What is the Cause of the Poor and the Oppressed?

AD Robles

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Well, I've been on a ketogenic diet the last three weeks, and as a result, my blood pressure has gone down, and I was very excited about that.

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I was like, wow, this diet's working, but then I realized I also haven't really been listening to Kyle J. Howard too much, and so maybe that's responsible for the blood pressure going down.

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It's hard to say. Anyway, I saw a tweet from him just yesterday, and it was about how a big divide in Christianity is how we interpret

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Romans 13, and he said that white people interpret it one way, and then the correct way is the way that black people interpret it, and I asked him on Twitter, although I'm pretty sure

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I'm muted. I asked him, what is the correct interpretation? Of course, he did not answer, and I think that that's intentional.

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I think that the vagueness that people from the social justice side is a weapon. I think that not getting the specifics ...

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I don't need exegesis, but I do need some kind of specific interpretation that you're applying.

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They don't tend to put that kind of stuff in black and white, because then you can pin them down and start to critique it, and they don't like that.

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I wanted to talk a little bit about something that you always hear social justice warriors talk about, which is the

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Bible says that we need to take up the cause of the oppressed, take up the cause of the poor, take up the cause of the fatherless and the widow.

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That's very true, because if you look in the Bible, you will find dozens upon dozens of passages that talk about that.

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Deuteronomy 10, verse 18 says he executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

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Psalm 82, three, give justice to the weak and the fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.

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Isaiah 1, 17, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless and plead the widow's cause.

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Proverbs 31, verse 9, open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and the needy.

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James 1, verse 27, religion that is pure and undefiled before God the

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Father is this, to visit orphans and widows and their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

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Those are just a few of the verses I could have chosen from. Again, there are dozens and dozens of these verses that all essentially say the same thing.

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Now, the question is, what is the cause of the oppressed? What is the cause of the poor?

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What does executing justice actually look like when you're talking about the poor or the oppressed?

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You see, that's the thing. There's a vagueness there, because what they want you to think, social justice wars, what they want you to think is, yes, we should care for the oppressed and take up the cause of the oppressed.

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And what they want you to do is think of oppression the way they do, wealth inequalities, income inequalities, things like that.

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And you will not find that in the Bible, because the cause of the oppressed is not the fact that they have less money than the rich.

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That is not the cause. There is no injustice because poor people have this much money and rich people have this much money.

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That is not an injustice in and of itself. But the Bible, luckily, well, not really luckily, because God is smart, he defines his own terms.

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He gives us context for what he's talking about. Here's James chapter two, verse six, just a few verses after what

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I just read from James. But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court?

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Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you are called? You see, James is saying that the rich people are dragging poor people into court.

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And so what when God says to take up the cause of the poor, he's not saying pervert justice for the poor.

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He's just saying, give him justice. So if the poor man is in a dispute with the rich man, there's a tendency for people who are judging to say, hmm, you know, the rich man can do things for me.

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If I take up his side of this debate, the poor people really can't. You see, I wonder if I could get something out of this by judging in favor of the rich person.

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And there's a tendency to skew justice sometimes. Now, this doesn't mean that the rich person is automatically incorrect.

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The rich person could be taken to court and could be totally right. We see this all the time. People sue companies for ridiculous reasons and spurious reasons.

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And that doesn't mean that the rich people are automatically in the wrong. We should not pervert justice in that way. Here's again from James chapter five, verse four.

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He said to talking to the rich people again, behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud are crying out against you.

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And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. See, that is what this is.

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The cause of the oppressed, the oppressed have a tendency to be more vulnerable. And so rich people sometimes think they can take advantage of poor because they're like,

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OK, I'm not going to give you the money I owe you. What are you going to do? Sue me. I've got better lawyers than you.

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And that's the thing. That's the thing. That's the position of the rich. It's not the fact that the rich has this much money and the worker has this much money.

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It's the fact that the rich is taking advantage of his position of power and actually not giving the worker what they agreed to be, what they agreed to work for.

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And so that's the cause of the oppressed. It's normal justice, standard justice. It's look, you said you would give the poor person five dollars.

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You decided to give them nothing. Now you better give them five dollars, even though I know that you're rich and you could potentially do something for me in the future.

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Maybe throw me a few bucks, kick back a few dollars, maybe give me a contract or something like that. I'm still going to take up the cause of the poor.

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See, that's the cause of the poor. The cause of the poor is not the fact that they're poor. The cause of the poor is that sometimes justice can be perverted because they don't have a whole lot of money.

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It's like a rich person taking a poor person to court again. There's a tendency for the rich person to have better lawyers or to have better connections or things like that.

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And that's not OK. God says justice is the same whether you're poor or rich. So it's the same standard.

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It's not the fact that you're poor. That's the cause of the poor. It's not the fact that you're an illegal alien.

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That's not your cause. Your cause is actually just standard justice. All of these verses have context like that.

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Here's Ecclesiastes chapter four verse one. Again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun and behold the tears of the oppressed.

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They had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors, there was power, but there was no one to comfort him.

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You see what I'm saying? So that the oppressors have power doesn't mean everyone who has power is an oppressor.

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See, that's what people that are take the social justice perspective want you to believe. They want you to believe everyone that has power is an oppressor just by the fact that they have power.

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That is not the case. Not everyone abuses their power. That's just the reality. Not everyone abuses their power.

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Some people do. And those people need to be brought to justice. Those are the people that are the ones that are actually oppressing people that need the oppressed need their cause to be taken up by Christians.

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Again, it is not the fact that they have no power. That means they're oppressed. It's only when there is actually an injustice being done, robbery, abuse, things like that.

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That's the only time that oppression is being had. So incoming, when you hear someone spouting out income inequalities, wealth inequalities, what you need to ask him is what caused those income inequalities?

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Is it fraud? Is it someone saying, I'll pay you $5 and then only paying you $1 when payday came?

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That is the cause that you should take because the scripture says we should not show favoritism to the rich or partiality to the poor.

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What we're seeing right now is very powerful organizations. And again, this is ironic because the

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Bible is talking about powerful organizations, perverting and oppressing people. What we have right now is very powerful, well -funded organizations that are telling you to be partial to the poor.

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The fact that somebody is poor means that they're oppressed. And that is not the case. That's a perversion of God's justice and don't believe it.

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So if your pastor or your friends are talking about social justice, you need to make sure that they're not talking about just income inequalities and wealth inequalities and poor people versus rich people.

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That's not what the Bible is talking about. The Bible is talking about actual injustices defined by the 10 commandments, defined by the law of God.

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That's what the Bible is saying you should take up the cause of the oppressed. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless.