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It’s interesting how “social justice” has become a rallying cry of the left and an annoyance to the right.

I think of Melinda Selmys’ paragraphs

The irony is, that this lack of compassion is often promulgated in the name of compassion. It’s as though mercy were a scarce capitalist commodity: one over which different marginalized groups vie for a monopoly. The result is that disadvantage and lack of privilege become a kind of swag that people show off in ridiculous contests of intersectional one-up-manship.

Not only does this make social justice look stupid, petty and barbaric to people on the right, it also creates a toxic environment for anyone who wants to try to advocate for marginalized groups. You have all of these warring groups of downtrodden, politically disempowered people fighting among themselves for the biggest piece of the victimhood pie – and if someone with privilege, influence or power tries to intercede on their behalf, that person can basically expect to be torn to pieces for having the affrontery to enjoy power, influence and privilege in the first place.

The footing beneath it seems to be that there is no tension between justice and mercy. It is a full implementation of the American assumption of opportunity and merit. The goal of “the system” is to afford equality of opportunity which will thus yield the pure outcome of meritocratic rewards. Those who are wealthy have earned it, and those who are poor deserve their want.

There is certainly a sense of justice there, one that most of us can embrace, but it of course ironically undercuts the other narrative of our rebellion and being recipients of unmerited mercy, in other words grace.

I was working through 1 Corinthians 8, the passage about the strong who “know” eating in pagan temples who become a stumbling block to those without knowledge, the knowledge that idols are just piece of stone. The narrative there is that those who consider themselves strong out to consider whose who are weak, yet don’t really consider themselves weak. The reason for this is that the one who really is strong made himself weak on their behalf. The invitation is to give, not to demand.

The American Civil Rights movement taught our nation that to win you must demand. MLK Jr. convicted the nation that 100 years was too long to wait to end the kind of brutal legal repression and injustice that the African Americans had suffered from. He was right. Demand, however, has now become our savior. Prayer is not a means to move the heart of God, but either a waste of time as compared to demand, or a public show to claim our own moral superiority over our unjust adversary.

What is forgotten in all of this is that we ourselves are naturally unjust agents. Since God has no public presence we have no debt to Him.

The irony of course is that we are still skinflints when it comes to justice. We want “social justice” but just a little bit of it. We wring our hands over the feelings of a teddy wearing Olympian while millions and future billions of the world in Africa and Asia will suffer the kind of poverty we can hardly fathom. We are like self-righteous teachers imagining ourselves as moral crusaders resolving squabbles in the school yard while over the fence orphans pick through the landfill looking for scraps. We get pictures of the landfill but are relieved because it is someone else’s government’s problem. pvk