Tim Keller's Generous Justice - Some Initial Thoughts

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So I'm reading the book

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Generous Justice by Tim Keller. By the way, thank you, patrons, for your support.

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Your money helped me to buy this amazing volume. But anyway, I have a few thoughts.

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I'm not, I mean, I'm only like, man, I don't know, eighth or sixth of the way through, something like that. It's a small little book, but I'm taking my time with it.

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Just a couple of quick thoughts up front. One of the things I noticed about this book is that one of the main arguments is that justice includes mercy, it includes charity.

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And I think there's a point to be made here. I think that in the Bible, in the past,

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I've used the term righteousness and justice as synonyms. But I don't think that the Bible, so in English, justice means something very specific.

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We have a very specific category for justice. In fact, in this book, Tim Keller talks about how at the cross,

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God gave his, that's God's justice. And he doesn't give his people justice.

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He doesn't make his people pay for their sins. Instead, Christ pays for their sins. So he gives his people mercy and grace instead of justice.

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And so Tim Keller understands that in English, those two words are very different. Grace and justice are very different.

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Charity and justice are very different, but he wants to make the argument in this book that justice includes mercy and grace.

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And I think that there's, is a point to be made there. Oftentimes when you see righteousness being talked about, it includes both mercy and grace and justice as we define it in English.

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But we have to make sure that, you know, we speak English, you know, we have different words to mean different things.

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It might not be the same in Hebrew. It might not be the same in Greek. In fact, I reached out to a brother, I won't name him, but a brother who's on more of the social justice side of it, but also is very serious about God's law.

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And I asked him about that. And that's pretty much what he said. He said that Hebrew and Greek are, there's not as clear of a distinction as we're used to in English.

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So anyway, I think it's, it's a, it's a little confusing for someone who speaks English to say, well, yeah, there's a very big difference between charity and justice.

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Tim Keller understands that. In fact, when he preaches the gospel, he is very clear about that. We don't get justice.

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We get mercy from God, but then he, he wants to muddy the waters when it comes to justice as far as taking care of the poor.

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So anyway, I don't think any Christians out there would deny that part of righteousness is to be charitable and also part of righteousness is to be just, but they're very different things.

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Anyway, a couple, a couple of points about this book. One of the things that he does is he says that the two words in Hebrew when they're put together are the best way to describe that in English is the term social justice.

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And the two words are often translated in English as righteousness and justice.

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I believe that's what it was. I'll have to look back anyway. We don't, none of, none of your

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Bible translations would translate it as social justice, but what Tim Keller recommends is that you, when you read those two words together, you should re -translate it in your mind.

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And so here's what he does. Let's listen to this. This is Psalm 33, five, according to Tim Keller, the

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Lord loves social justice. The earth is full of his unfailing love.

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This is Jeremiah 9, 24. I am the Lord who exercises kindness and social justice on earth for in these

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I delight, declares the Lord. Now imagine if I argued for theonomy in this way, like imagine if I said, you know, the best way in English to understand whenever you see the terms

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God's law or your law, you should just replace it with theonomy. So imagine if I said, and this is how

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I argued, I said, the Psalmist said, oh, how I love your theonomy. You know what

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I mean? Oh, how I love your theonomy. I meditate on your theonomy day and night. It might not be wrong, but the problem is that these are loaded terms.

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Tim Keller knows that social justice is a loaded term. In fact, in the next chapter, he's about to talk about some of the downsides of how people have used social justice.

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So you can't argue like that. It's just so silly. It doesn't make any sense. Why do that? If you know, it's a loaded term, theonomy is a loaded term.

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So if I decided to change the Bible and I just said, Hey, well, uh, wherever it says law, just replace it with theonomy that it's, it's an illuminating exercise.

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That wouldn't be helpful because theonomy is a loaded term. It means all kinds of things. Now it could be, it really just means

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God's law. I get that, but it's a loaded term and we have to understand that. So he thinks that that's very helpful to replace words in the

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Bible with social justice. I think that's the opposite of helpful because these are, these are, these are nuanced ideas.

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They're complicated. They're loaded terms and he admits people abuse social justice, the idea of it.

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So why confuse the issue? I don't really understand that. Another thing that he does here, um, he talks about, um, he talks about God being on the side of the poor.

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Let me read this. He says this, he says, by the way, he quotes a Latin American theologian who is a literal

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Marxist. So take that for what it's worth. He says this, he says, this emphasis in the

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Bible has led some like Latin American theologian Gustavo Gutierrez to speak of God's preferential option for the poor.

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At first glance, this may seem wrong, especially in light of passages in the Mosaic law that warn against giving preference to rich or poor.

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Yet the Bible says that God is the defender of the poor. It never says he is the defender of the rich. And while some texts call for justice for members of the well -off classes as well, the calls to render justice to the poor outnumber such passages a hundred to one.

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Is that how we do Bible exegesis? I mean, honestly, like, you know, a good

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Bible expositor, one who doesn't have an agenda, and I'm not saying that Tim Keller is not a good expositor. He is, he knows better than this.

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He has an agenda though, but the one who, one who doesn't have an agenda looks at these two things and he says, well,

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God, the Bible says God is the defender of the poor. Okay. God is on the side of the poor.

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He takes up their cause. Okay. And then we also have Bible passages that says you shouldn't be partial to the poor and God is not one to show partiality.

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The Bible explicitly says that. And so a Bible expositor is not supposed to say, well, there's a hundred of the verses that say this and a couple that say this, therefore

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I believe the hundred. That's not how it works. What we have to do is combine the two and it's very easy to combine those two.

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In fact, it's very embarrassing for me to say this as an unlearned, you know, uninitiated member of the

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Christian church. But it's just so easy. It's like, okay, yeah, God's on the side of the poor because there's oftentimes not someone willing to take their cause.

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He's not on the side of the poor, of the ungodly poor. Do you see what I'm saying? Like the pagan poor, the, the, the

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Dagon, the Baal worshiping poor, he's not on their side. You see what I'm saying? So, so that's why the

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Bible can say, if you're a lazy sluggard and you're poor, God's not on your side.

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In fact, you're wicked. God's judging you. He's, his wrath is pouring out on you. You don't think that there were poor people in Egypt when he gave them the plagues and killed their firstborn.

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He's not on the side of the poor just because they're poor. He's on the side of his people who are poor.

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He's not on the side of the pagan poor. He's not on the side of the pagan poor. You tell me, you mean to tell me there was no poor in Sodom and Gomorrah when he demolished them?

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So here's the thing. He takes up the cause of the poor because oftentimes the poor are, they don't have the power.

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They don't have the money to defend themselves. That's the point. It's the same standard. He's not on the side of the poor over and against the rich.

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No, he's on the side of the poor when they're, when they need justice and they can't find it cause they can't afford it.

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They can't afford people to defend them and, and rich people can do that. You know, like if somebody were to sue me and then also sue a multimillionaire,

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I would be less able to defend myself than the multimillionaire. That's just obvious. And so God takes,

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I'm not saying I'm poor by the way, but God takes up the side of the poor because they're less able to defend themselves.

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It's almost like a threat for the rich. You don't take advantage of the poor because I'm on their side when they're in the right.

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You see what I'm saying? Dave Chilton answered this. There's a whole, there's a whole chapter about this.

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Is God on the side of the poor? And he answered this a long time ago. I'm sure Tim Keller has read this book. The answer is yes, sometimes, but it's according to the same standard.

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He's on the side of the poor, not in a partial way, but in a way of, you know, he will defend them when no one else will.

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That's the point. It's not about him just preferring the poor like that Marxist theologian that he quoted is said.

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It's not that. It's not that. We don't do Bible interpretation like that. I just, I have a hard time with that because Tim Keller is way smarter than me.

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And yet it's so easy to say, well, this is your agenda talking here. This is not your

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Bible exegesis skills talking because I know you've got epic skills, but you're just pushing an agenda here.

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Is God on the side of the poor? Not automatically, not automatically. In fact, his wrath pours out on the poor when they're the ungodly poor.