Social Justice Pharisees - Watch Out For Them

Social Justice, Socialism, and Biblical Justice

All right, today, I wanted to do a video that was inspired by a Twitter conversation that I saw. I actually don't think I was involved in this conversation, but I saw it. And it was between a guy that was responding to Jamar Tisby.

But the conversation wasn't between Jamar Tisby, he doesn't really tend to respond too much to tweets. But some one of one of Jamar's disciples was responding. And what was so interesting about it is that so Jamar says a lot of things that are very socialistic.

I don't know if Jamar would call himself a socialist. I think he would actually, if you asked him directly, I bet you he's open about the fact that he's a socialist, but maybe he isn't. So I don't know that for a fact.

He says a lot of things that are very socialistic. He talks about public funds as if that's a real biblical category. It isn't public funds being used to help the poor and things like that. And there's no such thing as public funds, they only become public because they're stolen.

And that's a biblical idea. So we can talk about that. But But anyway, the point is, though, that, that he says a lot of these things, and he gets challenged a lot. And again, he doesn't really respond to it.

So somebody had challenged him on something he said that was very socialistic. And one of his disciples responded and said that the Bible basically something like I don't have the exact tweet, I didn't really want to put too much effort into showing you showing you this tweet.

Besides, he wasn't a blue checkmark, I don't want to put him on blast on my video. But anyway, the disciple of Jamar said that the Bible does not prescribe a form of government. And so because the Bible doesn't prescribe a form of government, then socialism might be okay.

So if you want to help the poor and use socialist policies to do it, that might be okay. You know, Tim Keller said something different or something similar. Tim Keller also says that the Bible, well, God's not a Democrat or Republican, ooh, he really went out on a limb there.

But yeah, he likes to make it seem like, like the realm of politics is almost like neutral, like you could be a Democrat or socialist, which is basically the same thing. Or you can be a Republican or socialist and, and, you know, God's, you know, way is kind of in between or maybe a mix of both or something like that.

And look, I'm not a Republican myself. And I know a lot of you guys are. But the reality is that that the Bible is not neutral on these topics. The Bible actually does give you specific commands on how to help the poor.

And one of the ways it does not say is okay is to steal from the rich. So in other words, if your tax system takes more money from the rich than it does from the poor, that's showing partiality. And that's actually against the scripture.

The scripture specifically calls that kind of taxation out. Marcus Pittman on his show Law and Prophets, you got to watch that show. It's a fantastic podcast. He talks about this all the time how there was a head tax in the Bible, but the Bible specifically says the poor doesn't pay less, and the rich doesn't pay more.

And so therefore, if you have a tax system where it's not that way, where it's a progressive tax system where I end up paying more than the less than the poor person, or a bigger percentage or whatever it is, that's actually evil in God's eyes.

So socialism is evil in God's eyes, very specifically evil in God's eyes. So if you're watching this, and you're saying, well, you know, the Bible is kind of ambiguous. Why would God be ambiguous about that?

Honestly, God is God is very concerned with with with who we have sex with, and how we have sex with them. And what genders because that's very important. I'm not saying it's not important. I'm not trying to be flipping about it, because that is very important.

Adultery is a serious sin. It destroys societies, right? God's very careful about giving us all the do's and don'ts there. But he just decided that politics, which is one of the primary ways that people engage in the world.

Yeah, just leave it up to them. Come on, man. Come on. It's as we have this big book of law in the Bible, a big gigantic book of law. And you're saying, well, you know, God's ambiguous. I always find that so ridiculous.

The Psalms, the Law of God, and Specific Political Commands

In the psalm, the psalm singing debate as well. There's a lot of churches that don't sing any psalms. I'm not a psalm of the only guy, right? I know a lot of people that I respect that are psalm of the only and I love them.

And I think they have a lot of good points. I'm not a psalm of the only guy. But to neglect the psalm, there's a big book of songs in your Bible and you're just like, I want to sing oceans. Like, I just don't get that.

I don't get this. We got this big book of law. And you're saying you're telling me that God doesn't prescribe a form of government. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. Now he doesn't give you every detail. Obviously, what what the Bible does is it gives you the 10 commandments, and then it gives you case laws, it gives you how do you apply the the law, the commandments in this instance, or in that instance, and it's not exhaustive.

So God's people would say, Okay, well, the death penalty is required in cases of murder, right? And so therefore, God's people can't just go, Okay, well, if somebody murders, you know what, let's give them some candy.

