Too often we allow a false distinction to be drawn between social justice and spiritual justice. We discuss Christ’s teachings about caring for the poor and oppressed and his teachings about the redemption of our individual souls as if they had nothing to do with one another. But the commands to love our neighbor and to love God are the two fundamental elements of one law.
We see a similar confusion in the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. In these books, human beings struggle with an incomplete knowledge of God’s work and will. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes (Ch. 4, v. 1) writes, “So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.” Characterizing the lives of oppressors, Job states (in Ch. 21, v. 13), “They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” The author of Ecclesiastes and Job struggle with the injustice of the material world they see. They both affirm the necessity of honoring God by defending the weak and the disenfranchised, but they also both express discouragement: They don’t see the world getting better. They don’t see any consequences for the actions of the wicked. They don’t see enough aid for the afflicted. They are perplexed. Death is indiscriminate but not equitable. It appears to bring the rich and poor onto an even playing field, but in reality, it only makes violence, exploitation, systemic inequality, and their consequences more extreme. The authors of Job and Ecclesiastes understand something that we often miss: When we look at socioeconomic injustice and oppression, death itself is a fundamental part of the problem.
When Jesus came, he touched upon this explicitly. In his telling of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (The Gospel according to Luke: Ch. 16, v. 19-31), he reveals how resurrection and, more broadly, what happens to a human soul after death is relevant not only to individuals but to societies and to humanity as a whole. In the narrative, justice for the Rich Man and for Lazarus is only possible through the direct and supernatural intervention of God. The Rich Man neglects Lazarus, yet he does not seem to be touched during his life by misfortune or any legal consequences. Lazarus makes no apparent error, and yet suffers in poverty. Furthermore, Lazarus has leprosy: Even if the Rich Man had had compassion upon Lazarus, received him into his house, and waited on him hand-and-foot until he died, Lazarus would have still been subject to arbitrary suffering and death upon earth, which no one but God could remedy or repay. Death and disease themselves perpetuate injustice, and injustice perpetuates death and disease. This is what the apostle Paul gets at in his Epistle to the Romans (Ch. 5, v. 12) when he writes, “[B]y one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Death and sin—physical and spiritual evil—are inextricably and systemically linked. Systemic poverty, racism, misogyny, and all other forms of prejudice and injustice exist because of death. For this reason, it was not only necessary for Christ Jesus to combat social injustice and sin by teaching and exemplifying God’s law of love but also by offering himself as a perfect sacrifice able to defeat death and reconcile all things to God (Epistle to the Colossians: Ch. 1, v. 19-20; Epistle to the Hebrews: Ch. 9, v. 26-28). By making forgiveness, immortality, and access to God available to all people freely through himself, Christ enacts divine justice.
Thus, it is impossible to advocate for justice authentically as Christians if we neglect the preaching of salvation through Christ, and it is equally impossible to preach of the free gift of eternal life authentically without advocating for justice. They are two parts of a whole. When reproving the Pharisees for methodically tithing while neglecting “the weightier matters of the law,” Jesus does not say they should have been attending to those things instead of tithing; he says that they should have been attending to those things as well as tithing (The Gospel according to Matthew: Ch. 23, v. 23). Jesus doesn’t ask us to follow him in one thing only—to advocate for justice or to preach the cross or to love our neighbor or to love God. We are to try to do all these things. We will not always succeed. We will not even properly understand what exactly we’re supposed to be doing a fair bit of the time. But we are to seek to “grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ” (Epistle to the Ephesians: Ch. 4, v. 15).
The speakers in Ecclesiastes and Job often lament that we all likewise perish, but Christ expounded more perfectly (in the Gospel according to Luke: Ch. 13, v. 3) that “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Through Christ, we are no longer unilaterally condemned or alienated from God. Through Christ, all people—rich and poor of all ages, ethnicities, backgrounds, and identities—have an advocate who understands and cares for them and their individual infirmities (Epistle to the Hebrews: Ch. 4, v. 14-16). Through Christ, we all have access to the free gift of eternal life—to atonement, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God—if we will accept it. Through Christ, we have the promise of a coming time of the “restitution of all things” (Acts of the Apostles: Ch. 3, v. 21). This we have because God cares greatly for all people, body and soul, and if he does so, his Church must not neglect the care of either in any person.
Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash
Comparing Notes 