Biblical Justice vs Social Justice - Where ERLC, TGC and T4G Go Wrong - Economic Justice

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Well, all right, I wanted to talk a little bit about the idea of justice When I when

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I reviewed the David Platt speech at the t4g conference He decides to preach on the passage from Amos where he says let justice roll down like waters

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And he actually does a really good job exegeting that passage, but unfortunately, he doesn't choose to define justice

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And I think that's kind of where he goes off the rails in the speech or or sermon I never know whether to call it a speech or a sermon, but it seems like it's more like a speech

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Anyway, I'm in the speech He starts to cite what he considers examples of injustice and some of the things that he says are these income and wealth

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Disparities and he also talks about a few other disparities as well And so he says well look, you know the average white family makes income up here

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But the average black family has an income down here and the same thing with wealth and the same thing with with you know

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Jobs and stuff like that and he says that's an example of injustice and he's trying to connect that with what

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Amos was talking about when he said let justice roll down like waters and Unfortunately, that's where he goes off the rails.

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That is not an example of injustice When you decide an income disparity like that, it could be an example of injustice

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But you have to prove it the income its disparity itself does not prove it unless you're you know

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Using cultural Marxist type categories now, here's where I like to go in the Bible to kind of make this point

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The first place I like to go is in Matthew chapter 20 This is a parable that that a lot of us really have have a lot of familiarity with This is the parable

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Jesus tells where there's a land owner and he wants some people to work his field

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And so he goes to the marketplace and he finds some people and he goes at different times in the day He goes in the morning and he sends some workers to the field

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He goes and he goes about midday and then he goes towards the evening and he finds workers each time and at the end of The day he pays everybody exactly the same amount.

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He pays each person a denarius and This makes the people that were hired at the beginning of the day kind of upset because if you divide that denarius hourly

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They made much less per hour Than the people that were hired in the midday and towards the end of the day and so they make there's an income

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Disparity here with this particular job and they grumble at him and they're upset and this is what the owner says of the land

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He said this is this is in Jesus's parable verse 13. He says he replied to one of them friend

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I am doing you no wrong Did you not agree with me for a denarius take what belongs to you and go

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I? Choose to give to this last worker as I gave to you Am I not allowed to do what

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I choose with what belongs to me? Now we know that this is not primarily a parable about economics however, if the economics of this parable are untrue and And the owner of the vineyard is not allowed to do with his money as he pleases then the

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Application that Jesus is trying to make is also untrue and so we have to we have to embrace the economic situation that he is presenting here in order to understand and embrace the actual message that he's trying to tell about the kingdom of God and So what do we have here?

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We have evidence of an income disparity a very clear income disparity because the workers at the beginning of the day

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We're making much less per hour than the workers at the end of the day who are making much more per hour

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They all got the same at the end, but hourly there's an income disparity. There's no question about that That's why the people were grumbling

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Now was this owner unjust? Jesus says no He was not unjust and so that proves it what it does prove it doesn't prove everything but what it does prove is that an income disparity in itself is not an

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Injustice because we don't want to accuse Jesus of any kind of an injustice We don't want to accuse

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Jesus of saying something is is totally fair. We don't want to say well Yeah, Jesus you weren't quite right that actually isn't fair No, no

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It is fair if you agree to work for a certain amount even if it's less than you know White people as a whole earn for a certain job.

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That's not an injustice It just simply isn't you have to actually show how something is an injustice now

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The Bible has a lot of warnings for rich people. There's no question about that and the Bible has a lot of Comfort for poor people, but we have to understand that this is this is a very

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Specific kind of warning is very specific kind of comfort that the Bible is offering for rich and for poor here's here's

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James chapter 5 right James chapter 5 contains a warning to the rich and G and and James is saying come now you rich weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you

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Now he's not saying that they have to weep because they're rich He's not saying that they they're gonna have miseries come upon them because they're rich.

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Here's what he's saying verse chapter I'm sorry verse 4 He says behold the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields which you kept back by fraud are

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Crying out against you and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts

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So what is happening here? These people aren't just rich and because they're rich and they have a higher income

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They have some sort of rich privilege and so we have to repent of our rich privilege That's not the issue.

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The issue is they defrauded people that were working for them So that's the sin that breaks the commandment you shall not steal

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They are stealing from people that work for them And the reason they're doing is because they're rich and they have much more power

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And so they're like, what are you gonna do about it? You're gonna take me to court I've got better lawyers than you I could buy influence on that court.

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What you gonna do about it? I'm not going to pay you That's the problem. It's not that they're rich It's not that they have a higher income or wealth and there's not that's that because there's a disparity there

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No, it's because they're committing fraud And so David Platt if he wants to actually have an effect on somebody like me who's going to go to the scriptures and say

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Okay, let justice roll down like waters. Yes. So let's find out what that injustice is. He can't just cite an income disparity

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He has to show how the current income disparities that exist are due to fraud or due to something like that And it can't just be a historical generations and generations ago kind of fraud

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It has to be a fraud right now that we can we can actually adjudicate we can actually correct According to biblical standards of justice two or more witnesses all of that.

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And so that's the thing So when James talks about the rich and he says woe is woe to the rich He's saying no no woe to the rich who were who got rich by fraud by by abusing their power now the other thing is a lot of people in this movement tend to you know,

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Look at poor people as if that they're just always victims and that's why they're poor. That's a Marxist Analysis of the situation so you look at the disparity

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So, okay, the blacks are only earning this much the Hispanics are only earning this much But the whites are earning this much and therefore these people down here.

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They're victims That's not what the Bible teaches. Look at look at Proverbs chapter 10, right

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Proverbs chapter 10 Where's what it says in verse 4 lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth

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Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Now. This is not saying that every poor person is lazy

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This is not saying that every rich person has diligent hands because there are lazy rich people as well

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And there are also hard -working poor people This is talking about specific poor people who are lazy who do have a sinful attitude when it comes to work when it comes to managing money when it comes to all of these things there are there can be such a thing as a

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Poor person who's poor for a reason and it has nothing to do with being a victim They could just be a victim of their own laziness.

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And so we this is why we have to have nuance This is why we can't adopt Karl Marx as our standard of justice because Karl Marx says if you're making less

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Than this other group up here who's making more than you are a victim and Jesus says no No, you might be a victim, but we have to prove that we have to prove that you were frauded

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Defrauded or you have to prove that there was some kind of crime done against you But it could be that you're just poor because you're lazy or it could be that there are other circumstances like, you know, you could be a hard worker, but Outside circumstances could come and make you poor

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I could look, you know, I'm a hard worker But you know, don't don't get me wrong in an instant I could I could have a catastrophic medical problem and I could be poor in an instant

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Okay, and it has nothing to do with my laziness. It's nothing you see I'm saying so so this could happen I'm not saying that it doesn't it's always one way or the other but the reality is this is why we cannot just say

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There's the disparity. There's the injustice Karl Marx style No, we have to go to the scriptures and define these things according to scriptural terms and this is same with you know, incarceration rates

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It's the same with all of this stuff We can't just assume victimhood Because that's again.

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That's a Marxist interpretation of the situation not a biblical interpretation. So I hope this was helpful

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I plan to do a few more of these videos to sort of kind of hash out what the basics of Biblical justice are this is a topic that is very deep in the

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Bible if you haven't just if you haven't discovered how the scriptures Speak to justice specifically in very specific terms and economics and things like that.

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I suggest you do that study It is absolutely fascinating and it makes it very easy to see when people are misusing the term like David Platt did