That'll be the good punishment. We can't do that. We actually have to look at the law and say, Okay, how do we apply the general equity of the law? Execution for people who murder? Do we have to stone them to death?

I don't think we have to stone them to death, but they have to be executed. That's justice, right? That's justice. That's a specific form of justice. And so to say that the Bible doesn't prescribe these things, it's just it's just another words of saying, what the Bible says, I don't like it.

And you know, that's the Old Testament, you know, the church doesn't have to do that kind of stuff. That's ridiculous. The New Testament talks about the the equity of the law of God all the time, Paul applied the equity of the law of God all the time.

And so that's ridiculous. But even more so, this is something that I thought is just so amazing. This guy who was in this Twitter debate was who said that the Bible doesn't prescribe a form of justice, so socialism might be okay.

He's a social justice warrior, just like Jamar Tisby, a social justice warrior, just like Tim Keller, a social justice war, and all these guys are telling us that the Bible doesn't prescribe a form of justice.

And here's the reality. If you're going to tell me in one breath that the Bible doesn't give you the form of government that we ought to be to to apply, and at the same time, try to accuse, you know, sometimes they do it indirectly, but sometimes they do it directly.

Try to accuse Christians of sin for voting for a certain politician or certain policies. You are admitting you are a Pharisee. You're saying the Bible doesn't tell us what to do. But then you're saying you're in sin if you don't do what I say.

So if the Bible's not commanding it, but you're calling it a sin, that is Pharisee ism. That is Pharisee ism. So to say that the Bible like Tim Keller said, the Bible doesn't prescribe a form of government.

If you do that, and then you start to put any kind of moral obligations, any kind of moral yokes on my neck, repent from your sin that is wicked to do that. Now, I don't do that. I say the Bible does put obligations on Christians in terms of politics, it does.

And so when I say you need to, you know, being more conformity with the Bible, you might disagree with me, but at least I'm not being a Pharisee. At least I'm not making up my own law and saying that you're held accountable for all of you never Trumpers.

If you don't think that the Bible has a specific form of justice in mind a specific command when it comes to politics that we can apply today, how dare you be a never Trumper? How dare you see the law of God is central to this debate.

And so until you social justice warriors find out about the law of God, and start applying it specifically, we're never going to get anywhere because you're just making up your own stuff, just like the Pharisees and calling it holy.

That's not what we should do as Christians. The reality is that if you use the argument that the Bible doesn't prescribe a form of government, and then you try to hold other people accountable with how they engage in politics, you're in sin, you're a Pharisee, and it's time to repent.

It's time to repent. Hope this was helpful. God bless. I remember when I was first first converted to Christ, I went to Tim Keller's church for a while lived in New York City at the time. And then I went to a smaller church, which was more more of a baptisty type church, not to say that Tim Keller's isn't a baptisty type church, it very much is even though it is a Presbyterian church.

But anyway, so I remember it was kind of one of these hipster churches. And I wasn't a hipster but for some reason, I was attracted to this church. And I remember that it was one of those churches that really dim the lights and, you know, things like that when they were doing songs.

And look, some of you probably go to churches like that. I'm not saying that that's necessarily wrong. But personally, I always dreaded our worship time in in some ways. And the reason I did is because some of the songs that we would sing, were super girly.

And I don't mean just like the music. I mean, the music was girly, there's no question about it. But the lyrics themselves were very feminine. You know, put your heart on Jesus's chest and listen to his heartbeat and stuff, stuff like that.

And some of it was very pseudo sexualized. I dreaded those songs. That's not to say all of our songs are like that we sang some good songs too. But I remember I would dread Oh my goodness, I hope we're not going to sing one of those songs this week.

And look, look that men don't like that stuff. But that's not why you shouldn't do it. But you shouldn't do it because it's not costly to do that kind of stuff. Let's not feminize and sexualize the scripture in areas where it's not supposed to be.

Singing Psalms, Masculinity, and Scripture-Saturated Worship

That's one reason why I love singing songs because the songs are real man that there's emotion there. And there's all kinds of full range of emotions. You know, you get anger, you get sadness, you get grief, you get passion or all these things.

The songs are so good for that. So every day when I go to church now, in some ways is because I pick the songs, but I don't always pick the song. Well, we sing some hymns that are very theologically deep and beautiful.

But we also sing psalms every Sunday. And those are God's battle hymns. And it's amazing. And the reality is guys, men get more out of that. But so do women. So I would urge you to consider singing songs.

I'm not saying you shouldn't sing only psalms, but please include psalms in your worship. It is awesome. Men like it and you'll learn some scripture at the same time.