Equality and Distinctions

Those who believe in cosmic justice are actually at war with nature. If you desire to have all people have absolutely equal opportunities (as in our sprint race example) by manipulating all kinds of variables, you are actually fighting against the created order. You are fighting biology, genetics, and indeed, providence.

If you’re a Cosmic Justice devotee, you resent the idea that those biologically male should be placed in roles where they seem better suited than those biologically female. Indeed, you will wage war over those words “better suited”, enlisting examples of female soldiers, female bodyguards, female oil-rig welders and so on, showing that any distinction is purely a social construct, or even an arbitrary prejudice.

For that matter, someone like this may be at war with other variables of the created order: someone’s native intelligence, talents, interests and dispositions. All that seems determined by forces outside the liberal’s ideology must be challenged.

Tragically, some Christians begin breathing in this air, and exhaling it with a Christian twist. For example, a favorite hijacked text is Galatians 3:28:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

There!, says the liberal, doesn’t that just prove that the gospel is all about removing distinctions and inequalities? Well, in a word, no. The gospel eliminates any boasting point a human might use to claim special favor with God: sex, class, ethnicity, or some other trait or qualification. In Christ, these distinctions give none an advantage or disadvantage. In Christ, none of these hinder table fellowship and spiritual equality. But that is far from saying this equality of access is the removal of distinctions. Far from it. Paul gives different roles to men and women in corporate worship (1 Tim 2:8-15), and even for informal church life (Tis 2:1-8). He acknowledges that the class system of Roman life is the order of the day, and calls for Christian masters and slaves to behave in exemplary ways (Eph 6:5-9). For that matter, in Romans 14, Paul is probably referencing how Jewish Christians may behave differently to Gentile Christians in respect of diet and observance of days, and does not call for these differences to stop, but to be tolerated and respected with deference and considerateness. From Paul’s perspective, differences in ethnicity, class or gender are part of life and the Christian is not called to erase or resist them.

But what of those inequalities brought about not by biology or genetics but by injustice: either the injustice of human society, or the apparent injustice of the universe? What of people born to an ethnic group that is enslaved, despised, or maltreated; people born in poor circumstances, with little chance to improve, people born into a system that targets them for oppression? Should we not wage war on the injustice that gave them a disadvantage?

Perhaps, rightly defined. Christians wage war by casting down systems of thought that oppose God (2 Cor 10:5-6). Christianity’s view of man ultimately fermented Rome’s cultural life to where it could no longer function as it once had. Christianity’s view of man brought about the Magna Carta, balancing the divine right of kings with the imago dei. In some cases, Christians have worked actively in politics. In most cases, Christians have been faithful Christians in their vocations, and allowed their view to salt the culture.

Christians can also work to faithfully reverse or counter the effects of the curse, whether it is dealing with disease, catastrophe, or some area of the natural order that harms or threatens life. Christians may not understand God’s providence in giving some less, or the place of deformity or disease, but they can seek to heal and assist.

Christians do not fight injustice by artificially privileging victims or descendants of injustice over others. Christians do not fight injustice by pretending that the blind man’s vision is adequate, or that the illiterate can read, or that the unlearned can lead. Christians do not fight injustice when they place their finger on the scale, trying to act on a scale that belongs to God. We cannot fight the truth of injustice with the fictions of our own benevolent intentions.

We cannot wage war on the past. We cannot re-direct the river of history. We can only help hard-working people in the present, and have mercy on those harmed or destitute by something other than their own laziness. Societies that allow hard-working people to succeed are just. Ancient Israel was more than just, it was also merciful: providing means for the poor to survive (Leviticus 19:10). But notice, the poor still had to work, and glean the corners of the vineyard.

Ancient Israel did not fight against the very concept of the poor. It accepted that such would always be the case in a fallen world, and made merciful provisions for those who would work with the strength they had. They were interested in merciful justice, not cosmic justice. They were concerned with an equal right to survive, not an equal experience of life.

About David de Bruyn

David de Bruyn pastors New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minnesota and the University of South Africa (D.Th.). Since 1999, he has presented a weekly radio program that is heard throughout much of central South Africa. He also blogs at Churches Without Chests.

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