parents and teachers watching tonight. We have a church and a school, and obviously we're always looking for moments where we can teach biblical worldview that we believe this is a culture shaping moment that we're in our society right now. For those parents and educators that are listening tonight, what advice would you give them regarding the conversations that should be had in the classroom and at home with our next generation. Yeah, you know, I go back to my last book, Expository Apologetics, and I think I describe in the book what I call the expository apologetic Waltz, this three step process where step one is listening and understanding. And when I say listening and understanding, what I mean is we listen to people to understand the worldview assumptions behind the assertions that they're making. So when people are talking about justice or racism or whatever, what I want to do is I want to probe them to understand how they're defining these terms and what it is that they're advocating for. Now, the second step in this is comparing these things to the idea found in Scripture. Now, if these people are not coming from a biblical worldview, then whatever they're describing is going to be found wanting, and we need to be able to analyze that and be able to expose the inconsistencies and the holes. In this worldview. And then thirdly, we point to the Gospel because it has a superior answer. And so I'll give you an example. You know, when we're talking, for instance, about when we're talking about color blindness, right, this is something that's big, and you know this, this whole discussion and the anti racist movement, the critical social justice movement. You know how color blindness is bad because you know, it's disrespecting people's races, and you know this and that and the other. Okay, fine, I get why you have a problem with color blindness because you're coming from a worldview that's not a biblical worldview. There's a problem with what you're pursuing, because if you're not coming from a biblical worldview, then you're just saying race, you know, was constructed, but you're not going back to the fact that we come from one man, Adam, and that that's why it's wrong to think about people in terms of race, right, And that takes us to the biblical understanding of us being united in the last atom Christ, and our only hope for reconciliation between us is by viewing ourselves in the last atom Christ. And so now we bring back to it a more complex understanding that says, well, we're told that we no longer view anyone according to the flesh. So I recognize that you have. A problem with color blindness in that a certain version of it is disrespectful to people's ethnicity. But at the same time, your simplistic rejection of color blindness also rejects the idea that in Christ there is no male, no female, no Jew nor Greek. So there is a sense in which we break down those walls and those barriers. So it's wrong to hold on to. It in a way that we disrespect people's ethnicities, right, But it's also wrong to hold on to it in a way that disrespects our oneness in Adam, our oneness in Christ. So that's a way where we listen, hear what's being argued. For, recognize that they're arguing for it because there is some truth or some good in it, evaluating it and breaking it down right based on what's lacking there, and then bringing it back to the Cross and back to the Gospel so that we can offer a better version of it that is Christ centered. That's awesome, body. I can't thank you enough for just spending this time with us and helping us think biblically. We are always challenging our people, and I hope for people even outside of our church that are tuning in. We really need to return to this idea that we have a We have the Word of God and that is sufficient for every area and aspect of life. I also just love how you reminded us tonight of God's two words, his Law and his Gospel. Were just a few weeks ago we were looking at Amos and it was and just the message of the prophet. When you live in different to God and to His law, justice is not achievable. It is the law of God that moves us. To pursue justice and when we live in different to God into His word, chaos and brokenness and just the world being living in darkness will always be evident and we need the. People of God to wake up. I also just thank you for your reminder that the Gospel is our only hope for reconciliation and really look forward to hopefully connecting with you in person one day. Hopefully we get to see each other when you're in Florida in January. But thank you brother for what you do, and just to remind our audience that He is coming to us live from Lusaka, Zambias. So thank you for joining us and thank you for your work in Africa and also vote Baka Ministries. You are a breath of fresh air to the Christian community. Bless you brother, Thank you appreciate you having me now. I want to thank everybody for joining us this evening. We encourage you to visit Vodibachom dot org to find out more information about voting and his ministry, as well as you can access a variety of resources to help you and your family and those in your sphere of influence to think biblically and engage with culture. During these unprecedented times. If you found this talk tonight on Biblical Justice helpful, this talk will be up on our YouTube channel, Coridge Presbyterian Church YouTube channel. Please forward this to a friend, a family member as we pursue biblical justice during this unprecedented time. Yeah yeah,