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

Group Guilt and the Social Justice Framework

Well, today I wanted to talk a little bit about this idea that we find in social justice, even in Christianity, but I think this idea is a little bit more deeply entrenched in sort of the secular approach to social justice, but it's this idea of like group guilt, right?

So there's certain crimes or sins that we can attribute to one race, and so everyone from that race is sort of guilty, even if they had nothing to do with the actual specific crimes, they're still sort of guilty.

And there's some truth in this, but the way it's applied is actually very unbiblical, and I think we saw a little bit about this in Thabiti, his article that said we await repentance for murdering Dr. King, and in the article he's awaiting repentance for just white people murdering Dr. King, and a lot of people were pushing back and said, well, white people didn't murder Dr. King, certain white people did, and certain white people probably supported it, but you can't just put that on all white people, especially white people that are alive today, because so many of the white people that are alive today had nothing to do with it, and they had nothing to do with racism, and they aren't racist themselves.

And so there's this idea of people that are descendants of people who did these crimes, the slave owners, things like that, people that are descendants are sort of still guilty. And so that's sort of the idea that's put forward.

Now, there's also even some more extreme ideas where people are saying, well, yeah, there not only are white people guilty as a group, but they should pay, there should be restitution made by white people today that had nothing to do with the sins of the past, but just because of the fact that they have white skin, they should pay up.

And so that's a more serious application that would be, you know, essentially saying, well, yeah, we should punish the sons for the sins of the father. And unfortunately, the Bible says that that's actually not how it works.

Personal Responsibility in Deuteronomy 24

Let me switch the screen here. This is Deuteronomy chapter 24. And in verse 16, he says, fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers, each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Now that's very specific. You pay for you make restitution for the crimes that you personally do. And that would apply to money as well. So if your father stole something in the past, we can't say to you, because you didn't steal anything, we can't then say to you, now you owe restitution for what your father stole.

That's not how it So if your father does this crime, and he gets convicted, he pays for that crime. And if he never gets convicted, and then we find out after the fact that he had done a crime, that's it.

I mean, that I mean, game's over, there's no one to convict at that point. And that's this is to avoid sort of this generational crime idea that, you know, if your fathers were criminals, or your fathers were slaveholders, if your fathers did such and such, that we could come after you for that.

That's, you know, there might be some instances where we do that today. Well, that's wrong. That's according to the Bible. That's not how we do this. We don't go back in time to see what families committed crimes.

And then the people that are alive today, even if they had nothing to do with the crime, we don't, the Bible says, No, that's not justice. That's absolutely the opposite of justice. Now, you might say, Well, hold on a second, Adam, there are instances in the Bible of group kill.

In fact, I think the BD brings up the idea of an axe, or maybe this is someone who responded to the BD, the book of Acts, where where Peter's preaching, and he's putting he's he's saying that this generation is guilty of Jesus's blood, there's blood guiltiness there.

And there's, there is a doctrine of blood guiltiness, where there's sort of a group application of sin where a group is responsible for a sin. So let's, let me tell you about kind of where that comes from.

Blood Guiltiness and Exodus 34

That's from oops, sorry, that's from Exodus, chapter 34. And there's other places as well, where you can establish this doctrine of blood guiltiness. And here's what it says. This is this is the people in the covenant of God.

And here's what it says about God after he after the the covenant is made, right, or rather, the covenant is renewed. It says the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

So that kind of looks like it almost might contradict, right. But what when you look more carefully at this, this is very, a very different application. And on the one hand, with Deuteronomy, they're talking about sort of criminal justice, right?

They're talking about here on on earth, what justice looks like, how do we adjudicate things? What is jurisprudence? What does peneology look like for us when we're working as judges, and you know, and that kind of thing.

But in in Exodus, it's talking about what God does. And what God does is very different than what we do. So when God decides to judge a nation or something like that, he does visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children.

And what he what he means by that is, the sins of the father have ramifications all the way down the line. And so oftentimes, the sins of the father become the sins of the sons, because they follow their fathers into these sins.

Now, not always, we can't just assume that that's what's going to happen. And so this is very applicable to today, because a lot of people say, well, America has been racist for so long in the past. So we can just assume that everyone is systemically racist today.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Sometimes that happens. And sometimes God works things out that way, where he visits the iniquity of the fathers onto the sons. And there's, you know, generational curses in that way, from from God's perspective, but we can't work under that assumption.

We can't do the same thing that God does just because God visits the iniquity of the fathers onto the sons into the next generations, the third and fourth generations doesn't mean that we can do that.

God doesn't give us that option. So this is more of a statement of what God does, how God handles things. And so we should repent of our national sins, because otherwise, God will judge the nation for those national sins.

One of our national sins is abortion. We're standing by while 1000s upon 1000s of children are murdered every single day. And we have a blood guiltiness for that we have a blood guiltiness for that. And so when God judges the United States of America for that sin, that's going to be an example of judging, you know, children for the sins of the fathers.

Now, we can't do that. But God can do that. And so that's a very important distinction to make. We can't go and say all white people are white people are guilty for these, the sins of a few white people, God might hold certain people accountable in ways that we cannot.

But it's very different than than justice. And I thought we were hopefully talking about social justice here, justice that we adjudicate to each other. That's what we're about. So we can't we can't take God's perspective on this and say, well, we stand in the place of God.

And so we can assign guilt to white people. No, we can't do that. God might do that. We can't do that. The thing that's interesting about this Deuteronomy passage, this is just kind of a bonus here. He talks about oppression here.

If you look at this, this is verse 14, you shall not oppress a hired worker, who is poor needy, it says who is poor needy. That's very true. The Bible does talk about oppression. But then it defines very specifically what oppression is.

And it's not what most people are talking about today. Look, you shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor needy, whether he's one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns, you shall give him his wages on the same day before the sun sets, because he is poor and counts on it.

Lest he cry out to you, the Lord and you'd be guilty of sin. This is talking about something very specific. Don't don't rob poor people. Don't take advantage of poor people by not giving them their paid promptly.

They need that pay. So this is not like oppression. We're like, don't, you know, make sure that everyone has the same income. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what he's talking about here. What he is talking about is don't rob people.

You know what I mean? So like oppression has to do with real crimes like robbery, like stealing, like murder, like adultery. These are real crimes. We're not talking about stuff that like there's no income equality standard in the Bible.

There just isn't. Anyway, that's kind of a side issue. Hope this was helpful. God bless.