justice

In a world of fallen men, where the poor are oppressed, women and children--even whole families--are exploited for others’ gain, where some live in comfort and others in squalor, where some do violence to innocent people out of hatred for their ethnicity or religion, what is to be the response of the church? What about the part of each individual within the body of Christ? “Is this not the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6). Isaiah speaks of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked. James, speaking to the church, said that “pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress…” (James 1:27). From the brothels of Cambodia to the diamond mines of the Congo, from the prisons of Nigeria to the streets of Grove City, people suffer—whether their suffering is caused by another or is the result of their own choices, they are the cold, the hungry; they are under the yoke of suffering.

In this age of information, we are without excuse: we know that people are oppressed; we know that our neighbor is in need. Yet apathy clings to the church—clings to us; we wallow in it, looking to programs and governments to care for the orphan and the widow. Complacency after information may be complicity--partaking in the oppression by default, by virtue of silence and inactivity, but what is it about the church today, about our model of Christianity that breaks down at the point of action? Why is there no synthesis of orthodoxy and orthopraxis, of doctrine and action? Surely biblical faith incorporates action. Right belief for the Christian not only entails action; it incorporates it somehow. Has our theology strayed from justification by faith alone but not by a faith that is alone, which implies that a living and vital faith is one that is demonstrated to be genuine by works, to a justification by faith alone, a faith that stops after a one-time personal transaction of verbal assent with God?

American Christianity has a problem of synthesis. We of all people have most reason for loving our neighbor; we are called to do so, but more than that, we can look at the suffering around us and cry at the injustice knowing that it is not simply what is. We were not created for misery, but for joy; but for the corruption of sin, man is glorious. Yet many of us, people of so-called orthodoxy, wallow in complacency when it comes to the orphan and the widow, focusing instead on right belief. We watch others, without the right belief, carry out the right practice. We need first to renew a robust and proper doctrine of justification in the church—one that goes beyond the sinner’s prayer to a subsequent working out of salvation. Not a salvation by works, but a salvation demonstrated by works. James said that salvation without works is dead (James 2:17). A church that stops at the sinner’s prayer and offers a trite assurance of heaven to the individual will not look outside its doors to the oppressed on its doorstep. If I rest in my right belief and fail to love my neighbor, fail to at least try to break the yoke of oppression in the world, I may above all things be confident that my faith is dead and I am lost.