Christianity as a Religion of Justice

A Call for a New Reformation, Part 6

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“There's something in the psyche of a child that says the witch at the end of Hansel and Gretel has to go into the oven.”

A seminary professor said that in our Wisdom Literature class. Developmentally speaking, children need to know that the universe is safe. And for the universe to be safe, the bad people need to be punished. For a child, this idea of punishment is integral to their underdeveloped understanding of justice.

As we grow into adults, there is a good chance that our understanding of justice transforms and evolves because it becomes more complex. Not everybody grows in this manner. But for those who do, the concept of justice itself becomes something radically different than some form of hellish retribution.

For those who have adopted or are shifting into a more complex postmodern worldview, their perspective on justice is related to their understanding of the nature of authority, which flows from the margins of society rather than the center.

This is where Divine Justice and social justice interpenetrate one another.

An eye opener for exvangelicals

Listening to the stories of exvangelicals (those who’ve deconstructed and left evangelicalism) on social media, I see a theme. While studying the Bible they discovered something new. It was something they didn’t really learn much about in church: The ministry of Jesus.

You see, in their former religion, Jesus’ ministry really didn't matter. The only thing he was good for was to be a tool to get them the big payout at the end, which is escaping hell and getting into heaven. When they heard about Jesus’ ministry, it was all really about pointing them to accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, and the significance of that ministry generall stopped there.

As they paid closer attention to the gospels, however, they discovered that Jesus stood for something in his ministry. Constantly, he was giving voice to those who had their voices stolen from them. He was befriending those who had been rejected. He was sharing the wealth of his Kingdom with the poor.

Jesus was identifying primarily not with those at the center of society and the powerful. Rather, he was very specifically and intentionally identifying with those on the margins of society, those who were powerless. As he did so, he stood against those who had social power and used their social power to generate and enforce this marginalization.

It didn't matter whether those in power were political or religious figures. The power—the authority—he incarnated stood against them.

What is the primary reason that exvangelicals deconstructed and left their religion? Because they encountered Jesus for the first time as someone other than a means to a personal, self-interested end.